

Silvaco will appeal 'tainted software' case to state Supreme Court, CEO says - anigbrowl
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202458169745

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anigbrowl
For background, Silvaco Data systems makes chip-testing software. A
competitor, Circuit Semantics Inc., misappropriated, modified, and resold
Silvaco's source code, and were successfully sued for this. Intel and some
other manufacturers who had bought and used CSI's software (but did not have
access to the source code) were asked to stop using it by Silvaco following
that judgment, but refused. Silvaco sued, lost, appealed, and were denied.

Referring to an 8,000 page appendix of legal reference material entered by
Silvaco's attorneys, which duplicated the court's own record and included 27
copies of a 103 page index to its own contents, Judge Rushing grumbled that
'Seldom have so many trees died for so little.'

Background:
[http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202457477366&Inte...](http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202457477366&Intel_Off_Hook_for_Buying_Tainted_Software)
Appeal Court ruling:
[http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1115553154677364...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11155531546773644177&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr)

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hga
My reading of the law.com items and reading/skimming of the judgment suggests
that Silvaco Data needs to get better lawyers and probably needs to listen
better in general.

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gte910h
Who the hell would want to live in a world where supplier error or even malice
would screw innocent third parties downstream in the supply chain? That would
be hideous in today's IP soaked technical landscape.

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hga
Perhaps a company that can't retain its technical staff?

Hmmm, perhaps that thought goes further, maybe their lawyers are lousy because
they can't retain good ones who will push their novel (and as you point out
insane) legal theory?

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gte910h
Yeah, we need a neologism for companies pursuing crackpot legal theories,
betting their entire company on the outcome. This feels like a SCO trial part
II.

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hga
The bulk of _SCO Group v. The World_ (them vs. IBM and Novell) wasn't as I
recall based on crackpot legal theories, their problem was that the facts
weren't on their side. I.e. they didn't own UNIX(TM) and IBM didn't do
anything illicit with UNIX(TM) anyway.

That's in part why it took/is taking longer, there have to be findings of fact
which a judge can't do (Novell's summary judgment win on ownership was
reversed, so they had to put it before a jury, where they won).

