The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

Post by toxik » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

mashpoe wrote: post #143

vasco wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents are a monopoly on an idea. And ideas shouldn't be owned by anyone. One shouldn't be forced to share their ideas, but the concept of coming up with something, and then going to your community and saying: "Hey everyone, I thought of this and wrote it down, none of you wrote it down before so now it's my idea for the next 30 years" Is just ridiculous.

People like to say that without patents there will be no incentive to advance technology, but if you're the one to come up with an idea then you already have a huge head start. If you don't make use of that head start, then you don't deserve it, and this applies to patents as well. Monopolies are bad, and competition is good. Everyone is already incentivized to come up with and implement ideas faster than their compe…

Post by bubblethink » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:28 AM UTC

vesinisa wrote: post #145

lelanthran wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact bogus patents help established companies even more, because the trolls at least have to defend those patents in court at times, a small new player who is threatened by a large established one over some bogus patent can't afford to defend themselves. At one point when Microsoft was still in the phone business, I recall an article pointing out that Microsoft made more money off android in a single year (unspe…

I think you might be referring to the patents from Nokia. These are licensed on FRAND terms. Nokia was one of the original inventors of GSM and owns a considerable patent portfolio especially on the network tech.

Post by vkou » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:46 AM UTC

varjag wrote: post #153

mashpoe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to say that without patents there will be no incentive to advance technology, but if you're the one to come up with an idea then you already have a huge head start. If you don't make use of that head start, then you don't deserve it, and this applies to patents as well. Monopolies are bad, and competition is good. Everyone is already incentivized to come up with and implement ideas faster than their compe…

In practice you'll have a head start of maybe a year before a grifter in China replicates your three years of R&D and floods the market. And a copied product will always be cheaper as they don't have to amortise development costs. That's how technology worked before the patent systems, and the outcome was manufacturer secrecy - which generally sucked more than the patent system.

Post by varjag » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:51 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #175

varjag wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice you'll have a head start of maybe a year before a grifter in China replicates your three years of R&D and floods the market. And a copied product will always be cheaper as they don't have to amortise development costs. That's how technology worked before the patent systems, and the outcome was manufacturer secrecy - which generally sucked more than the patent system.

It sucked in different ways, but its not clear that it sucked more. The point of the patent system is that you share your invention in the world, in exchange for monopolizing it for a few years. The problem is that most software patents share absolutely nothing of value with the world.

Post by charcircuit » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:53 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #176

toxik wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact of the matter is that countries with weak IP laws and/or enforcement see less innovation. It makes sense too, the calculus is easy: rip someone’s tested idea off for free, or invest huge piles of money just to get your foot in the door?

Do you really believe that software patents represent anything close to an original idea? From my perspective, Software patents are on such stupid things utterly divorced from anything that could be considered innovative, that none of it incentivizes inovation. The calculus also doesn't seem all that clear to me. A alternative calculus: Build something new on top of someone else's idea (stand on the shoulders of gian…