If he has a good lawyer, they will probably settle, agreeing to have his record wiped clean and drop all charges in exchange for him not suing for money.

Trials are expensive.

2) If they don't give you a real promotion in 3-5 years, then they never will - but another company will give you the promotion. Make contacts.

3) Finding a place where you are happy is worth more than that promotion or the extra money.

I am glad because I think his wife would very likely be DEAD if this angry idiot had not been sent to prison.

I think his wife's continued life is in fact an improvement of the situation.

I also think that this guy will most likely be better off now - with a conviction that was overturned by SCOTUS - and enough time for him realize that maybe keeping his dumb mouth shut would benefit him than he would have been if he had been convicted of another actual crime of physical violence, that he so clearly was heading towards committing.

This also isn't a win for him, yet... It's getting remanded back to the appeals court (and possibly, eventually back to the trial court), and so his fight isn't over. On retrial, a jury could still convict him by finding that he actually did intend to threaten his ex when he sent her a facebook post saying that her restraining order wouldn't protect her from a bullet, rather than just that a reasonable person would interpret it to be a threat.

That said, after reading what this moron actually posted on Facebook, I am glad he spent his time in prison, even if the Judge gave the jury 'poor' instructions.

He certainly sounds like the kind of angry idiot that was (and probably still is) dangerous.

If they did that, the provisional application would never be published or open to public inspection, so it would be useless to prevent a troll from getting a patent on the same technology.

Looking at the people here calling for blood, do you think such an announcement would be taken without a grain of salt? There's nothing binding in an announcement.

They did file in the name of the actual inventors. If you click the links, they're by John Resig and Joel Burget.

That's not true at all. The only thing that "first to file" changes from "first to invent" is interference practices: previously, if Alice and Bob both filed patent applications for the same exact invention, they would go onto an interference, which is like a mini-litigation, to determine which of them actually conceived of the invention first. They cost between $20-50k for each party, and there were on average about 20 per year... out of over half a million patent applications filed each year. Under the new system, it's just a question of who filed their application first.

First to file has literally nothing to do with prior art. And prior art that was never patented absolutely matters - white papers, scientific journals, product literature, etc. can be and are all used as prior art, even under the first to file system.

Claim 1 has legal weight, unlike the abstract. You can tell it's a claim because it starts with a number, is a single sentence, and is in the section that starts "I claim" or "we claim" or "what is claimed is", rather than the section that says "Abstract".

Well, yes, most improvements in technologies draw inspiration from earlier technologies. The Tesla Roadster draws inspiration from the Model T. The Boeing Dreamliner draws inspiration from the P51 Mustang. Windows 10 draws inspiration from Microsoft Bob. The question isn't "was this inspired by something earlier" but "is this obvious in view of what came earlier?"

Also known as "published normally". Patent applications are typically published 18 months after their filing date. There's nothing "quiet" about it - it's included in the official gazette each Tuesday and Google Patents (among other services) take an image of it. But it's a nice attempt by Subby to imply that there's a dark conspiracy here.

This appears to be a reference to the 20-person pro bono committee at Wilson Sonsini. Most law firms have pro bono committees of partners in charge of selecting and approving pro bono work, which is then taken on by junior associates. The committee itself doesn't do the work, so no, they didn't have a "pro bono team of 20+". They probably had a supervising attorney, a patent agent, and a paralegal, donating probably around 50 hours total for the two applications.

They can also be filed before the public disclosure. They're inexpensive placeholders that you can file without paying fees for search and examination. If you don't file the nonprovisional application within one year, the provisional expires and disappears forever, so they're particularly a good thing for startups who don't have revenue yet.

That's the abstract of the patent. It has no legal weight and is only there to aid in searching through patents.

Yeah. That patent has no patent term adjustment, as I said.

I felt lucky to be able to afford 670 sq. ft. Including a second bedroom for me and my wife, and only be 50 mins from the office. This is London. Your life sounds so bloody easy and spoilt. Sympathy for you = 0.

If France had American-style bankruptcy laws they could've filed for chapter 11 and reorganized, jettisoning the debt owed to former employees or at worst, making them accept stock in the "new" company instead of cash.

That sounds horrendous. Why should the ex-employees get shafted like that? Is the business more important than the people?

(Please Putin, don''t feed my baby to the dingoes) )