By Steven J. Vaughan-NicholsAugust 15, 2014 02:04 PM E

 

The patent wars keep going and going and we keep paying and paying.

 

Computerworld - When I started covering technology in the '80s, the last thing I thought I'd need to learn about was intellectual property law. But as Nicolai Tesla learned in his fight with Thomas Edison in the electrical-current patent wars of the 1890s, wherever technology goes, IP law is sure to follow.

My moment of revelation came in 2003, when I started covering SCO's copyright assault on Linux. SCO never really had a case, but I was soon to find out that with software patents, you really don't need a good case to profit.

You see, defending yourself against a serious patent attack is expensive -- expensive enough to make not defending yourself against a serious patent attack very desirable.

According to the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), companies sued last year for patent infringement by a non-practicing entity (that and its acronym, NPE, are lawyerspeak for "patent troll") for less than a million dollars that decided to fight all the way through a trial spent an average of $820,000.

 

ComputerWorld/ full article here/ http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9250407/Steven_J._Vaughan_Nichols_Patent_trolls_under_attack_but_not_dead_yet