Three cheers to the jury. Winners innovate. Losers litigate. The absolutely incredible potential liabilities and uncertainty surrounding tech-related “intellectual property” show how utterly broken the system is. Oracle wants $1 BILLION (with a B) for “copyright infringement” of an open source platform. The RIAA, in its lawsuit against LimeWire, took things a step further. They argued, apparently with a straight face, that LimeWire’s liability is $55,000,000,000,000. Yes, that is a 55, followed by twelve– count ’em, TWELVE– zeros. As in, fifty-five trillion dollars. Probably more than the GDP of the entire world. That is how much a lobbying organization thinks a now-defunct little piece of software “owes” them.
Hopefully the recent SCOTUS guidance regarding their Prometheus v Mayo decision (i.e., stating a law of nature, and then stating “apply the law” is not patentable, thus stating a business model, and then stating “on the internet” should also not be patentable) offers at least some measure of remedy as respects technology, and specifically internet-technology and software patents.
Three cheers to the jury. Winners innovate. Losers litigate. The absolutely incredible potential liabilities and uncertainty surrounding tech-related “intellectual property” show how utterly broken the system is. Oracle wants $1 BILLION (with a B) for “copyright infringement” of an open source platform. The RIAA, in its lawsuit against LimeWire, took things a step further. They argued, apparently with a straight face, that LimeWire’s liability is $55,000,000,000,000. Yes, that is a 55, followed by twelve– count ’em, TWELVE– zeros. As in, fifty-five trillion dollars. Probably more than the GDP of the entire world. That is how much a lobbying organization thinks a now-defunct little piece of software “owes” them.
Hopefully the recent SCOTUS guidance regarding their Prometheus v Mayo decision (i.e., stating a law of nature, and then stating “apply the law” is not patentable, thus stating a business model, and then stating “on the internet” should also not be patentable) offers at least some measure of remedy as respects technology, and specifically internet-technology and software patents.