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Google In Battle With Its Own Lawyers
An anonymous reader writes "Google is at daggers end with a law firm it's been using since 2008, after discovering that lawyers in the law firm, named Pepper Hamilton LLP, were representing a patent licensing business that sued Google's Android partners last month. Google has claimed that Pepper Hamilton LLP never provided notice that it was hired by Digitude Innovations LLC, the firm that filed patent infringement complaints against Google's business allies."
We're talking lawyers here.
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Never, never trust a lawyer.
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google has the finances to buy out entire u.s. legal system. why have not they set up their own shark team yet ? ............
really. the way silicon valley takes these threats to the digital age - like copyright/big media, patent trolls etc, anti-net neutrality etc - is WAY too carefree and lighthearted. even, totally oblivious.
for example, sopa/pipa thwarted, another is being cooked, acta already being pushed, and silicon valley is not doing shit.
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If that happened in my state and Google wanted to push it to the end, that firm could lose its firm license and the lawyers in charge could lose their licenses too.
But then again, my state takes conflicts of interest very seriously.
But the conflict occurred while the file was already open!
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It sounds like this law firm just violated Model Rule 1.7(a)(1), which is concurrently representing adverse clients. Someone's getting in trouble with the state bar...
There's no conflict; the lawyer's interests are perfectly consistent.
Plus, they were probably using Windows Notepad, which almost never seems to be deterred by that sort of thing when it opens a file. It's like it has...connections...
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
If only they knew of a quick and easy way to do a search like that.
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We're not *quite* post SCO... The bankrupt ghost of SCO is still trying to push pieces of the lawsuit through the courts.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
No - but it should be!
The differences, of course.
First, there's no history of violence against lawyers. There's never been (to my knowledge) a lawyer genocide, or a lawyer slavery. Remarks about racial discrimination, even in jest, are at best uncomfortable because there was once some sincerity to it.
Second, people cannot choose their race. I did not choose to be Caucasian. But people can, with very few exceptions, choose their profession - I chose to become a programmer, lawyers chose to become lawyers.
That's why it's funny. Because there's none of the uncomfortable realness that comes with race-based jokes.
* Except NYCL!
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Never been known to fail..."
Don't you just hate it when you strengthen a system, like patents, and it gets worse, and you strengthen it even more, and it gets worse, and you strengthen it still more, and it gets worse?
Psst -- Google, Apple, Motorola, Microsoft, IBM -- come here, I want to tell you something.
When the machine that you have built is moving too much revenue from the producers to the inventors; you can fix it by making it move less revenue from the producers to the inventors. When producing for the customer is paying less and less, and having lawyers and patents is paying more and more, and it is leading to wild legal thickets that make it unattractive to produce things for the customer, the system is out of balance. Much like copyright, the answer to a malfunctioning patent system is not always stricter patents. Sometimes the answer is weaker patents. You should be able to see that pretty clearly from where you are standing. Just open your damned eyes.
You are getting hoist by your own petard. Wake up and figure it out, already. You own the government now, so we can't do anything to help you. You've got to tell the legislators you own to cut back on patent strength, or you -- and all of us, not that you give a shit -- but you are going to lose all you have built.
Ask yourself this: Are we having more problems with companies not bothering to come up with cool new patentable things? Or are we having more problems with companies squabbling over who is allowed to build which things? If the bigger problem is the latter, it means we need to reduce the rate of revenue flow or we will all lose. It is actually a pretty easy thing to control through patent policy -- strengthen it, more revenue flows, weaken it, less revenue flows; like a faucet -- you just have to open your eyes and recognize the problem.
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I don't see a hatred against all lawyers, but a general distrust of the industry and a hatred of bad/immoral/etc lawyers.
NYCL is fairly popular here, as are the folks at Groklaw (OK, P.J. is actually a paralegal). The others (patent troll lawyers, Jack Thompson, etc) are surely unpopular here, but IMHO in most cases their lack of popularity is rather warranted.
It's like the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry's dentist is making Jewish jokes, and Jerry starts making dentist jokes. Then the dentist gets all upset because his "people" (the dentists) are oppressed, and Kramer calls Jerry an "anti-dentite". Classic.
It's an oblique Shakespeare reference.
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In my experience lawyers exist to extract money from clients.
When I told my lawyer that I needed a EULA for an iPhone / iPad app and gave him a list of concerns, he called me back 15 minutes later to say that Apple's App Store EULA covers third parties like me and that my listed concerns are covered there. That I didn't need my own EULA.
There must be something wrong with my lawyer, he served me well rather than extract the maximum amount of money. YMMV.
First, there's no history of violence against lawyers. There's never been (to my knowledge) a lawyer genocide,
When you point things like that out, it really makes me depressed about the nature of humanity and society.
I mean... why the hell not?!
In 1958, my grandfather worked for Purina and was severely injured falling four stories down an elevator shaft. The elevator had no doors. He was a complete invalid until he died ten years later. His and my grandmother's lives were living hells.
Grandma spoke to a few lawyers in the area, all of whom told her she she had no case, despite Purina's obvious negligence.
My dad found out later that Purina had every lawyer in the state on its payroll. It's disgusting what lawyers who are owned by soulless corporations will do for their dirty money.
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