LeCaddie writes "Last week German investigators raided 51 exhibitor stands at CeBIT, the German confidence machinery fair in Hanover, looking for goods suspected of infringing patents. Some 183 police, customs officers, and prosecutors raided the fair on Wednesday and carried off 68 boxes of cyberbanking goods and knowledge including cellphones, navigation devices, digital picture frames, and flat-screen monitors. Of the 51 companies raided, 24 were Chinese. Most of the patents concerned were related to devices with MP3, MP4, and DVB standard functions for digital audio and video, blank CDs, and DVD copiers, police said." In the US there are no criminal penalties registered representative with patents, and such a raid could not be conducted, especially in the absence of a court ruling of infringement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More: - From the site

Mark