Amazon wins its patent suit against Virginia inventor/attorney James Gatto; Gatto had sued claiming that Amazon's one-click shopping patent violated one of his own patents. The court found among other things that one of Gatto's claims was too vague.

My take: This is a good illustration of why Congress should take the patent quality issue seriously, starting with the internal processes of the PTO and not later in the game. Fairness. Patent claimants seem to need some kind of sanity check on their claims, otherwise they will go off suing people in reliance on questionable claims and ruin their lives. Gatto now owes Amazon over a million dollars.

Sarah Lai Stirland has detailed coverage of the issues in a TechnologyDaily article on the suit, including discussion of the question of whether attorneys' fees would be awarded to Amazon and legislation on the subject of patent attorneys' fees. The big picture question is whether awarding fees can deter questionable litigation.

My take: It is doubtful whether discretionary awards of fees would be sufficiently certain to do it. But the routine application of "loser pays" ("The English Rule") might well do it. I'll be looking into this further over the next few months.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 11:02 AM | Patents, Software

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