Quote from: NewLiberty on July 04, 2013, 03:23:44 AM

Quote from: xxjs on July 02, 2013, 09:45:37 AM

Overview of the patent system:

The patent covers an invention, and the patent applicant can get monopoly of the use of the invention for a limited time. He can then force others to not use the invention or license it, of his own choosing.

No. That is almost as bad as claiming that since there are police, there is no crime.

A patent doesn't do what you described here very well, that would give the law magical powers that it doesn't have. Patents are routinely violated, they never result in monopoly. What they do is provide an offensive legal weapon to point at those that attempt to do something like what you have patented.

Using a patent is an expensive proposition, and may not succeed, so you aren't going to enforce it unless the perp is rich. Win or lose you have to pay. Lose really badly and you have to pay for the other guy's legal costs too. If you do ultimately win your patent defense case, you aren't done. All you get is the court sending you to another case to figure out what the "reasonable license fee" is, and that's what you get. If you win a good award, then you have to try to collect it.

Do you know how many patents get profitably violated? All the good ones.

Firstly I agree, a patent doesn't stop anyone from doing anything. Just because you have a patent granted doesn't stop anyone from knowingly infringing upon your patent. Either way I think most of the discussion thus far is acting like the patent was granted. In fact it has just been published and will get the first office action rejection in a few months.

I'm not sure how deep the inventors pockets are but he is gonna have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees just arguing that there is anything patentable here. His claims will be worn down in scope and numbers as his lawyers have to pare down the original claims. I would fully expect at least 4 rounds of office action rejections before anything is even close to being approved.

Even then after approval I fully expect that any granted claims will be highly likely to be overturned. This is IMO a huge waste of money and time for these guys, they made mistake number 1, never trust your lawyers. Lawyers get payed to scare you into spending way more than needed, and often in patent law, will say you have a great shot at getting a patent. They are not technically lying to you, they might be able to get 1 or 2 of the claims through, though they probably wont be the ones you wanted nor have the coverage to enforce much of anything, if they can even withstand a re-examination.