| Well, that was an interesting case, with wording
in the injunction that was very
broad, with the
appeals court very evenly split, and unfortunately
EchoStar gave
up and settled instead of seeing
it through. I believe if it had, the outcome
would have been different, and if you read this
paper
[PDF]
you'll see why I say that.
Of course if you play games, or a
court thinks
you are, you could get stung. But Google would
never need to play
games, it has some of the best
programmers in the world, executive leadership
who
themselves know how to code, and it wouldn't redesign
without its lawyers
advice, as EchoStar apparently
did. The issue is always, does the workaround
still
infringe? If it does, and that depends on the
injunction wording as well
as on the patents, it is
possible to be found in contempt. It just is
never,
ever going to happen to Google.
As the court also said, attempts to work
around a
patent are to be encouraged. Unless you are playing
games, of course,
but that's an edge case. Also
keep in mind that the US Supreme Court over and
over
and over has had to spank the Federal Circuit for
overbroad rulings. It
just is that way, so even
their decisions are appealable. Just because they
say
something, it doesn't mean it's so ultimately. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
