"Commented [A2]: Whoever wrote this sentence might
be the same person who writes patents. It would be
helpful in the future to write and speak in plain English.
You are dealing with an ordinary court, not a patent
examiner.
I once spent about four months going through several hundred patents of a competitor, finding a way to do a product that did not infringe. We more or less succeeded, but man it was painful. Had expert legal help (and permission of our corporate lawyers) -- don't go off on your own and read these things.
A few thoughts on patents:
- Don't bother reading anything other than the claims. Ignore everything else (yes, even the diagrams) unless referenced by the claims.
- Yes, they do try to -- and succeed in -- patenting stuff you can pull out of a textbook. One patent was a near cut-and-paste of some stuff on Kalman filters (that one made me pretty mad).
- Any time a patent lawyer makes a reference to a patent's "teachings", punch them in the nose. These things don't teach anyone anything, that's an impolite fiction for a game that's really all about obfuscation. If there was a patent that described how to nail two boards together, you wouldn't walk away from reading that patent with any useful knowledge.
- The very fact that every company in the US will tell you "Please, for the love of Pete, don't go read patents on your own, without permission" again belies that these things are land-grabs that are never designed to advance the state of the art through teaching.
That's what the lawyers always tell you. "Out of an abundance of caution" etc. etc. yada yada yada. Always listen to your lawyers :)
Now, for the reality: I never saw this happen. How would they know you looked at their patent? From your server logs? From the PTO's? Do you think they file discovery on your personal computer? (Just don't send an email about their patent or write anything down about it -- THAT they can track.) Very, very few infringement suits go to trial anyway.
I think the real reason the lawyers tell you this is so they won't have to answer your questions. And because you might misinterpret the claims (not at all a hard thing to do).
If your management and lawyers want to, they can get an official opinion from a lawyer that you're not infringing. That's something you can use.
I absolutely _love_ chances to read or listen in on any instance where a judge provides feedback in the US legal system. For reasons I do not understand, there seems to be a strong culture among judges of constantly dishing out statements which somehow always feel like "sick burns". The few encounters with IRL judges I've had also had this quality, where the judge would be totally willing to frame people really harshly in their questions, or just outright denounce someone. If anyone has any insight into this (I bet there are some good books about "legal culture and judge culture" that'd be real interesting) please do chime in!
So, some of the work I did for my previous employer was deemed patentable. I wrote up technical but still comprehensible documents describing each distinct invention for the legal/IPR folks. Months later, I was notified that patent applications have been filed.
The language in them is so horribly convoluted that I, the supposed inventor can't make any sense of them. Hell, it took me a while to even figure out which invention maps to which application.
"Commented [A2]: Whoever wrote this sentence might be the same person who writes patents. It would be helpful in the future to write and speak in plain English. You are dealing with an ordinary court, not a patent examiner.