Microsoft can't sell Word anymore?

If you guys ever do patent search you will find pretty much everything you have ever written in software, even trivial applications, are probably illegal*. There are many thousands of software patents, and a nice percentage of them describe pretty generic functionality that many people use everyday.

* But if you do, keep in mind you are now committing willful infringement and are now subject to even more punishment. BA HA HA HA. Enjoy the lawsuits.

In fact, I assume some people won't believe me on this. So if you really don't believe me on this, point me to whatever software product you wrote and I will personally find a patent that infringes on it.

I want to show you that software patents are not the friend of the software developer. It might look that way (look ADDED protection! Now I can make the big bucks!) but it basically is biased towards people who just have sh!tloads of money to file generic patents. You don't have much time to actually write any software if that's your business model.

Right you are telling your customers you don't guarantee it doesn't infringe. But that won't stop you from getting sued yourself. And if you are popular enough, or have enough money, and you write software - you will get sued. Microsoft is one example, but FFS they are far from the only example. Plenty of legit software companies are theatened or sued by people (if lawyers qualify as people) who never wrote a single LoC in their entire life, but own several hundred "software patents".

It's still illegal. Even for personal use. They might not discover it, you are right. But non-commercial, or completely personal replication is still patent infringement.

If your product is popular enough they will find it, and they will ask for license fees or threaten to sue you. Patent trolls are actively are looking for people to sue, that is their business model.

That's not true. Not in the USA at least. It's certainly more difficult to get money out of a case like that, but it's not impossible. The the worst they can get the money they had to pay their attorney to sue you (attorney fees), which can be several million dollars (seriously) in some cases.

It's always better to sue someone with money. That is true. Recovering the entirety of big judgment from someone with little money.. it's like drawing water from a rock, not very likely.

Contrary to popular belief (apparently), they can't go after the judgment they get against you for your entire life. It's like something like 7 years (in the USA) they have to try to get this money from you, plus you can declare bankruptcy. So as I said, they rather sue someone who has deep pockets and they know this before the lawsuit. If you get a $100 mill judgment against Microsoft, there is a good chance it will be paid. Microsoft is not going to declare bankruptcy over a $100 mill judgment. Usually the patent trolls who are in it for the money will go for people or companies with enough money for the lawsuit to be worthwhile.

But it's happened before regardless, it's not a good experience to be sued regardless. Just don't think you are completely safe because you are non-commerical and have no money, yes you are less of a target then Microsoft, but you are still risking liability everytime you write a line of code.

You never know when you will win the lotto and then patent troll come running for your winnings.