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I'm sorry, but agreeing to almost half a billion dollar settlement despite very little work or investment, then backing out only to watch the courts side with the agreement breakers is too much for my own sense of fair play. $450,000,000 was a more than fair price and anything more is greed, plain and simple.
The courts won't even delay the proceedings to allow the patent courts to properly review the patents, which could take a year. Which of course is another matter. You are arguing for enforcement of patents that have already started to fall apart and are being shown to be invalid. By the time the review is done, NTP may very well deserve zero dollars. Yet they could end up with 500 million to a billion dollars? Is that fair? How can this judge not wait for a patent review? That's like declaring someone guilty or innocent before the trial is even over and hope you made the right judgement when it's all over. But at the patent office, at least someone in our government is starting to show some common sense.
But the courts can't give NTP their money fast enough it appears. Just because they can get 2$Y more than $X doesn't mean they should throw out prinicple and fairness to get it. That may be naive, but if that's the way NTP wants to do business, that's their choice and their reputation. And if their patents are ruled invalid, do they get to keep their half billion dollars for free?
I'm not sure why NTP backed out or what the legal basis was. But apparently the courts allowed it.
As far as the lawyer comments go, the evidence is out there and clear. For every decent and honorable lawyer, there are ten ambulance chasers who helped create our climate of litigation. Our lawmakers have focused so much on the letter of our laws that they've thrown the intent out the window. Our society is sue-happy because our so called lawmakers allowed it to get that way and the ambulance chasers are more than happy to take advantage of the situation. I hear all this talk about activists judges, conservative judges, liberal judges etc. But I think we need some common-sense judges.
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