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Patent Attorneys Sued For Copyright Infringement

Posted by Soulskill on from the sibling-fights-are-the-worst-fights dept.

Zordak writes "Patent blogger Dennis Crouch writes on Patently-O of a catch-22 for attorneys. Patent attorneys are required to submit all prior art that they know of to the patent office. Failing to do so is an ethical violation, and can result in a patent being invalidated. But now the Hoboken Publishing Company and the American Institute of Physics are suing a major patent firm for copyright infringement, because they submit articles to the patent office without paying a separate royalty."

8 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Looks like its by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    intellectual property all the way down...

  2. What About ... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What about any legal proceeding? I'm sure that there are countless instances of published works used in legal proceedings that aren't copyright related. Do the lawyers need to pay royalties for those as well? What a racket!

    1. Re:What About ... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What about any legal proceeding? I'm sure that there are countless instances of published works used in legal proceedings that aren't copyright related. Do the lawyers need to pay royalties for those as well? What a racket!

      I would be astonished if this isn't considered Fair Use.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  3. IP daily? Not so much ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is not a catch-22, it's a cost of doing business. The lawyer needs to purchase the information for the application and failed to do so.

    Of course it is interesting to see an Intellectual Property (IP) Lawyer fail to guard IP.

    1. Re:IP daily? Not so much ... by Oswald · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I vote we can mod parent up and get on to the next thing. People who make their living in IP can hardly expect to just ignore it when the shoe is on the other foot. And couldn't they just bill the extra expense back to their clients anyway?

    2. Re:IP daily? Not so much ... by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The information isn't necessarily available for purchase, if it's on paper right of first sale allows you to pass it on ... but if it's an electronic document it could very well come with a license which doesn't allow you to transfer ownership ... at which point you're kinda stuck. RAND is the exception, not the rule ... the rule is "whatever the market will bear, unless not granting a license at all has competitive advantage"

      Of course the same is true for patents, so it's hard to feel any sympathy.

    3. Re:IP daily? Not so much ... by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree. The ranks of the wealthy are filled with those how managed to get the rules applied mostly to their competitors and not to themselves.

      (To be fair, I think we're all tempted to act like that. But some of the super-rich have been extraordinarily good and/or lucky in achieving biased enforcement of rules meant for everyone.)

  4. Re:Summary is misrepresenting things... by Albanach · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Should you ever have a need to hire an attorney, you may well appreciate that they are pedantic. Sure, that can often be annoying, but without it,we'd introduce a lot of vagueness into our legal system.

    In this case it's documents being copied. But lets say the law firm is litigating over a music CD. They send a paralegal down to the nearest store to pick up a copy, then duplicate that copy for every attorney on the case. Would that be okay?

    How about if it's a computer program. Can they just duplicate it for every attorney because it's part of a case? A movie?