51–60 of 197 posts
> That prompted over 4,000 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community members to rally in defense of the GNOME Foundation, raising over $150,000 to defend against the bogus claim
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patent examiners can look basically anywhere a member of the public can and some other places. The internal search tools check a lot of patent databases and are quite good, but take time to learn. The USPTO has a lot of subscription databases as well, including fancy AI/ML-based ones. Many examiners will also search normal search engines like Google, though this can be tricky for legal reasons. If the application was…
Why is the secrecy required if the patent is going to end up public anyway? If you could pre-publish to the public (with a verifiable timestamp) then anyone could submit a challenge and the patent would be only be granted if it’s actually novel and remains unchallenged for some time. IDK I must be missing something because this seems too obvious a solution...
As for why the applications aren't published as soon as possible, I'm not sure. I suspect people might want some time before publication to test the market. If there is no market demand, I know that some law firms will abandon the application. But if it's worthless, then why not publish it?
> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high Take that further. The stakes should be high against all adjacent patent holders. Ultimately if we want to keep a working patent system it's too much work to rely on piecemeal independent cases like this, albeit a great success. The system has to self-police to be fair, and perhaps the best people to keep trolls and mischie…
> Ultimately its probably better if we move to a world where a lot of "intellectual property" expires with it's holder and passes into the public domain. I fully agree with you (and it's one of the few strongly held opinions of mine), but I'm not really sure why you would bring this up within the context of patent trolls. Patents do run out, rather quickly even. It's other intellectual property -- namely copyright --…
How about we make "non-practicing entity" a defense in a patent lawsuit? That, if you can prove that the owner of the patent is an NPE (and doesn't reasonably license or innovate or even try to innovate, only sue or unreasonably license), case tossed...
No, that's just polishing the brass on the Titanic.
Patents on software just shouldn't exist. At all. We already have established laws where you can't patent maths. An algorithm is just a function. It should be covered by the maths disqualifier.
The fact that a smartphone could could contain and potentially violate literally thousands of patents is a complete anathema to the original intent of the system and it should be a huge red flag to the entire idea of software patents.
> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high Take that further. The stakes should be high against all adjacent patent holders. Ultimately if we want to keep a working patent system it's too much work to rely on piecemeal independent cases like this, albeit a great success. The system has to self-police to be fair, and perhaps the best people to keep trolls and mischie…
Aside from everything else in your argument, this is a really bad point to lean on - in America laws are specifically structured to leave the selling party blameless in all but the most extreme circumstances.
As a more general response:
I also think the thing that makes anti-troll legislation difficult is that making it harder to attack patents, and making it harder to defend patents makes it harder for smaller businesses trying to defend their property from larger businesses. If we start leveraging personal penalties on the attorneys of bad faith suites we need to have confidence that that also won't be turned into a tool to silence legitimate claims from small parties...
If we decided, for instance, to fine every bad faith attorney for 1 million dollars we'd need to make sure that large companies can't use the threat of that fine to strong arm small businesses into compliance.
This is a really complicated question and, at the end of the day, it's why we need to be really careful about maintaining a high quality in our federal judges - bad judges cause extreme harm by making justice inaccessible.
Here's something that would work, maybe, eventually. It IS simple; it's just not easy. You have to realize that lawyers and politicians don't want to fix problems; they want to make a living off them.
Who wants to lead this effort (and don't say "you" because I'm retired)?
1. Get someone with legal training to write legislation fixing this situation. Personally, I think just declaring software as not patentable subject matter is the core of the solution, but that's to be decided.
2. Get a Congressman to introduce it into the House or Senate. Let's say it becomes "H.R. 666" or some other number.
3. For every Congressional candidate, ask them "Do you support H.R. 666?" Make it clear that your support depends on a Yes answer. That's a language they can understand.
Will this work? Well, it stands a chance. Comments on a thread like this don't have much chance at all of effecting any change.