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US Supreme Court: Patent Holders Must Prove Infringment

Posted by timothy on from the telling-mom-what-you-did dept.

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."

2 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Now the next step... by Moryath · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  2. DOS Patent Trolls? by luciano.moretti · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?