Re: MP3 decoder packaged with XMMS
On 7/13/05, Dan Ravicher <ravicher@softwarefreedom.org> wrote:
> >>Patentees only win patent infringement cases 1/3 of the time, so it is
> >>not unreasonable to feel confident that a dispute would result favorably
> >>for the accused infringer. Further, whether your company or any other
> >>defendant could afford to defend yourself if sued has no impact on
> >>whether a "condition" has been placed on you. That's your financial
> >>situation, not a condition placed on you by a court or yourself.
> >
> > If you were inclined to place any weight on this sort of statistic,
>
> That statistic comes from ...
Of course it comes from somewhere reasonable; I have stipulated that
you're on the saner end of the FSF spectrum. But it's still no basis
for a claim that you have, or anyone else has, exercised "due care"
with regard to any particular patent, let alone a suite of dozens that
has withstood the kind of scrutiny that Fraunhofer's has. The Federal
Circuit, en banc, characterized one defendant's reliance on a similar
statistic (offered by their counsel and apparently relied on in good
faith to the extent that that means anything) as "flagrant disregard
of presumptively valid patents without analysis" -- and I can find no
better words for it.
Cheers,
- Michael
(I haven't read the Underwater Devices case, only citations to it in
later cases; so I'm not entirely sure which party was the arrant
infringer. Doesn't matter, except that it contributes to my already
tortured syntax.)
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