From: Robert S. Thau (rst@ai.mit.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 23 2000 - 05:56:37 PST
Dave Long writes:
> I'd agree: it should be their business decision; my understanding is
> that the law is written on a full-lawyer-employment basis: you may
> lose protection unless you go full-bore after any and all potential
> infringers. Sounds awfully like the law's decision and not business
> judgement to me.
That applies to trademark rights; it certainly doesn't apply to
patents, however. Which leaves copyright, including all the stuff in
the DMCA, somewhere in the middle --- I'm pretty sure that a copyright
holder can't lose the ability to sue for infringement by allowing some
earlier infringement to go unpunished; what may be the case there is
that you lose the ability to *recover damages* from infringer B if you
let infringer A slide --- but you don't actually lose the copyright
(you can still, for instance, get injunctive relief).
rst
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