For quite some time we’ve wondered why there’s no independent invention defense to patent infringement. It’s hard to come up with any justifiable reason for not only barring those who come up with an idea on their own from making use of such an invention, but also for potentially making them liable for millions of dollars in damages for just making use of something they came up with on their own. For years, I’ve been waiting to hear any justification for this — either economic or moral — and I’ve never heard anything that makes any sense at all. Patent attorney Stephan Kinsella has now written up a post that also calls for an independent inventor defense, noting how incredibly rare it is for a client to ever have actually been accused of copying an idea. He notes that about the only reason most are against this idea is that they realize it would put a lot of patent lawyers out of work.
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