Take a look at the real patent system

When you take someone to court with a patent that will not hold up, not only is there patent tossed out, but there are penalties. The other party will also counter sue and make the holder of the bogus patent pay dearly.

  I remember reading somewhere it's like 5x damages and expenses or something like that written into the law, just to make it risky to actually take people to court frivolously.

  But what you miss is many lawyers are playing poker and not law.

  By this I mean they will intimidate people into paying just so they can avoid a fight, but in practice they can't afford a fight any more then the other guy, maybe even more so. Just ignoring them, or counter bluffing probably wouldn't have any repercussions.
  But you never know what cards they may be holding.

  The problem is the Engineer's mentality. I know because I used to have it, and still do to a point. I have also had many partners with it.

  They always play devils advocate, asking what's the worst cast scenario, how can I over engineer to make sure my bridge will not collapse, or my power supply will not burn down someone's house. Overly cautious.

  But in law, and business and business law matters, a totally different approach is needed.
  It's about Risk management, the risk reward tradeoffs, Poker, social interactions, and BALLS.

  Most engineers panic with any legal things, always assume worst case, and constantly keep putting rules and boundaries where there really aren't any. (Thinking in the BOX) and making the box ever smaller.
  "Oh is has to be done like this", or "you can't do that", "the law says this or that".

  Well The Laws are only 1/3 of the legal story, Case precedence another large part. What did the courts rule in similar cases? How are these cases handled?
  But most important are what are the practical reality of a given situations. Can these guys afford to sue, Can you stall the legal actions in the courts for 20 years till the guy keels over dead from old age. Can you even collect if you win?

  I have come to find that many of these "business Guys" will blatantly cross a line. It's only the ones that do this as their full time MO for years before it will catch up with them.

  In practice, it's like running a red light; it's only illegal if the cop see you. The differnece is police usualy have time, where District Attorneys are overwhelmed and can only go after the top 10% of what's out there, and only when everything is laid out simple even a five year old can what took place.

So if we had a race, the real business guys will cautiously run the lights, where the engineers wait till the light is completely green. The engineers will almost always loose the race.

  I recently had a corporation in California. We had a business guy whom we gave a few shares to about two years into our startup, under 25%.
    About a year later realizing that most of us in this venture after 3 years were low in cash, he just decided the company was his.
    He closed down the office, took all the contracts, papers, and hardware home with him.
    He had secretly filed papers with the state listing him as the sole owner and just deleted us like we were never there.
    GoDaddy even took the Domain and web site from me! (it was in my name)
    And he started to present my Inventions (patent pending) to Sun, HP and Intel as well as many investors without us!

    We talked to the state, turns out they just file list of corporate shareholder and offer filings, there is no verification or even protection from Fraud it's left totaly up to the courts to deal with fraudulent filings. This means in I could just file papers claiming I own Intel! The State would mindlessly file this, no questions asked. It's up to the courts to clean up any problems that may arise from this.
  Of course someone like Intel would send hordes of Lawyers at the problem.

  But in our case, only a corporate attorney may present this to the DA. Every Attorney we talked to wanted $100,000 US cash up front to do anything! Ya Right, maybe when I win the lotto.

  Anyhow as a private individual I can't even represent myself in a suit against this guy for what he is doing with my patents and company!!!

  So what he is doing is way far from legal, but knowing the system and where the three original founders are left at, he knows he is able to just steal the whole dam thing, betting that we can't come up with the cash to do anything about it.

Why am I going into all this, as an example of how thinking as engineers, we have little chance against the school yard bullys out there who want to take our lunch money.

  Some Idiot lawyers go after small companies lead by an engineer. They waive a patent around, and the engineers panic and give up or hand over all their money. These laywers wouldn't try this against a real business men, because they know there bluff might get called.

John L. Sokol

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