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Trolls Are Real

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71–80 of 107 posts

Re: Trolls Are Real

#71
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A world where you can release a chip or a drug or a jet engine and have a Chinese company immediately copy it and sell a competitor at a fraction of the price with no consequences is one that’s not good for Silicon Valley in the long run. I have no problem living in a world where the government is unable to exact violence against people for copying data. This seems to me to be an entirely artificial crime whose exi…

What changed it from being important to being a human rights affront?

The evolution of the internet and remix culture.

Things are different now with respect to IP than they were when Tesla was filing patents. Don't you think?

Re: Trolls Are Real

#72
post #37

This may mean it's a good time to re-read the history of SCO and their patent claims on Linux: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes

That was copyright not patents.

Thanks for the correction! I'll likely leave the comment to stand as-is, since perhaps it's still vaguely relevant, but I appreciate the note.

Re: Trolls Are Real

#73
post #60
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. Examiners are in a GS scale, with overtime pay and a small bonus, none of which are based on how many patents they approve.

True, but whether the examiners or the USPTO get that money is totally beside the point.

Incentives to make yourself more money are much stronger than incentives to make the government more money. And as others have mentioned, USPTO gets more money the more filings they require.

Re: Trolls Are Real

#74

Reference: Speech given by USPTO Director Andre Iancu to the Eastern District of Texas Bar Association https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/10/19/iancu-risk-takers-pate...

I guess that he's playing to the audience.

Maybe some of those attorneys are major Trump supporters.

Or maybe it's just generic hate for plaintiffs' firms. Which primarily support Democrats.

Re: Trolls Are Real

#75
Re Patents (Just get rid of them entirely!)

Please prove me wrong that they aren't effective and are a myth.

Processes of how to do things often come down to engineering and math; if given the same goal a solution is likely to be similar at it's core as for any given problem there is probably an ideal bound and variations of effort will produce similar results or results optimized slightly to different circumstances.

(Yes, this is copied from a different post I made last night with respect to all sorts of intellectual property issues.)

Re: Trolls Are Real

#76
post #62
post #59

Trolls are definitely real, and we need reforms, particularly at the PTO, to cut down on the number of bad patents. At the same time, there are companies who make lots of money free riding on other peoples’ IP. And that’s also a huge problem. For example, YouTube became a multi-billion business ripping off content companies. YouTube doesn’t create a product-it’s just a middle man for content produced by other people.…

> A world where you can release a chip or a drug or a jet engine and have a Chinese company immediately copy it and sell a competitor at a fraction of the price with no consequences is one that’s not good for Silicon Valley in the long run. I have no problem living in a world where the government is unable to exact violence against people for copying data. This seems to me to be an entirely artificial crime whose exi…

I genuinely do not understand your position.

Let's say a U.S. company spends a billion dollars creating a chip design. You think that it should not be illegal for other companies to steal said chip design and manufacture it because it is just "copying data?" So the company that invested to design has to compete with a company that stole it, and therefore can price it lower because they don't have to recoup that investment?

Just because something can be copied more easily now than when it required a bunch of photocopying doesn't mean it isn't (or shouldn't be) a crime.

Re: Trolls Are Real

#77
Haven’t been affected by this issue but I’m dreading the future where a lot of hard work building my company is wiped out by people like this. Fairly demotivating as an individual and terrible for innovation based economies.

Re: Trolls Are Real

#78

Haven’t been affected by this issue but I’m dreading the future where a lot of hard work building my company is wiped out by people like this. Fairly demotivating as an individual and terrible for innovation based economies.

100% this. It’s exactly one of the biggest of my concerns at the idea of starting a software company.

Re: Trolls Are Real

#79
post #59

Trolls are definitely real, and we need reforms, particularly at the PTO, to cut down on the number of bad patents. At the same time, there are companies who make lots of money free riding on other peoples’ IP. And that’s also a huge problem. For example, YouTube became a multi-billion business ripping off content companies. YouTube doesn’t create a product-it’s just a middle man for content produced by other people.…

EFF advocates for civil liberties, not for Silicon Valley or the US.

But for Silicon Valley and US, it's debatable whether trying to maintain continued dominance through stronger IP is a good bet. China and elsewhere are switching to producing more IP faster, even if starting far behind. It's not a simple or binary choice, but consider whether over the next decades it will be more advantageous to make it easier for US firms to copy Chinese firms, or to make it harder for Chinese firms to copy US firms? I'm in favor of whatever lessens potential for non-digital catastrophic conflict.

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