Slashdot Mirror
US Supreme Court: Patent Holders Must Prove Infringment
jfruh writes "The Supreme Court issued a ruling that might help marginally curb patent madness. Ruling on a case between Medtronic and Mirowski Family Ventures, the court rules that the burden of proof in patent infringement cases is always on the patent holder. This is true even in the specific case at hand, in which Medtronic sought a declaratory judgement that it was not violating the Mirowski patents."
placing the burden on the patent holder to prove the patent is NOT the result of:
- Patent slamming to game the system (e.g. submitting the same fucking thing 100 different times hoping one submission will slip by an overworked patent reviewer)
- Patenting something already patented
- Patenting something that is already obvious
- Submarine-patenting
...I've become increasingly used to insanity when it comes to the court and advancing technology. Next you'll tell me that the court will find that it's unconstitutional to collect certain kinds of data without a warrant...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Patent is a property right.
If you are suing somebody for violating that right, you have to "make your case" so to speak.
I don't respond to or upvote ACs
I can see this leading to some pretty costly discovery for companies being sued.
Because it's going to amount to "in order for us to prove you violated our patent, we need you to hand over all of your information so we can find the proof".
I hope there is a provision for saying "OK, but we're going to charge you $100 million for our time in getting this" -- because otherwise this just allows the patent trolls to cause the people they accuse to incur massive costs which might make settling cheaper.
You shouldn't be able to make someone bear the cost of you suing them based on something you can't prove without them doing the work for you.
This reminds me of the SCO lawsuit, where the most they ever found was, what, 7 lines of infringing code which SCO themselves had nicked from AT&T UNIX?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A plaintiff always bears the burden of proof in showing that he is entitled to the relief requested from the court. For patent infringement, that means showing a patent has been infringed.
The only reason this is in the news is because the appellate court (the CAFC) screwed it up one time, and the Supreme Court had to make a return to sanity.
This ruling on its own might only help slightly. But aside from that, I think this kind of 9-0 ruling (!) coming from the U.S. Supreme Court is encouraging for other patent-related cases that the Court will soon be hearing.
How hard would it be for OpenSource Projects and Small Companies to file for a declarative judgement lawsuit for every software patent held by trolls? I'm assuming that filing fees would get cost prohibitive quickly, but would we be able to DOS attack the patent trolls and the courts they use to prove the point?
Cue a million companies queuing up to sue for declaratory judgement in order to force companies to show their cards instead of vague "something you do violates some part of one of our patents pay 20% of your income or be sued" threats.
Isn't this the way it's always worked?
Why wasn't this already required...? (Innocent until PROVEN guilty?)
Isn't the burden of proof in any civil litigation always on the plaintiff?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In my opinion the next step after that, should be to abolish software patents.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Yep. If you sue someone, you have to prove your case.
Until now. Now, with this ruling, if you sue an inventor you don't have to prove anything. It's now up to the defendant to prove that the plaintiff did something wrong. This is insane.
I get it for patent trolls but if it's a legit ripoff of a patent of mine now I have to play P.I. and break into their office and interview people and steal papers and hide recording devices? Because otherwise good luck finding proof from a tightly locked down company giving you the runaround. They won't hand over so much as a blueprint without a court order.
> if you're suing somebody ... you have to "make your case" so to speak.
Until now. Now, if you sue an inventor the burden of proof is on the person being sued. The plaintiff is asking that the court proactively rule that nothing they ever did infringes on any of defendant's patents. SCOTUS ruled that the defendant now has the burden of proof, so they have to figure out which product plaintiff is concerned about, which patent it might infringe and how, or else the court rules that none of the products infringes any patents.
By analogy, it's the same as me petitioning the court to rule that I never stole anything from you. The court agrees, saying that unless you figure out the puzzle and guess what I stole and when, I'll be deemed innocent and you can't come after me later when you realize that your gold watch is missing.
If you sue someone for patent infringement you have always had the burden of proof, even before this ruling. All this ruling is saying is that if you threaten to sue someone, and they go to a judge first asking you to put-up or shut-up, the burden is still on you as the patent holder, same as if you had sued them.
Secondly, this ruling does nothing to limit the discovery process. As a small inventor suing a big company you still have the same subpoena powers during discovery as you did before.
In other words, the Supreme Court simply reaffirmed that accused infringers are innocent until proven guilty, regardless of the procedural nuances of how the lawsuit is initiated. None of the concerns you voiced will become worse due to this ruling.
LOL...if someone is charging you $10K to file it for you, then you are getting ripped off.
The cost isn't the patent submission fees. The primary cost is the lawyer you'll inevitably have to hire during the process. Getting a patent successfully through is actually more complicated than it might seem at first glance.
This is almost as bad as listening to lawyers talk about software.