A guy admits he invents nothing, brazenly sues people before even attempting to sell a license, is challenged by the inventors of the cryptosystems in question, is shown evidence of prior art by the inventor of RC4, and wins the case.
Can it get any more disgusting? I don't want to blame all lawyers, since I may one day need one fighting for me, but this guy is a real douchebag. Sugar coat it all you want "playing the game within the rules of the system". One can play honorably, or one can play dirty, and this guy is a dirt bag.
Sadly truth means nothing in the courtroom. Only what you can convince people of. Had Diffie been a bit more more upfront in his testimony at the start, the troll's lawyers would have had no ability to impugn his credentials and get the judgement for infringement.
It really sucks that all juries are pulled from the same wide pool, especially when the case is so incredibly esoteric. A murder or a drug case? Sure let anybody be a juror. But deciding some highly technical stuff? Probably ought to at least have an engineering-ish degree.
The more I read about patents, the more I think we should have "I thought of that first" rights, whereby people who thought about patenting something before the person who patented it could get their fair share of any licensing revenue derived from the patent. This would protect the small inventors from the big lawyers who dominate the patent scene
I know some might deride that idea as rewarding people who contributed very little, but let's not forget: thinking it up is the hard part. After all someone who doesn't know as much about gaming theory as this guy wouldn't know what to do with a pseudo-random if they had one. And actually making things is mere grunt work, hardly befitting someone as important as an inventor. ~
Can it get any more disgusting? I don't want to blame all lawyers, since I may one day need one fighting for me, but this guy is a real douchebag. Sugar coat it all you want "playing the game within the rules of the system". One can play honorably, or one can play dirty, and this guy is a dirt bag.