Re:No Source Code == No Patent
by tzs on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @09:46AM
(#35628064)
They would face some hurdles.
1. Plaintiff's experts will have weeks or months to examine the code. There is a good chance they will notice it doesn't match what plaintiff figured out when they were doing their pre-lawsuit investigation to determine if there was enough evidence to support suing.
2. Plaintiff doesn't just ask for a copy of the code. They will ask for things like engineering notebooks kept during development, earlier versions, and various other things related to the development of the alleged infringing product. Facebook would probably have to fake quite a bit more than just the current product code.
They might claim they don't have any of that other stuff, but if they make/keep that kind of thing for their other products that is going to look pretty suspicious.
3. Plaintiff is going to depose individual engineers who were involved with the product, and probably also call some of them to testify in court. If they lie under oath (and depositions are under oath just like in court testimony) they could personally be charged with criminal perjury.
This is not one of those things where the employer is the one that gets punished. That falls squarely on the engineer.
1. Plaintiff's experts will have weeks or months to examine the code. There is a good chance they will notice it doesn't match what plaintiff figured out when they were doing their pre-lawsuit investigation to determine if there was enough evidence to support suing.
2. Plaintiff doesn't just ask for a copy of the code. They will ask for things like engineering notebooks kept during development, earlier versions, and various other things related to the development of the alleged infringing product. Facebook would probably have to fake quite a bit more than just the current product code.
They might claim they don't have any of that other stuff, but if they make/keep that kind of thing for their other products that is going to look pretty suspicious.
3. Plaintiff is going to depose individual engineers who were involved with the product, and probably also call some of them to testify in court. If they lie under oath (and depositions are under oath just like in court testimony) they could personally be charged with criminal perjury.
This is not one of those things where the employer is the one that gets punished. That falls squarely on the engineer.