Re: XOR [ was: Linux stifles innovation.]

[Dan Hollis]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 [e-mail] wrote:
> About a year later I was talking with a group of business owners who had
> also received a similar demand letter.  Some paid, some didn't.  Those
> who didn't pay were not pursued other than the occasional copy of the
> demand letter.

Probably they did not pursue because they knew their patent was invalid,
and if they did fight they would probably be found guilty of bad faith
patent enforcement - treble damages, the whole bit. And maybe criminal
fraud, if they had collected enough money under the bad patent.

The XOR patent and the fraudulent enforcement of it is the purest
embodiment of everything that is wrong with the patent system and IP law.

> Since that time, about 1986, I learned that there is a whole cottage
> industry of going through old, but not too old, patents and seeing how
> they can be misconstrued to apply to current technology, buying the
> patent for cheap, and then threatening "infringers".  More or less
> an extortion racket.

RICO statutes anyone?

-Dan