Re:My Brush With a Patent Troll
by alanctgardner2 on Friday September 21, 2012 @05:25PM
(#4555898)
What would an inquisitional legal system look like? No litigants, just aimless fact finding?
Re:My Brush With a Patent Troll
by alanctgardner2 on Friday September 21, 2012 @11:13PM
(#4556993)
That's interesting, and I'm very grateful you didn't just LMGTFY (I was on my phone!). It sounds like it's only really employed in criminal proceedings, and even then only a small number, because the expense of employing an investigating judge is very high. As far as I know, patent litigation is moving to a 'loser pays' model in the US, which seems much more economically sound.
LMGTFY is definitely considered bad form here on HN.
Even loser pays can be problematic, though, because the troll or bigcorp can fund a war of attrition for far longer than a startup or small business. I saw a variant of this happen to a company. An adaptation of the inquisitorial system to civil cases seems like the most sensible approach, if the goal is to provide equitable outcomes regardless of the financial resources of the litigants.
An alternative idea is a shared pool of legal funds. Both parties contribute to the pool and the pool is divided equally. If an aggressor wants to hire the best lawyers in the business, they have to provide the equivalent to the defendant.
This seems like an archaic goal that could safely be discarded if the legal system were changed from adversarial to inquisitorial to compensate for the fact that differences in wealth allow the wealthier side to hire more convincing counsel.