Posts Tagged: "patent owners"

Simply stated, Lemley is wrong and his suggestion that eBay v. MercExhange is at all positive, let alone the best development, strikes me as utterly ridiculous. The true mischief of the eBay decision isn’t that patent owners can’t obtain a permanent injunction, but rather that the Supreme Court has taken the threat of a permanent injunction off the table. This means that infringers have no incentive to deal. If infringers had to fear the possibility of a permanent injunction they would be forced to enter into meaningful arms length negotiations with patent owners. Instead, now infringers can merely say “sue me,” which is exactly what they do.

Punishing everyone for the actions of an easily identifiable few is an abuse of power. The difference is when Sister Mary did it we lost a few minutes of play or had to sit quietly and watch seconds tick off the clock. Today the overlords who want to stamp out abuse risk destroying the engine of the American economy. If you haven’t noticed manufacturing jobs have gone. All we have left, by and large, is innovation. Are we going to kill that too?

It is truly a shame that so many have bought into the demonization of patent owners without any critical thought. In order to believe the narrative emanating from certain Silicon Valley giants you would have to believe the existence of helpless multinational, multi-billion dollar companies on their knees and wholly incapable of defending themselves against despicable independent inventors, diabolical universities, and monstrous scientific researchers. After all, looking to find a cure for cancer, or trying to figure out how to clean up the environment, or invent the next great kitchen gadget that will be the darling of QVC by definition makes someone vile, immoral, corrupt and down right sinful! A real devil in disguise!