[Home] [Groups] - Message: [Prev in Group] [Next in Group]
11458: RE: [MUD-Dev] patents and muds
[Full Header] [Plain Text]
From: Cynbe ru Taren <cynbe@muq.org>
Newsgroups: nu.kanga.list.mud-dev
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 14:49:20 -0500
Organization: Kanga.Nu
Bruce Mitchener wrote:
> Can this list help to serve as an archive of prior art? Has anyone run into
> problems of this nature yet?
In the '80s, I participated in a legal fight to reverse a bogus
trademark.
The case was open-and-shut, the other side was conducted by a
semi-senile fool with the unpaid help of a lawyer friend with no
relevant expertise, they made about every legal mistake possible, we
did everything about as cheaply and well as possible...
... and it still took nearly a decade and over $20,000 to win.
Reversing a -patent- defended by a company with anything approximating
sane, paid legal advice would be -much- harder, no matter how clear
the prior art.
This whole area is dominated by case law made by and for mega-corporations
fighting their private duels: Considerations of public interest and
such get -very- short shrift.
So the practical question is less, "Do we have prior art to show,"
than "Do we have people willing to spend hundreds of thousands of
dollars (doing things -very- cheaply) and years out of their lives to
contest this?"
Barring a friendly billionaire who thinks fighting bogus software
patents sounds like a neat sideline to get into, the answer is almost
certainly going to be, "No."
On the bright side, a lawsuit against an open source project for
patent infringement is going to be expensive to win and unprofitable
even when won: The target is legally diffuse and can easily legally
relocate to a country with sane patent laws.
My Muq server source is currently distributed only from the
Netherlands. Seemed legally advisable. :)
Cynbe
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist - MUD-Dev@kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev