Patent Endgame

I have a feeling that this lawsuit marks the point of no return for a major meltdown of the patent system. As Josh says, the only people that are winning are the lawyers. And while Kodak will likely never see the full $1 billion they want (been watching too much Austin Powers?) and it will be in appeals for years, it shouldn't have gotten this far.

Patent lawsuits aren't based on objective reality anymore, it's simply who has the most resources to push things through the legal system.

The idea that Sun could spend so much time and effort on Java (however inspired by NeXT) and have Kodak just swoop in out of desperation and claim ownership -- it's pure insanity. I'm not even that big of a fan of Java in general, but the basic principle is looney. The patent system just wasn't designed for something like this, and certainly isn't resilient to such abuse.

The result is that inordinate amounts of resources are applied to bureaucracy instead of actually working on products. Consumers lose, employees lose, employers lose.

As for Kodak themselves, they're never receiving another penny from me. This almost makes Microsoft look tame. While I'm usually against jumping on the "spam the company with complaints" bandwagon, I think this is a special case. Here's the Kodak feedback form.

Even more interesting is how this post on slashdot points out that Kodak didn't even create the technology, they inherited it from Wang. So now we have a business model that consists of buying a company with a good patent portfolio and launching lawsuits.

The federal government needs to sue Kodak.

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