Eminent Domain Applied to IP Due To State Secrets 312
NormalVisual writes "Wired recently ran a story about a group of inventors that found themselves unable to sue Lucent Technologies for infringement of a patent they held on a novel design for a pipe/cable connector. They had been working with Lucent on an underwater application for this connector, but unfortunately for the inventors, Lucent's application was being developed for an as-yet-unnamed branch of the U.S. government. The government is now claiming a state-secret privilege, and is refusing to let the inventors sue Lucent for patent infringement, citing national security concerns. In the meantime, Lucent continues to directly profit from their invention without paying any royalties or other compensation. The patent in question can be found online. It's doubly a shame because, unlike so many other patents that we've seen here, this one is actually creative and non-obvious." We've touched on this topic before.
IP? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Let me explain this... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:state sanctioned theft.. (Score:3, Funny)
the funny mustaches
A minor logical flaw (Score:3, Funny)
2. Publicly posted patent.
I suspect this is not a legal/governmental snafu at all, but rather a behavioral experiment to see how stupid an excuse the government can manage to get away with foisting off on people while essentially conducting crimes that they'd never let the people get away with.
Maybe that's a little far fetched. OK, so it's really just people in government offices fucking with people and laughing about it. There, that makes more sense.
Re:I'm SO confused! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm SO confused! (Score:2, Funny)
One-sided posts are all my feeble mind can handle!
Judging from the results of the last election, you're in good company.
/. Rules (Score:5, Funny)
1 - Microsoft, SCO, MPAA, RIAA, & all corporations unless noted in rule 2 = Bad
2 - Linux, Google, Apple, AMD = Good
3 - DRM, outsourcing = Bad
4 - Open source, P2P = Good
5 - Patents, Copyright = Bad, unless being used against a big corp
6 - Goverment = Bad unless they are installing WiFi in your town
7 - NASA = Good, unless they say they will not keep Hubble in space
8 - USA = Arrogant
9 - Religion = only post flames, any intelligent conversation for or against religion will be ignored
10 - In Soviet Russia, Does it run Linux, Beowulf Cluster, I for one welcome, etc = overused, but still must be modded +5 funny