decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Patent System vs Deeds | 457 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Patent System vs Deeds
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, June 08 2013 @ 09:00 AM EDT
As someone who has traced a piece of property in deeds from
pre-revolutionary times to today, I'll agree that many early
deeds do have such language. At the time, that was the best
measurements that could be done - measuring distance by
stride from a known marker.

Now, though, deeds reference plots that are recorded via GPS
(at least the ones I see). they're fairly easy to read, and
reference maps easily available. Also, the local community
(town/city/county/etc) is very involved in writing the deed.
In fact, the purchaser has little say in the plot lines of
the deed. The system purposefully works to make them easy
to interpret to PREVENT court actions - in other words it's
very clear whether or not something violates the deed.

Contrast that with patents. Written by the patent holder
(think buyer of the deed), intentionally made vague and
broad to capture as much revenue as possible. Instead of
preventing court action with clear wording, it actually
encourages court action. If it were clear, if the patent
holder had to show up in court (or designated place) with a
working model of the patent, most court actions would not
drag on for months/years, but be over in hours - and, in
fact, not happen, because no one would doubt the patent had
been violated.

Of course, there would be a lot less patents out there, and
it would actually be worthwhile for someone working on a
project to read the relevant patents (and be able to find
them). In other words, the patent system would more likely
work "To Promote progress in the Useful Arts and Sciences."

jjs (not logged in)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )