Cee--You post a couple noteworthy quotations from JJ as they relate to JJ’s possible personal feelings about Goog’s general conduct in the case. Of course everything is couched in legalese.
For example, instead of referring to Google’s general infringement “actions” or “activities” JJ makes a point of referring to Google’s continued “misconduct”. And he makes point of the fact that the alleged W/A wasn’t even close. He states that the redesigned Adwords system “clearly” replicates Old Adwords, and that it’s “undisputed” that New Adwords uses the Old Adwards click-through procedure.
---You quote a legal maxim to the effect that “equity will not suffer an injustice”. But that does raise an interesting thought in our case. JJ gave his surprise laches ruling in favor of Google before he ran into Google’s obvious tactics of obfuscation and Google’s continued “misconduct” and “clear” replication of Old Adwords in New Adwords, in an “undisputed” way.
Laches is an “equitable” doctrine. Basically, JJ effectively said that Big Bad I/P and it’s predecessor had been unfair to poor little Google by not warning poor little Google that it was infringing on the patent of Big Bad I/P and its predecessor. JJ effectively said that equity, justice and fairness required that Google be protected because of the blog that Big Bad Lycos should have somehow been aware of. Thus JJ took away about 5 years of past damages that I/P would otherwise have collected because of the "inequity" that would have been visited on Google. Poor Google. Big, mean, I/P....
I wonder, just wonder, if JJ would rule the same way on laches if he had the chance to be grant “equity” to Google under the circumstances again? Just a thought.
....We’re gonna win big one day, guys, but in the meantime it’s kind of fun to wonder about these things.