🚀 go-pugleaf

  If a company believes a certain course of action would render them at
  litigious risk, it would be imprudent for that company to pursue that
  course.  That company is effectively barred from entering a market,
  and it is impossible for them to compete in that market.

Perhaps not barred from entering it, but it could end up as a painful
experience if that company's lawyers' initial judgement differs from
the one eventually rendered by the courts.  Kodak vs. Polaroid comes
to mind.

And if it's difficult even for top patent lawyers to understand the
scope and impact of patents and other intellectual property
protections, woe be to lowly engineers venturing to build something.
RMS's random variable theory of legal decision gains some credence
when you see companies get burned by unexpected changes in the legal
system (such as the court restructuring about ten years ago that left
us with a much more "pro-patent" legal system, a change which Kodak's
lawyers did not anticipate.  Whoops!  Only a couple billion down the
drain.)

Patent protection was meant to foster innovation.  It could probably
fulfill this purpose if the laws were modified to reflect 20.9th
century technology and society, instead 18th century ones.  As it is,
sadly, the patent monopolies granted by government to advance
technology are often used either as portfolio weapons in cross-
licensing battles between the big boys or as a government granted
license to sue, extort and intimidate.  If current trends continue,
upstarts will have nary a niche which isn't blocked by one or more
patents or UI copyrights.

Some legal protection of intellectual property is needed, but things
are getting way out of hand when the government regularly grants one
person a 17 year monopoly on an idea which at least dozen other people
would "invent" in the normal course of their work or research within a
year or so.  Protecting the myriad of such minor innovations only
benefits the lawyers and their jockeys.  It certainly doesn't foster
major innovation.

Jim Helman
Department of Applied Physics			Durand 012
Stanford University				FAX: (415) 725-3377
(jim@KAOS.stanford.edu) 			Work: (415) 723-9127