Topic: $1 Billion for violating a patent without marketing a product.

[Nemesis]

Link to full story.

In his August 6 order, Judge Webber confirmed the jury verdict that DuPont/Pioneer willfully infringe Monsanto's GMO roundup-ready seed patent. The jury rejected the defendants' claims that the asserted patent was invalid; that the patent had been finally obtained through inequitable conduct; and that the reissue patent improperly expanded the scope of the original claims. The judge also confirmed the jury's reasonable royalty damage award of "One Billion Dollars ($1,000,000,000)."

Basically Monsanto convinced the judge and jury that doing research that used the patents gave them a "improper head start" on being able to bring a product to market when the patent expires in 2014.  That in spite of there being an exception for research in patent law.  Somehow they convinced the judge and jury that the exception doesn't apply to genetic research.   

So now your patent protected market time is extended as your competitors can't do preliminary research on products using it until after the patent expires.  At least not without paying you big bucks.

So how about all these patents people get that extend someone elses existing patent?  Can they now be forced to cough up as they must have been using the existing patent in the research?

[Starfox1701]

That bull sh*t plain and simple.  Monsanto is going to be the death of us at this rate. Somebody needs to expose this company.

Rant over on topic, If I where  DuPont/Pioneer I'd appeal and go down the road of that the GMO is an idea and their seed and  Monsanto's seed represent 2 different expressions of that idea and their fore doesn't violate the IP rights of  Monsanto.

[Brush Wolf]

I am certain that DuPont will appeal and like in almost all lawsuits you never hear about the appeal verdict. SCO vs Everyone else is a bit of an exception mostly because there are people here that have kept us informed, the average person is unlikely to have even heard of SCO or the lawsuits.

[Nemesis]

One of the effects of this ruling is that any development that uses someone else's patents will now be done in countries without this type of legal ruling.  More job losses.  More tax losses.  Hopefully they can move to Canada, we can use them.

There are more on line resources for following lawsuits all the time.  It used to be that about all you could do to follow a lawsuit is read the newspapers and watch the TV news, neither of which followed any but the most shocking cases like serial killers or local serial rapists.  Now people put up websites just for this purpose (Groklaw as the premier example).  There are also judicial documents put into online systems such as one called Pacer that allow you (for $) to get the legal documents from cases you are interested in. 

I've followed several cases notably the SCO vs the world series.  The Oracle vs Google and the various MS and Apple vs Android/Linux using companies suits.  One of the Apple cases has Apple claiming that people can't tell the difference between the iPad and the Samsung Tablets, apparently the prominent Apple Logo vs the Samsung name is too hard for people to see as is the Portrait orientated Apple vs the Landscape oriented Samsung, they just "look the same"  . 

[Kreeargh]

Link to full story.

In his August 6 order, Judge Webber confirmed the jury verdict that DuPont/Pioneer willfully infringe Monsanto's GMO roundup-ready seed patent. The jury rejected the defendants' claims that the asserted patent was invalid; that the patent had been finally obtained through inequitable conduct; and that the reissue patent improperly expanded the scope of the original claims. The judge also confirmed the jury's reasonable royalty damage award of "One Billion Dollars ($1,000,000,000)."

Basically Monsanto convinced the judge and jury that doing research that used the patents gave them a "improper head start" on being able to bring a product to market when the patent expires in 2014.  That in spite of there being an exception for research in patent law.  Somehow they convinced the judge and jury that the exception doesn't apply to genetic research.   



So now your patent protected market time is extended as your competitors can't do preliminary research on products using it until after the patent expires.  At least not without paying you big bucks.

So how about all these patents people get that extend someone elses existing patent?  Can they now be forced to cough up as they must have been using the existing patent in the research?

WOW wine aboubt rights  of the lame bullsh*t patent laws where many x 1000 has the glory or their ideas  RIPED!