[Discuss] The America Invents Act

[invalid at pizzashack.org (Derek Martin)]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 08:07:43AM -0700, Hsuan-Yeh Chang wrote:
> This has been changed by AIA and recent court decisions.? See, for example, http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/02/patent-reform-act-of-2011-an-overview.html
> 
> Below are some quotes from above link:
[...]
> What you said has been out dated by Obama's signature of AIA...

You're overlooking some pretty glaring practical issues with your
argument.  You're quoting a summary of the act written by patent
lawyers.  They have every incentive to try to make you think that
patents are good for you: patents are good for THEM.  You're also
failing to recognize that what the law literally states is subject to
interpretation by lawyers, judges, and often jurors, who are fallible
and may also have their own agenda.  Any law suit that happens in
practice will usually be won by the guy with the best lawyers, which
usually means the guy with the most money, i.e.  not the OSS software
developer.  Or, actually, it usually comes down to who has the deepest
pockets, because patent trials are EXPENSIVE.  Microsoft has vastly
more resources than you do, and can litigate a suit against you until
you no longer have the funds to defend yourself, or until you can't
afford to miss any more work, at which point, YOU LOSE, regardless of
whose side the law is actually on.  The law is a tool best leveraged
by those with lots of money. 

RMS addressed most of this in his video also, again in much better
terms that I have.

I'm starting to think that you are yourself a patent lawyer or
employee of the SBA.  If you're not, then YOU represent the biggest
challenge to making REAL software patent reform happen:  If we can't
get people who actually understand software to agree that they are bad
for us (and in fact everyone), we'll never convince people who
understand software much less well.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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