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Comment by pi18n | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see some sort of punitive damages if a patent you sued over gets invalidated. At a minimum, Apple should need to compensate a portion of Samsung's legal fees.

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Even if you stand against the current patent system, it's how it works right now, so that suggestion is a little bit of blaming the victim. Apple were told that they have a valid patent by the office which makes those determinations. How are they to blame for accepting grant of the patent?

Apple knows as well as we do how broken the patent system is—and they take advantage of that brokenness.

In no way are they a "victim."

I don't think that makes sense. It's not Apple's fault that the US patent office granted the patent. Just because they changed their minds doesn't mean Apple is responsible. If anything, the US patent office should compensate both Samsung and Apple for essentially wasted legal fees.

Disagree, it actually may make sense. The office is overwhelmed with patents and does not have the resources or people that are experts in that particular field. The author of the patent is supposed to be the world's best expert in their field (they are claiming to have crossed the boundary of known things with their patent, aren't they?) and it should be far easier for them actually check if there is prior art or the patented thing is actually not obvious to anyone, who is explained the problem that it is supposed to solve. Many low quality patents are filled and there is no risk in filling them. There should be a risk and a penalty for misusing the system.

This is my thinking. The guys pursuing these patent cases typically are well aware that their patents are not non-obvious, and quite often aren't even novel. Lodsys is my typical whipping boy; if they weren't shocked that "click for upgrade" got through the patent office, it's only due to their familiarity with patent trolling. They should suffer damages for using a ridiculous patent in the first place, and they should pay the court costs for the defendants. I'd like there to be an "invalidation with prejudice" that would allow this, if the court decides that the patent is outrageously improper. I think that would both discourage trolling and encourage defending against obviously invalid patents. Otherwise, it's almost always better (economically) to suffer the extortion than to try and fight it.

Well, that depends. If the patent was found to not be valid because of invalid intent by the "inventor" (such as known prior art, knowingly stealing an idea, knowingly patenting something that's unpatentable), it actually is the inventors fault... When submitting a patent, the inventor must sign an oath indicating these (and other) things:

> The inventor must make an oath or declaration that he/she believes himself/herself to be the original and first inventor of the subject matter of the application, and he/she must make various other statements required by law and various statements required by the USPTO rules.

Now, it would be VERY difficult to prove the oath was broken. But if it was, it's completely and 100% valid to hold the inventor (here Apple) responsible.

I'm not saying that's what's going on here (or in most cases of an overturned patent), just that it may be Apple's fault. It's not a black and white situation here...

I am not sure about legal fees, but at the very least, I think it's only fair for US patent office to refund patent fees for invalidated patents. Won't happen though.

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