Good luck, Andrew!

Cheers,

Alan

-----

At 10:59 AM -0800 3/6/00, agree at carltonfields.com wrote:
>> As I have said several times before, I don't think there is > anything
>>in the
>> patent that wasn't covered by prior art ... (but reality > doesn't always
>> hold sway in court ...).
>
>Indeed.  The problem is that to prove a patent invalid, one must do so to
>the satisfaction of a jury by clear and convincing evidence.  The C&CE
>standard is the highest standard used in civil cases, analogous to "beyond
>a reasonable doubt."  Ultimately, when a jury (just six or so guys off the
>street) is sitting cross-eyed after a week-long (if lucky) trial of
>meaningless gobbledygook, and the judge says that they must find for the
>plaintiff unless the hold a strong and unwavering conviction of invalidity
>-- well, you can guess where things stand.  In practice, to litigate
>invalidity, you pretty much have to plan on winning after appeal, which is
>very, very expensive.
>
>It is for this reason that I believe it is essential that the standard
>applied for validity over prior art not considered by the patent examiner
>be decided by the usual "preponderance of the evidence" standard.  I
>intend to get frighteningly political on this point, as I believe it is
>the essential flaw in the patent system today; the rest being wounds that
>can be self-healing.
>
>So much for my non-sense about this -- I have a quasi-announcement!
>
>IANAL any more!  (well, still anal, just not a practicing lawyer :-))
>
>Starting end of March, I will be leaving my firm to accept a tech position
>(VP Eng. R&D) with one of my clients.  I can announce more particularly
>after they are done doing their PR.  I blame entirely all of you, my dear
>friends in the Squeak community -- and all the wonderful folk at SqC, who
>ultimately convinced me by their actions that I needed for my own sanity
>and happiness to get back to the hack.  What was really neat is that my
>employment agreement expressly permits me to continue contributing to and
>messing with Squeak.
>
>Thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement, as I undertake
>this scary (but exciting) step.