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The Dell amicus brief, PDF and text, HP's as PDF (i4i v. Microsoft)

By Pamela Jones et al.

Seattle PI's Nick Eaton has provided the PDF of the Dell amicus brief, at last! Webster was going to run to the court today for us, when I saw journalists quoting from the brief but not giving us the PDF to read it for ourselves. We don't just want to know what reporters think is important. We want to know for ourselves what *we* think is important. For that, we need the PDFs.

Thank you, Seattle PI. However, the brief has been so heavily redacted, even reading the PDF doesn't give you much of an idea why Dell thinks the injunction would be disruptive. It asks in the alternative that the time to make necessary changes be extended to 120 days, if the court affirms the injunction, which seems a reasonable request depending on the harm i4i presents and is able to establish. The court tries to balance the equities. Somebody is going to be hurt in this picture, obviously.

And that's the problem with software patents, if you think about it. There were no software patents when Microsoft was building its business. Now, there are. Is it better? Or is it so massively disruptive it should never happen to anyone? Yes, it's irony indeed that it is Microsoft being stung, in that it has been threatening to do to Linux exactly what is now happening instead to Microsoft. And to the extent Microsoft has used that argument to gain a business leg up, any such advantage is now wiped away. It's now clear that patent troubles can happen to anybody. Absolutely anybody, no matter what you do or who you are or how hard you try to avoid it. And the results are so damaging, they shouldn't happen to anyone, not even to Microsoft, although heaven only knows it feels like reaping what it has sown to me.

It's strange that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit doesn't make these documents digitally available, in a case that Microsoft and Dell/HP say threatens to affect the public directly. I don't see in this brief any arguments or evidence that an injunction will affect the public, actually, just the businesses. We can continue to use the same software we used before the injunction, since i4i has chosen not to go after prior users. You can still use Microsoft Word if you like it. But since the argument is being made that the public is going to be affected, we naturally want to read the documents filed.

I hope the court changes its policy soon. No wonder people invent things like RECAP. My contribution to the public good is that I've done the amicus brief as text for you.

Full post as published by Groklaw on August 29, 2009 (boomark / email).