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Originally Posted by birick
When did getting found guilty at a jury trial and losing all of your appeals become extortion?
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Without getting
too off topic hear, recall that O.J. Simpson was found not-guilty of murder by one jury and liable for the same deaths by another. Regardless of which court was right, there's no question that our judicial system is not infallible.
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Originally Posted by birick
Many keep saying the judge rushed the case...isn't 4 years of appeals enough? Long (real long) ago I remember learning that the american legal system promises a "fair and speedy trial" How many years in a speedy?
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Four years is not long enough if the basis for judgement is a patent process that takes even longer! All the NTP patents are being invalidated on the extremely slow review process of the patent office. How can it be fair for the courts to work faster than that?
Also, many of the NTP apologists here seem to be under the misconception that RIM "stole" the idea(s). The problem is that patents are
not made public until after they are issued, but they are retroactively effective to their filing date. That means that two people can come up with the same idea independently and the one that files first is able to control the technology.
Also, the patents are being invalidated because they were not original ideas in the first place. The trouble is that the patent office is so overwhelmed with filings by companies like IBM and Microsoft (who each file hundreds of thousands of "trivial" patents each year) that they don't spend the proper time researching the filings before issuing the patents. They currently have the attitude of "let it get sorted out in court". Of course, when the courts value these ill researched patents so highly, there's a paradox that points to a completely broken system.
I'm curious to know if any of you that think that NTP deserves $600M+ feel our patent system works well?
Being an optimist these days :wink: I do see a silver lining to this dark cloud: This case might just cause the US Congress to give the process a much needed overhaul.