Eolas Sues Again: This Time, Facebook, Disney and Wal-Mart 97
judgecorp writes "Eolas, which claims to have patented key aspects to web browsers, is suing again, this time targeting Facebook, Disney and Wal-Mart for infringing hypertext patents. Eolas settled with Microsoft and has sold licenses to other players — but two of the four patents in this case have previously been declared invalid."
only outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
is that lawyers are getting paid.
Re:Lobbying (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it would take billions of dollars to outbid the current lobyists?
Re:Lobbying (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia:
"Lobbying (USA): Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interests hire well-connected professional advocates, often lawyers, to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress."
"Bribery: Bribery is an act of implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient."
Feeding a broken machine the very stuff that makes it broken doesn't make its problems go away.
Need....more...money.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason we don't raise $100,000s to repeal foolish laws is because that's somewhere in the neighborhood of three to five orders of magnitude too low two actually have an impact on the way IP law is written in the US.
There are ~470 members of congress, all of which need to fund multi-million dollar campaigns every 2 years, and we're looking at probably a 10 year time horizon to enact real, meaningful change. At the same time, there are multiple Billion dollar a year industries which reply on patents and copyrights to protect their business model and cash flow.
$100,000 is like pissing into a hurricane.