[conspire] Patent Case Fall Out

[Paul Zander]

Yes the current situation has gotten out of hand.

From: http://www.npr.org/2012/10/11/162717373/in-digital-war-patents-are-the-weapon-of-choice

   According to an analysis done at Stanford: "In the smartphone industry  alone ... as much as $20 billion was spent on patent litigation and patent purchases in the last two years — an amount equal to eight Mars rover missions."


--- On Tue, 10/23/12, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: [conspire] Patent Case Fall Out
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2012, 9:26 PM
> There's also a bunch of news at
> Groklaw about the basis for Samsung's
> request for a new trial.  I've covered some of that
> before, but we're
> also seeing:
> 
> 1.  A _lot_ of evidence of juror misconduct, primarily
> involving foreman
> Velvin Hogan.  For one, he failed to disclose relevant
> prior litigation
> he'd been a party to, when asked about it during jury
> selection.  Also,
> and more damning, he was asked during jury selection whether
> he would
> set aside all he knew of patent law from his own experience
> and just
> follow the court's instructions and judge based solely on
> evidence
> admitted at trial, answered 'yes', and then did the exact
> opposite while
> running the jury, including bringing in extraneous materials
> that had
> never been admitted into evidence.  He also did not
> speak up during jury
> selection when the judge asked if any of the prospective
> jurors had
> strong feelings in favour of patents, which he very much
> proved to have
> during trial.
> 
> 2.  Challenges to many more of the patents, based on
> both prior art and
> prior patents.
> 
> 3.  Federal Court of Appeals informed the trial court
> that its reliance
> on a particular case was 'at best incorrect' and reverse
> part of the
> trial court's ruling (the injuction against Galaxy Nexus).
> 
> 4.  The judge has pretty much granted every motion to
> unseal (reveal to
> the public) all details of this mess, showing that she's
> unimpresed by
> arguments that, e.g., Mr. Hogan's privacy outweighs the
> public interest
> in seeing what's up.
> 
> 
> One summation from PJ:
> 
>   We've been watching the smartphone patent wars for a
> while now, and
>   what have we learned? I've learned that all the
> vendors are infringing
>   somebody's patents. And that means we can all drop
> the phony moral
>   indignation and think about what we should do about
> the patent mess the
>   world has gotten itself into by allowing software
> patents. Clearly, the
>   current situation is untenable.
> 
> 
> 
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