Arthur5005

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We're so glad you're here! —User:ACupOfCoffee@ 07:07, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Patent troll

Hi. Was just reading through your (now deleted) comments on the patent troll talk page. Thanks for the apology for patent attorney bashing - you'll perhaps understand why my reply to your original comment was a little terse and my apologies to you if it caused you offence.

What I'm going to say now may sound condescending, but I come across your feelings quite a lot with the job I do - and by that I mean your fear of a patent infringement suit. Please believe me when I tell you that this fear is a media generated thing due to a few high profile cases and not connected with the day-to-day reality of patent protection and enforcement. I'm not saying that there is no chance that Microsoft or whomever won't suddenly decide any software you produce infringes one of their patents and slap a multi-million-pound/dollar/euro/peseta lawsuit on you, but it's not something that should keep you up at night because that's not normally the way that these things happen. It's the nature of these things that there can be a lot of masculine posturing which is unfortunate because it makes IP look unduly agressive, but we're all soft and fuzzy underneath - honest!

In terms of software patentability - please don't fall into the trap of thinking you know what a patent covers based on a press release. The patent holder will try to make their patent sound like it covers everything including the kitchen sink, while the accused infringer will try to make it sound like it's some trivial invention. Either way, the invention is going to sound like it's obvious. People always hear about the overly broad patents that get granted - what doesn't make the news (because the media aren't interested and, believe me, I've tried) are the patents that get refused by examiners who know their stuff because they're computer scientists, biochemists, engineers or whatever with years of experience.

Finally, back to trolls. I agree they're a problem and they get a lot of media attention - but they're not that much of a problem of themselves. They're more a subset of a larger problem of people being too agressive and suing first and asking questions later. It's a change in attitude that's needed, not a change in patent law. Having said that, there are things in the law (at least in the UK) that make agressive law suits undesirable and I hope small things like this will gradually change attitudes. GDallimore (Talk) 07:53, 28 November 2008 (UTC)