Re: [Fsfe-uk] Bromcom undead ?

[Ralph Janke]

Ian Lynch wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 10:02, Ralph Janke wrote:
>  
>
> > Ian Lynch wrote:
> >    
> er, I had the knowledge when I was employed in a school running a cable
> network in 1988. Since no-one asked me the question when I was on the
> witness stand, how does the judge know? I have a degree in physics so
> its perfectly reasonable that I would know about the possibilities of
> transmitting data over wireless. The main reason not to in 1988 was
> mainly cost and the fact it didn't give sufficient advantage at the time
> to justify the additional cost. I bet there were other physics teachers
> out there that would have known the principles.
>
>  
Maybe he needs to ask the right question ?

> > I disagree with that statement, since not only radio specialists would 
> > have known it, I had at that time
> > a Masetrs Degree in Computer Science and was lecturing this protocol in 
> > undergrad and graduate courses
> > at University. I have never been a radio specialist and would have still 
> > deployed a system in such a way.
> >    
>
> Exactly so maybe this should be appealed?
>
>  
I am not sure. Judgment of facts are usually not scopes of appeals in 
the UK system. However, maybe the lack
of sound procedure for making a correct judgment on the facts might be a 
matter of appeal. However, I would have
to make some more research in order to know (and my next law course does 
not start until February ;-) ).
There is also a question of timelimits for the appeal. If DfES wanted to 
appeal that probably need to hurry. I haven't
looked up the timeframes but I remeber something in the 6 month range ....

> > Therefore, I would despute the novelty or non-obvious assessment of the 
> > judge. However because of legal reasons, I
> > believe nothing can be done in that way. What we could do is offer our 
> > help to schools in danger in working out
> > the differences of claim 7 to their wireless network in order to give 
> > them a defense against the patent, because the
> > specific parts of claim 7 are not equal to the deployed network in the 
> > particular school.
> >    
>
> Surely the DfES would be interested in setting up a test case to force
> the issue.
>
>  
I think, DfES is not in the driving seat, since this is a defense for a 
lawsuit that has been started against a school. However,
there might be some way to force the issue by suing yourself or 
something like that (in US such funny strategies are very
common). I don't know , in which way the UK legal system would support 
that.
In the normal case, the schools are deploying wwireless (802.11) 
equipment. Either Bromcom is just sitting idle, then nothing happens.
If Bromcom sues one of those schools, then DfES could come in an support 
the school with the necessary legal resources
to defend against the suit.
Another way, DfES could help is to work on configuration that do not 
violate claim 7 and publish them to the schools. If that would
happen publicly (i.e. on a webpage) this might push Bromcom to sue as 
well, otherwise the schools at least have some
help to deal with this issue. The problem is most schools do not have 
the expertise to deal with this issue, neither the technical part,
nor the legal one. I also think a lot of Governors are probably rather 
hesitent to take risks....

Ralph