Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> But sure, arguably the fact that you can shut down a company just by 
> *threatening* to sue them is a flaw of the justice system itself, not 
> patent law specifically...

Actually, truly silly patent suits tend to be settled pretty fast and cheap. 
If (for example) your product was a database engine using LZW-type lookups 
for storage and not compression, it's probably pretty easy to get it thrown 
out cheaply.

The problem comes when people have to argue over what they think the patent 
means by the word "number" or "transmit" or something. Then you get a big 
fight, and depending on what the judge thinks, you might win or lose right 
there.

For example, the holders of the LZW patent might try to argue that 
"compression" includes storage of ASCII codes on disk, since the font glyphs 
for letters occupy more than one byte. *That* is the stupid "you certainly 
weren't thinking that when you wrote the patent" kinds of stuff I've had to 
deal with.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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