You would in effect be trying to prove a negative, by trying to prove that you
never heard of the invention before making your own product. That's just not
possible, other than by trying to emotionally persuade a jury that 'you are
telling the truth' and the other guy 'can't show that you are not being honest'.
Its not patent holder's responsibility under current law to prove that you
knew about it, and that there is the core of the problem. It doesn't matter what
you knew and when, under the current law, only that they have proof that you
thought what they thought, but after they thought it and had documented that
they thought it. Independent thought processes are not "provable" after the fact
if you did not intentionally document it first (e.g. write a patent or produce
proof of prior art that you can point at).
--- The Geeks IP Law: The
future health of a Corporation is measured as the inverse of the number of IP
lawsuits they have filed in the last 3 years. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|