61–70 of 87 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Google is far from the highest paid per employees in the US. New York-based law firm Skadden Arps, rakes in over $180,00 a year. But Netflix, Mozilla, and VMware are are all well known tech companies that top the list. Google is not even in the top 10. http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/americas-15-highest-paying-com...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You can file in any jurisdiction in which you have legal standing to file, which means any jurisdiction in which harm has been done to you." No. What you describe in the first sentence is basically what the old rule was, pre-1990 (28 USC 1400). The current rule is much worse (28 USC 1391). Basically, you have the effect right, but the description of the pre-reqs wrong :)
A quick perusal does not lead me to see how it's now worse. Could you explain why you think that?
The key difference is in whether or not you must have an established place of business for a suit to be brought against you in a jurisdiction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You can file in any jurisdiction in which you have legal standing to file, which means any jurisdiction in which harm has been done to you." No. What you describe in the first sentence is basically what the old rule was, pre-1990 (28 USC 1400). The current rule is much worse (28 USC 1391). Basically, you have the effect right, but the description of the pre-reqs wrong :)
A quick perusal does not lead me to see how it's now worse. Could you explain why you think that?
Basically, the federal circuit's view of 28 USC 1391 is very different than 28 USC 1400.
If you look at cases prior to VE Holdings, they view 28 USC 1400, and in particular, the definition of "resides", very narrowly (to principal place of business/corp hq).
If you look at VE Holdings, and their view on 28 USC 1391, you can see it greatly expands the definition of "resides" to include essentially everywhere.
Software patents are pitched as a policy choice that encourages programmers by giving them some financial incentive to invent more software. That's how they have been pitched to programmers and the American people. However, after having worked in the patent industry for a few years now, I can tell you software patents are really just a mechanism to redistribute the wealth of engineers to lawyers. Period. That's the e…
I read an article by the Economist a few years ago supporting a more general notion that the legal system is subject to a natural increase in the quantity of superfluous fees that are tacked on like pork due to the fact that the legal system is run by lawyers, who naturally like policies and systems that help lawyers make money.
If you look past the common rhetoric against ED Texas about bring patentee-friendly and look at the data, this is not really surprising. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1597919 ED Texas did get a bad rap for being plaintiff-friendly early on, but that didn't last long at all, as the data shows. These days it seems to be favored for being a relatively fast docket and having judges with more patent-e…
Uh, neither of those are really true, the fast docket is especially wrong.
In fact, there are a host of reasons why the Eastern District is popular (your source is wildly out of date due to changes since 2010). There's a reason that 44% of all patent cases for the first half of 2015 were filed in the district[1]. Juries do indeed rule for defendants there a decent amount of the time, but the rules tend to be very plaintiff-friendly in the sense that they make it very expensive to go to court at all, making settling seem all the more attractive (which just so happened to be the exact business plan of the article's subject, eDekka LLC :) Lots of sources linked in [1]
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/deep-dive-why-we-need-...
Is it normal in other areas of the law for the plaintiff to be able to choose the (extremely favorable) district and judge for the case? Cause I can't imagine this happening in any other area of law, either civil or criminal. It just doesn't seem right, especially when the bias is so clearly observable. IANAL though...
Unlike what others have said, the answer is no. Patents are governed by a specific jurisdictional statute that made this crazy. The history is detailed well here: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2007/04/patent_jurisdic.html THe TL;DR is: It used to just be: Any civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringemen…
For example a lawyer looking to file a class action lawsuit often factors the venue that they will wind up in into their choice of a lead plaintiff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read an article by the Economist a few years ago supporting a more general notion that the legal system is subject to a natural increase in the quantity of superfluous fees that are tacked on like pork due to the fact that the legal system is run by lawyers, who naturally like policies and systems that help lawyers make money.
I wonder what the programming equivalent of such a way of thinking is...
Is it normal in other areas of the law for the plaintiff to be able to choose the (extremely favorable) district and judge for the case? Cause I can't imagine this happening in any other area of law, either civil or criminal. It just doesn't seem right, especially when the bias is so clearly observable. IANAL though...
I remember reading of an oil company waiting until a tanker was in New York harbor to file some sort of case it thought better heard in New York.
Is it normal in other areas of the law for the plaintiff to be able to choose the (extremely favorable) district and judge for the case? Cause I can't imagine this happening in any other area of law, either civil or criminal. It just doesn't seem right, especially when the bias is so clearly observable. IANAL though...
Unlike what others have said, the answer is no. Patents are governed by a specific jurisdictional statute that made this crazy. The history is detailed well here: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2007/04/patent_jurisdic.html THe TL;DR is: It used to just be: Any civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringemen…
But the notoriously corrupt patent appeals court -- the CAFC -- in its first decade of existence, abolished 28 USC §1400 by fiat.
The patent trolls went into business in East Texas soon after.
Software patents are pitched as a policy choice that encourages programmers by giving them some financial incentive to invent more software. That's how they have been pitched to programmers and the American people. However, after having worked in the patent industry for a few years now, I can tell you software patents are really just a mechanism to redistribute the wealth of engineers to lawyers. Period. That's the e…
And after all that PR and propaganda from the patent bar programmers are firmly and solidly against the existence of any patents that read on software. Too many are able to think logically about the consequences to be scammed.
Congress, on the other hand, is not so hard to fool. Neither is the Supreme Court. That's why the dirge of lies continues. The patent bar is still going on about how patents will eventually stop harming and start promoting innovation in software.
Meanwhile patent lawyers are the highest earners in the profession, don't have to deal with criminals and the indigent, and expand in numbers every year by exponential parasitism while the software industry lives in fear and hides innovative techniques out of fear.