A Federal Judge's Decision Could End Patent Trolling (computerworld.com)

"Forcing law firms to pay defendants' legal bills could undermine the business model of patent trolls," reports Computerworld. whoever57 writes: Patent trolls rely on the fact that they have no assets and, if they lose a case, they can fold the company that owned the patent and sued, thus avoiding paying any of the defendant's legal bills. However in a recent case, the judge told the winning defendant that it can claim its legal bills from the law firm. The decision is based on the plaintiff's law firm using a contract under which it would take a portion of any judgment, making it more than just counsel, but instead a partner with the plaintiff. This will likely result in law firms wanting to be paid up front, instead of offering a contingency-based fee.
The federal judge's decision "attacks the heart of the patent-troll system," according to the article, which adds that patent trolls are "the best evidence that pure evil exists."

Comments

Re:Messed up morality

[mi]

I think every member of a society should balance personal motives such as profit, against the greater good.

Maybe, people should do this. But legally requiring it is a road to ruin.

Painful as it may be to boys and girls of the Che Guevara/Bernie Sanders persuasion to hear, there is no system with better quality of life than Capitalism, under which greedy sociopaths find it deeply rewarding to develop and make available to us the ever-better communication, transportation, medical, and other technologies.

Of course, you and Karl Marx both see these people straight through — had it been profitable for them to produce crushed glass, they would've produced just that. But no one wants to pay for crushed glass, so they produce what we want instead.

See also "benevolence of the butcher".

and then pursuing anyone who develops a lower cost variant, particularly when the "test" as it were is simply identifying pre-existing and non-made-made genes

For some reason, these tests simply did not exist, until these nasty people invented them. So, I ask you again, would the world have been a better place, if these greedy bastards have never been born? And, if you think it would have, why don't you just ignore their existence and not get tested?

not allowing them to game the system to our detriment and to their gain.

Given that you and I lose precisely nothing by ignoring their (overpriced) offerings compared to them not being available at all, it is, quite obviously, not your detriment, that worries you, but, indeed, their gain.

Stop counting other people's money and make your own. Then tell us about your charitable instincts.

Re:Messed up morality

[mi]

The "self-made man" is a fantasy.

Something a loser would claim to sooth himself...

whether you like it or not, you have an inherent debt

Fuck you, Socialist asshole.