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Do companies really compete on who has the best lawyers?
by Doug on Friday, July 25 2008I get so tired of meaningless lawsuits especially when it comes to the productivity of blind users. Remember Freedom Scientific versus Serotek over the naming of a Serotek product? I’ve been in this business well over 25 years. What happened to the days when products competed on their own? What happened to the days when competing companies could get along and be friends? I guess big mergers and acquisitions have changed those days. Freedom Scientific is back to the best way they know how to compete: sue.
GW Micro was just filed papers on behalf of Freedom Scientific.
Federal District Court filings
It seems Freedom Scientific is very nervous about our new 7.0 release and the huge power it now offers. My first guess was they were trying to stop our powerful scripting, but even Freedom has limits on how it can stretch things. It turns out they don’t like our new Placemarker feature. They claim it is in direct violation of their Patent.
United States Patent
Obviously we have no choice but to take the distraction very seriously. It is unfortunate that Freedom Scientific chose this route of attack, especially considering we were never approached by Freedom ahead of time even before our public beta release and, yes, several Freedom Scientific employees have been coming to all our 7.0 sessions at trade shows and conventions well before 7.0 went into public beta.
Freedom is obviously worried.
Update: We removed a line or two above to keep things general. We want this information to be available, but we're not in a position to provide any detail or comment about who's doing what, how, and why. Thank you, everyone, for your overwhelming support.
