Yet More Patent Insanity
Evidently the Justice Department is investigating MPEG LA on the grounds that they may be stifling innovation in the area of standards for web video.
High School Prior Art
Based on a Slashdot link, I read a blog post today about the Oracle/Google lawsuit over Java virtual machine patents. Among the list of software patents that Oracle has decided to sue Google with are two that I’m fairly certain that I wrote prior art for. This was in 1983 or 1984 while I was…
More on Patents
I had intended to give the indemnification issue a rest. But then the following caught my attention this morning: One big difference between patents and other kinds of intellectual property, like copyrights and trademarks, is that patent-holders who want to sue someone for infringement don’t have to show that their patents or their products were…
Providing Indemnification for Patent Infringement
Cardinal Peak recently had an unfortunate “first”: We chose to walk away from a promising engineering engagement because we couldn’t reach agreement with our customer about an indemnification clause. Let me give a little background before diving into the issue. “Indemnification” technically is the legal obligation to compensate a business partner for losses that the…