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Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

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Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#91

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

If patents exist as a legal form of intellectual property, they should be able to be purchased and exchanged in a commercial market. Authors, composers and other creators of works with intellectual property rights can transfer or sell those rights and there is no obligation for the purchaser to do anything with the work other than own it and collect royalties.

In the case of a song or a book, it is simple (in most cases) to know that someone is performing your song or publishing your book without consent. This isn't the case with patents. There is an involved process to determine if a given entity is violating another's patent rights. This friction in determining right from wrong is the mechanism that allows patent trolls to extract a toll from anyone who isn't able or willing to fight the claim. This puts an asymmetric amount of leverage in the hands of the patent trolls. Some mechanism/legislation needs to be put in place to balance the power so that there is a higher cost to the patent owner who brings spurious claims.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#92

Post by rhizome »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #30

> 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…

>If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the neighbourhood then some blame lies with you

From the context it seems like a more common analogy would be better to illustrate, rather than using an example of something that almost never happens.

A "use it or lose it" model to defang patentholders who don't manufacture their patents is a good idea, as well as using them as assets.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#93

Post by marcosdumay »

riazrizvi wrote: post #83
jmyeet wrote: post #57

> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high enough to make it less appealing as a business? 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 coul…

Algorithms are not patentable. Alice v. CLS Bank Int’l, Supreme Court 2014, holds that abstract ideas "merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.” But at the same time, just because a patent includes an algorithm, it is not necessarily invalidated.

Nearly all of those histories about patent trolling are for code running in a general purpose computer, with your standard I/O peripherals and the only effect on the real world being changing pixels on a screen.

AFAIK those patents are illegal on every single country. But it doesn't stop honest people from losing fortunes over them.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#94

Post by garaetjjte »

dismalpedigree wrote: post #84
jmyeet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the idea of a lawnmower be patented? There are already enough protections for IP. Design patents, trademarks and copyright (to some degree). Giving an inventor of something a monopoly on its creation should be extremely limited. Quite famously, the Wright Brothers original patent on the flight control mechanism successfully stifled any American company from making a plane, which became a real issue when th…

This is interesting. Can you recommend a link to read more about this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#95

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

pitaj wrote: post #80
jmyeet wrote: post #57

> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high enough to make it less appealing as a business? 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 coul…

Patents shouldn't exist at all.

That's going way too far.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#96

Post by cascom »

rhizome wrote: post #90
robbedpeter wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This leads to the notion of being taxed for having a brain. Software patents shouldn't exist. The concept is patently absurd.

> This leads to the notion of being taxed for having a brain Isn't this the same logic as used in the US against capital gains taxes, that a person is being punished for being successful?

Ehh - the more typical one is that the person already paid tax on it when they made the money the first time

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#97

Post by zamalek »

thechao wrote: post #64
jmyeet wrote: post #57

> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high enough to make it less appealing as a business? 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 coul…

If IP is real property, it should be taxed. The tax system I like for IP works for hire is this: each year you owe 1/4% * N (where N is the age of the IP) in taxes on the IP. Whatever you pay, the "public" (anyone/everyone else) can pay the balance to the USPTO (or LoC) to move that IP in to the public domain. Non-works-for-hire last for some fixed time, or until all the authors/inventors are dead, whichever comes fi…

> If IP is real property, it should be taxed.

As someone who thinks that the underlying concept of a patent is worthwhile (giving an independant inventor a bit of lead time for their invention against huge companies who could easily copy-cat), I seriously love that idea! Bonus point for somehow scaling the taxation based on real sales vs. lawsuits.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#98

Post by tepitoperrito »

jmyeet wrote: post #57

> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high enough to make it less appealing as a business? 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 coul…

I need to investigate this "maths disqualifier" because it completely blows my mind that companies are actively patenting the application of statistical machine learning models to their domain.

For example Xometry has successfully patented "METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR MACHINE LEARNING PREDICTIONS OF MANUFACTURING PROCESSES"[0]. To me there is literally nothing novel here, they are just describing the results of using an existing stats tool in the "manufacturing" domain, preventing other companies from sharing how they do stuff like this for fear of being sued.

I read that patent as saying if you work for a CNC machine shop you can't run random forest on a CSV of your own data unless you get granted a license to by a potential competitor.

[0] https://patents.justia.com/assignee/xometry-inc

edit:fixed link

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#99

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #66
LosWochosWeek wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 --…

Understood, please allow me clarify. Not to get off-topic with copyright despite being an "older author", notwithstanding the sibling comments, I'd agree it's too long. Now, it's nice that patents time-out quite quickly, and indeed that motivates for useful development, but what I'm talking about is adding serial (AND) conditions that require they're capable of being used. Alice has a fresh patent on a method for man…

> Charlie doesn't have an "interest" in the patent and so loses the patent

Wow, I like the direction of this, pragmatic enough to get implemented but also on its way to establish the commons as a party in the deal.

I’ve long thought that the commons need a stronger representation in policy.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#100

Post by amelius »

javajosh wrote: post #41
amelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the people who determine patent law (mostly patent officers/lawyers/judges) benefit from the current system.

This is at the root of a broader problem with the judicial system, which is that it systematically fails to do its job in a timely manner. But that's okay with the actors, because they bill by the hour. That's not exaggeration or hyperbole; I've never seen a class of people do less for more than attorneys and judges, who go out of their way to be pleasant and accommodating to each other, with total disregard for the…

I think we need a Department of Anti-Perverse Incentives.
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