{"id":1030,"date":"2011-04-05T21:07:01","date_gmt":"2011-04-06T04:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2011-04-05T21:07:01","modified_gmt":"2011-04-06T04:07:01","slug":"i-dont-read-patents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/05\/i-dont-read-patents\/","title":{"rendered":"I don’t read patents"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"big<\/a><\/p>\n

A friend recently overheard someone taking trash about how big companies were kowtowing to them because of a patent they had – and the friend asked me about it.<\/p>\n

Without knowing anything about the patent, it certainly does sound plausible someone would cut deals over an awarded patent – once a patent is awarded it’s hard to get rid of<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I couldn’t be of more help to them, because I couldn’t read the patent. As a working engineer (and, briefly, former IP lead for an AI company<\/a>) I’ve had to adopt a strict policy to not read patents.<\/p>\n

The reason is simple – if you as an engineer look at a patent and decide that it doesn’t apply to you, and a court later decides that you’re wrong, the act of looking at the patent will be considered to be evidence of willful patent infringement and will result in treble damages<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In case you’re wondering, this isn’t just me – most IP guys will tell you, if you are an engineer do NOT look at patents prior to doing your work – do what you need to do, apply for patent protection for what you’re doing that you think is new, useful and non-obvious, and let the lawyers sort out the rest – if it ever comes up, which usually it won’t.<\/p>\n

Not everyone agrees<\/a> and it really applies less to indie developers and open source projects than it does to people working at big companies with deep pockets likely to get sued.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately I work at a big company with deep pockets likely to get sued, so I don’t look at patents. Don’t send them to me, don’t tell me about them, and if, God forbid, you think I or someone I know is violating a patent you hold, I’ll find the number of our legal counsel, and they’ll assign someone to evaluate the claim who specializes in that kind of thing.<\/p>\n

Hate the damn things.<\/p>\n

-the Centaur<\/p>\n

Pictured: a big red stop button for a robot, I think from one at Bosch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend recently overheard someone taking trash about how big companies were kowtowing to them because of a patent they had – and the friend asked me about it. Without…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,71,72],"class_list":["post-1030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-development","tag-exploration-of-intelligence","tag-the-majesty-of-the-law","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1033,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions\/1033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}