Re: patent violation exposure when adding an incremental and novel missing piece

"Mike Turco" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> "Claus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > I will explain my question as an example...If I want to build and sell
> > a novel analytic technique capability and also the corresponding
> > financial software system, but there are 100's of patents on financial
> > software systems, what is my legal exposure ?  Do I need to pay
> > royalties to everyone along the way who has patents regarding basic
> > financial system techniques, or do I just need to patent my analytic
> > technique, build a financial software system, and not worry so much
> > about the other patents ??
> 
> I'll try to put this in terms I can understand. Lets say that you have
> patented a new type of cap for toothpaste tubes, but there are hundreds of
> toothpaste tube patents already on the market. Since your product will never
> sell unless it is attached to a tube of toothpaste, you have four choices:
> 
> 1) Add your cap to a tube style that is not patented. (In which case, I
> recommend you pay a patent lawyer or patent agent to do a prior art search.)
> 
> 2) License somebody's toothpaste tube patent and sell the tube together with
> the cap. (Good luck trying to license proprietary technology from Crest so
> that you can compete with them!)
> 
> 3) Invent a new toothpaste tube that doesn't infringe on anybody else's
> patents. (You already invented the cap, so what the heck.)
> 
> 4) License your invention to a big company, like Crest, who can sell the
> hell out of it and make you rich. (The dreamer's dream.)
> 
> I'm not hep to the financial s/w market. Are you sure that it is patents you
> are worried about and not copyrights? There is a huge difference between the
> two.
> 
> Mike

Thanks - then how do database companies and software companies get
going when there are patents on general "information storage and
retrievel" mechanisms, or software that "accesses information storage,
writes, reads, or updates data" ?  Does that mean everyone in the
commercial software industry is paying royalties for all these general
patents ?

Thanks,

Claus