Total victory for open source software in a patent lawsuit

Acacia has been doing this for <i>years</i>, they have a very big warchest filled with the money from previous extortions.<p>They simply bit off more than they could chew, you can bet that in the future they're not going to change their game much, they will just go after smaller companies again.<p>I really hope that this will set precedent in the sense that a future defendant will be able to point to this suit and link this party with their previous loss, unfortunately that is not how it normally works in the courtroom.<p>It's a pity that the lawyers didn't get reprimanded for bringing this case, that would have been better still. After all, if you can get the legal profession to think twice before bringing bogus lawsuits then Acacia et al will have do a lot of homework beforehand instead of hoping that the sheer pressure of a lawsuit will cause their opponents to capitulate, as has happened so frequently in the past.<p>Here's a link to a previous case they lost, it doesn't seem like that deterred them much:<p><a href="http://www.eff.org/files/acacia-patent-invalidated.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.eff.org/files/acacia-patent-invalidated.pdf</a><p>and a blog article about that:<p><a href="http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2009/09/good-day-for-the-industry-federal-court-invalidates-acacia-streaming-patents.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/200...</a><p>Another party that should be in the docket here is the patent office, they should somehow be made liable for the cost of litigation stemming from the issuing of patents that should never have been granted in the first place.

"Plaintiffs attempted to exploit this inexperience by arguing that open source software involved behavior that was, if not downright illegal, at least ethically dubious. They promoted the fallacy that open source distributors unfairly take the property of others and thereby unfairly profit. They also suggested that Red Hat's public criticisms of the U.S. patent system as it relates to software and related calls for legal reform were un-American and indicated a secret fondness for the writings of Karl Marx."<p>Wow. It's like a bad movie.

This case at once underscores the good and the bad of the jury system.<p>The good: surprising as it may seem to many, jurors usually do try to evaluate the facts, and apply the law as instructed, in a conscientious manner - and, probably 90% of the time, the result is sound.<p>The bad: Red Hat and Novell undoubtedly put up a 7-figure defense to get the case to a jury and then had to undergo the risk of sweating it out to see if this particular jury might be gulled into giving sleazeballs or opportunists a victory - this is something an average defendant just can't afford to do.<p>Another note for those who can't abide by the idea of software patents: even though an orgy of such patents has been granted this past 30 years, there does come a time when all of the dubious and obvious ones do enter into prior art through lapse of time and, in this sense, the problem is at least to a degree self-correcting (obviously, this is cold comfort for those who have to suffer under such patents during their long tenure). That really was what won the day for the defendants in this case.

Yay! A jury acted intelligently!<p>Woohoo! The obviously-just outcome was reached in an unjust accusation!<p>Does it really have to be like this? How can we as a nation justify a system that forces entities <i>that are obviously not in the wrong</i> to spend a large sum of money in order to defend themselves from freeloaders who clearly <i>are</i> in the wrong? And even after spending all that money, we are <i>elated</i> when the correct individuals manage to win.<p>Why can't the patent office (if we must have one) actually employ field experts? Patent infringement cases would be submitted to the appropriate department, and the accused would submit evidence supporting their case. The case should have to go to court only in the case that the accused loses such an accusation and decides to appeal.

This seems like a pretty big deal - not only did the patent troll lose the case, he lost his patents.<p>I wonder on what grounds the jury found the patents invalid. Was it a technicality, or prior art or obviousness?<p>This could significantly raise the risk (cost) of being a patent troll since the pressure to settle out of court is now, at least to a higher degree than previously, on the plaintiffs.

good.<p>Patent trolls have abused the system for too long. The whole point of patents was to increase innovation not stifle it

In the general scheme of things this is an example of a failure. Software patents are a failure - full stop.