Bonum Certa Men Certa

SCOTUS Helps the Monopolists, Not the Citizens of the United States (Again)

Supreme Court US, 2009



Summary: The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) shows its commitment to other dubious departments/branches of the government (USPTO) rather than justice for the people

SSCOTUS deals another blow to software developers (as before) by sidling with the unreasonable and requiring that coders essentially study hundreds of thousands of patents before writing a single line of code. Ars Technica says that according to SCOTUS, "'willful blindness' to patent infringement not OK":



In a lopsided 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court on Tuesday held that "willful blindness" to the existence of a patent will not save you from charges of inducing other companies to violate the patent at issue. The case has drawn interest from the software industry because a lower court decision had chosen a laxer standard, "deliberate indifference," that a coalition of software companies warned would be bad for innovation. The Supreme Court agreed with the lower court that the defendant here was liable, but it did so with a narrower rule that is less likely to ensnare inadvertent infringers in future.


Remember that "justice" is relative and it can also be pronounced "just us" (the rich people, those in power who use the legal system to protect them from the population). This magnitude of cronyism can easily make European software developers say to the USPTO and SCOTUS (which defends the same line, being part of the same institution) "up yours!" Let us "innovate in peace," advised Knuth to the European system when he urged against software patents. Knuth is quite the backer of Google, which suffers a lot from Microsoft's patent attacks (and patent tax).

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