Patent Infringement: Close, but not close enough!

Implications: The direction of many patent cases seems to depend on specificity!Many large corporations may pay millions if hairs are not split!

Analysis:      Extensive Patents are filed every year to protect ones basic right of innovation.  How protected are you?  Motorola clearly dodged a bullet with this ruling!  The court seemed to almost split hairs on the language of this 1987 patent essentially dealing with predictive text.  It seems the court hinged its ruling on the fact that Motorola's version did not just include a certain syllabic element.  The University of Texas at Arlington stood to potentially win hundreds of millions if they won this suit.  Their initial patent certainly seemed at first blush to cover Motorola's version, but not when placed under what appears to be a microscope.  At least one very important take away to be very inclusive when filing your patent.  Patent infringement can be very murky water.   http://inventors.about.com/od/patentinfringement/a/Infringement.htm Many corporations have felt the sting of patent infringement:  Microsoft was ordered to pay 521 million in August 03', Apple settled for 10 million in November 07 and Acer settled with HP for an undisclosed sum this past June.  While the list of patent infringement cases seems endless, rest assured the risk reward is clearly as endless!  Motorola's current victory will help save other text messaging issues, but it leaves the door open to this continued process of splitting hairs!