Re:Bank of America trying to load up on patents for the tech...
by cookiecaper on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @11:19AM
(#10812669)
>And then there's a fear of "and what if I lose"...
Which is not necessarily remote. In Ticketmaster v. RMG, the smaller company, which extracted non-copyrightable data from Ticketmaster's site, lost because the Court ruled that the momentary existence of a web page in RAM constituted an unauthorized copy. The real-world analog is claiming that an illegal copy is made every time a copyrighted work reflects against your retina. The only explanation for that kind of ruling is simple technological ignorance, but it's what we have to deal with.
While the American system has safeguards in place to prevent it, you do have to ask yourself how badly a particular judge is going to want to offend a massive company that could potentially make him tons of money if they believe he's a reliable ally; if not through explicit corruption and bribery, through the possibility of a post-retirement relationship as a "legal consultant" or similar. What benefit does the judge get by favoring a tiny company that's probably not going to be around for more than a few years anyway v. favoring a megacorp that has practically infinite money to burn? Whatever the deterrents are, we do have to recognize that the natural incentive is to favor the larger company, and remain cognizant of that.
We've seen a minor version of this happen with the Eastern District of Texas, which has become the go-to jurisdiction for patent trolls because they believe that judges that sit there are more sympathetic to their cases than other judges may be. The incentive exists for the circuit to encourage a "specialist" reputation, because they collect more filing fees that way, and the judges get more attention, which is a very valuable currency indeed.
Which is not necessarily remote. In Ticketmaster v. RMG, the smaller company, which extracted non-copyrightable data from Ticketmaster's site, lost because the Court ruled that the momentary existence of a web page in RAM constituted an unauthorized copy. The real-world analog is claiming that an illegal copy is made every time a copyrighted work reflects against your retina. The only explanation for that kind of ruling is simple technological ignorance, but it's what we have to deal with.
While the American system has safeguards in place to prevent it, you do have to ask yourself how badly a particular judge is going to want to offend a massive company that could potentially make him tons of money if they believe he's a reliable ally; if not through explicit corruption and bribery, through the possibility of a post-retirement relationship as a "legal consultant" or similar. What benefit does the judge get by favoring a tiny company that's probably not going to be around for more than a few years anyway v. favoring a megacorp that has practically infinite money to burn? Whatever the deterrents are, we do have to recognize that the natural incentive is to favor the larger company, and remain cognizant of that.
We've seen a minor version of this happen with the Eastern District of Texas, which has become the go-to jurisdiction for patent trolls because they believe that judges that sit there are more sympathetic to their cases than other judges may be. The incentive exists for the circuit to encourage a "specialist" reputation, because they collect more filing fees that way, and the judges get more attention, which is a very valuable currency indeed.