I appreciate your explanation, though I can also appreciate why the rule was introduced. It would seem the consequences of it were entirely unforeseen.<p>A devil&#x27;s advocate argument: should the rule be tossed, might there not suddenly be a bottleneck imposed on new projects where legal teams would now have to research whether a particular feature duplicates an existing patent? I&#x27;d say it&#x27;s an unwinnable game since doing away with software patents might also harm any commercial motivation to produce a service with even a hint of transparency into how that service does what it does.<p>I almost feel like the Treble damages rule is the least-bad of all of them, but that&#x27;s just a gut feeling. Any armchair-lawyers (or actual ones!) want to weigh in? I&#x27;m not anywhere near qualified to actually express an opinion on this.