Another case
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| djohnston Sep 05, 2013 5:07 PM EDT |
of legalese often has little to do with logic or reason. "It's semantics", said the judge. |
| DrDubious Sep 05, 2013 9:36 PM EDT |
Is there some variation of "slander of title" or something that Cisco could countersue the trolls for? Seems like suing Cisco's customers for using Cisco products would imply that Cisco products violate the trolls Intellectual Precious, even if they're not coming directly to Cisco to say it. |
| Bob_Robertson Sep 06, 2013 8:37 AM EDT |
What Cisco has to show is that they themselves are being attacked. So far, only their customers are being sued, so Cisco does not have "standing". It's very likely that Cisco could act through the courts for something other than a declarative judgement. Just as Cisco is not an injured party, and that's an absurd detail, going for something named something other than "declarative judgement" is also an absurd semantic detail. The entire legal system has been built by psychopaths feathering their own nests for centuries. Don't even try to understand it, you can't. |
| skelband Sep 06, 2013 12:12 PM EDT |
I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that it makes sense in a legal sense to only allow redress to a directly offended party in a civil case. Take the case of "trespass". What that means varies from country to country, and contrary to what a lot of people think, there is no common trespass in the UK. However, the implication of trespass where it is illegal is that someone is somewhere without permission. This "lack of permission" can only be asserted by the property owner since it is only their's to give or take away. Someone else can not make this determination since they do not have the right. I suspect that a lot of the precedent is based on this kind of reasoning and in this sense it makes sense. You can only be guilty of copyright violation if you are copying without permission and only the copyright holder can assert their rights since only they truly know if they give permission or not, notwithstanding the common "all rights reserved" commonly often used on copyrighted works. Same with trademark use, defamation etc... which are not obviously crimes as such and are civil in that they are a dispute between two parties neither of which is the state. |
| djohnston Sep 06, 2013 1:30 PM EDT |
Quoting:You can only be guilty of copyright violation if you are copying without permission and only the copyright holder can assert their rights since only they truly know if they give permission or not, notwithstanding the common "all rights reserved" commonly often used on copyrighted works. Yes, that is certainly true. But, as the article states, Quoting:This involves a case where certain customers of Cisco products were being sued for patent infringement by TR Labs, and part of its argument was that certain Cisco equipment resulted in the infringement by those customers [emphasis added]. The users of Cisco products are being sued for purported patent infringements contained within the Cisco equipment they're using. At least, that how I'm reading it. |
| mrider Sep 06, 2013 3:24 PM EDT |
To my mind, the analogy would be if a person were to purchase a shrink-wrapped DVD. When you play the DVD, there is music that is background to the action, and that music was purportedly illegally copied. That is to say that at least theoretically the person creating the film did not have rights to use the music. Along comes a person that claims to have those rights, and (s)he sues the consumer instead of the movie's producer. The person that produced the film jumps in and says "wait a minute, I can use that music - your copyright isn't valid". And the court says to the producer you can't get involved, you aren't being sued. As the consumer, my response would be "Is it my responsibility to audit every freaking thing that I purchase to make sure someone hasn't slipped proprietary IP into something I use but didn't make?" Of course with as bat-spit crazy as the courts have become, no doubt the answer would be "yes". |
| Bob_Robertson Sep 06, 2013 3:29 PM EDT |
> Of course with as bat-spit crazy as the courts have become, no doubt the answer would be "yes". Yep. Even if we all think that that's nuts, that's what is happening. The patent troll isn't suing Cisco because Cisco could afford to take them down. Just like SCO sending letters to people using Linux trying to extort money for their "stolen IP" in Linux. Same process of going after the people who can't afford to fight. Edit: Of course, SCO, not Novel. But I'm also thinking about the check that Microsoft gets for (most) Android phones because of their accusations of IP violation. |
| mrider Sep 06, 2013 3:31 PM EDT |
Quoting:Just like Novel sending letters to people using Linux trying to extort money for their "stolen IP" in Linux. Same process of going after the people who can't afford to fight. Am I misremembering? I thought that was SCO (the new SCO, not the original SCO)... |
| skelband Sep 06, 2013 3:45 PM EDT |
Cisco just needs to bankroll one of the litigants and tell then to fight it, and agree to cover any and all losses. They probably wouldn't do it, but it would be interesting to see. |
| CFWhitman Sep 06, 2013 3:56 PM EDT |
It was SCO that did that, not Novell. This situation cannot exist with copyright because you can't sue the customer for copyright infringement. With copyright law it's only unauthorized copying with intent to distribute that is illegal, which the customer does not do. With patent law, however, even unauthorized use of the patented technology is illegal, which the customer does do. Generally in the past, however, companies that had patents were looking for relief of present/future infringement and compensation for past infringement. They wanted to sell their version of the allegedly infringed technology themselves. In the current climate of non-practicing entities, also know as businesses without ethics, actually doing work to receive money is considered anathema. Why actually do work when you can just continue to sue and collect licensing fees for someone else's work? |
| Bob_Robertson Sep 06, 2013 4:10 PM EDT |
Sorry, of course, SCO, using what they thought they'd bought from NOvel. Fixed. |
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