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Criminalising patent infringement is draconian
From en.swpat.org
Governments occasionally discuss criminalizing patent infringement.
This raises massive social questions because acts such as making a website can infringe patents, and hobbyist software projects can infringe hundreds of patents.
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[edit] Why would anyone suggest this?
In many countries, the investigation of crimes is paid for by the government, whereas a civil case would have to be billed by the complainant. The idea of criminalizing patent infringement might be motivated by a desire by patent holders to have automatic enforcement, all funded by the tax payer.
[edit] Where has this been suggested?
In the European Union, the "IPRED2" directive proposed criminalizing a dozen laws, including patent infringement. Patent infringement was later removed, and the proposal later got stuck for other reasons. (Can you help? dates/years needed)
Note: it's usual for laws which talk about "intellectual property" to have perverse effects - it's rare that a unified policy can be intelligent for a set of domains as unrelated as patents and copyright and trademarks and geographical designations and plant varieties and design patents, etc.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement proposed different draconian measures.
[edit] Related pages on en.swpat.org
- Insurance against patent litigation doesn't work (and if it was a crime, insurance would be illegal)
- Infringement is unavoidable
[edit] External links
- Should patent infringers be jailed?, 14 Sep 2009, Trevor Baylis (patent holder) - calls for State-funded enforcement of patents
- Criminalizing patent infringement - "barking mad"?, 1 Sep 2009, IPKat
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