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Comment by pacaro | Hacker News Reader

I wish people wouldn’t post direct links to patents.

The advice from the IP lawyers at every company I’ve worked for (Microsoft, Dropbox, Amazon, Google) has been to never read patents or patent applications.

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It's still better to link directly than to "tech gadget news" websites (that are so popular on HN): their writers understand even less.

Yeah, it’s definitely a toss up, but because I can’t/won’t read a patent, but might read a discussion about it, in this case the techjunk article is counterintuitively preferable

I'm honestly curious what the aversion is to reading patents and patent applications. Is it to avoid suspect patent infringement by being able to claim ignorance? i.e. "I have not read any patent that relates to some work that I've created wholly on my own that out of coincidence achieves the same as a patented work." Does that actually hold up if defending IP?

Yeah, as osteele points out, it moves the needle from unknowing infringement to willful infringement. And willful infringement carries triple damages.

When people have asked “how would they even know?”, there are usually two answers: 1) don’t underestimate what can come out in discovery, and 2) no lawyer is going to advise perjuring yourself

> Does that actually hold up if defending IP?

Yes. You are subject to triple damages if you read the patent, so it's foolish to read patents unless you have to. It's impossible to read all patents, and patents in almost all cases are useless, so "I didn't read the patent" is the normal case for software developers.

Patents make no sense for software, and should be abolished for software.

Did they explain why?

This is standard legal advice. It reduces the chance that an infringer will be found guilty of a willful violation, that results in treble damages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treble_damages

Why is that?

Because wilful violation of a patent can make you liable for triple the damages. It's much harder to claim it wasn't wilful if you've read the patent.

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