"I choose you Patent of Phone which uses Glass!"
"I'm going to counter with the Patent of Electronic Things"
That seems to make some sort of sense but I don't think that's how it works. Judges have to enforce the law. They can bend and play with interpretations but there's a limit to that.
In these patent cases, they're supposed to figure out if the patent is not supposed, not questioning the validity of the patent when someone sues for patent infringement. There is a separate process for invalidating a patent, but the judge is supposed to assume that the patent is valid.
The courts are too far from where the problem is (laws, international treaties, patent offices) to be of much use.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/books/the-baseball-trust-b...
money quote: """ Mr. Banner, who teaches law at the University of California, Los Angeles, is himself a sure-footed historian and a legal writer of exceptional grace and clarity. His evident love of baseball does not seem to cloud his judgment.
It would be hard to say that of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, an avid fan. Called upon to decide a major antitrust challenge to organized baseball in 1915, he instead did nothing for a year, effectively destroying the fledgling league that had filed the suit and forcing it to settle.
The law would have required him to rule for the challengers, he later explained in open court, but he did not have the stomach to destroy a national institution. “I decided,” he said, “that this court had a right, if not a right a discretion, to postpone the announcement of any such order.” """
When the judge can openly admit that he sat on your case and bankrupted you because, while the law was definitely on your side, he didn't like you personally, there may be too much discretion.
This was some time ago - have judges been restricted since?
I don't know.
It all depends on how zealous their lawyers are. Or if they sell it to patent trolls, if they are in their normally litigious mood. They don't usually get to court, just the mere threat of litigation is usually motivation for the defendant to settle out of court for a tidy sum.