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How To Kill Patent Trolls

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Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#2

Post by ohashi »

I appreciate the idea and love the crowdsourcing model. However, if I need to invalidate a patent, there might often be more urgency than hoping for the crowd sourced solution. Not to say it isn't viable, but maybe it's something best used in conjunction with a team of experts?

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#3

Post by bryanlarsen »

ohashi wrote: post #2

I appreciate the idea and love the crowdsourcing model. However, if I need to invalidate a patent, there might often be more urgency than hoping for the crowd sourced solution. Not to say it isn't viable, but maybe it's something best used in conjunction with a team of experts?

I would think that offering a $10,000 reward to the first person to come up with the solution would create a better sense of urgency than paying a firm $200 per hour to do the search. The firm gets paid more if it takes them longer, so why would they hurry?

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#4

Post by peterb »

ohashi wrote: post #2

I appreciate the idea and love the crowdsourcing model. However, if I need to invalidate a patent, there might often be more urgency than hoping for the crowd sourced solution. Not to say it isn't viable, but maybe it's something best used in conjunction with a team of experts?

If this were to gain momentum, then I think the exact opposite would happen. Crowd sourcing is like a human map-reduce. The bad patent is "mapped" to people who know something about the subject and each searches independently sometimes sharing results. Analysis is done to "reduce" the result to provable prior art. Further, I think they should remove the award. I would do this for free. Sites that pay people to contribute almost always fail (think Mahalo vs. Wikipedia).

Patent trolls affect all of us. This is something everyone could get behind.

Edit: by "exact opposite" I mean crowd-sourcing could produce good results faster, with greater urgency, than any expert.

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#5

Post by seanc »

If only defending a patent suit was as simple as finding the prior art. Most patent trolls will happily invite you to take your prior art claim to court, knowing full well you can't afford to do it.

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#6

Post by arikrak »

I think the solution needs to be more ambitious. What if the "invention" is not prior art, but other people can come up with the same idea on their own? Does that deserve to be patented so that the company that was one week late will need to pay patent fees? Maybe the whole patent process should be crowd-sourced and patents should only be granted if no one can think of the same idea.

(I discuss this more here: http://zappable.com/2011/08/how-to-fix-the-patent-system/)

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#7

Post by dvdkhlng »

peterb wrote: post #4
ohashi wrote: post #2

I appreciate the idea and love the crowdsourcing model. However, if I need to invalidate a patent, there might often be more urgency than hoping for the crowd sourced solution. Not to say it isn't viable, but maybe it's something best used in conjunction with a team of experts?

If this were to gain momentum, then I think the exact opposite would happen. Crowd sourcing is like a human map-reduce. The bad patent is "mapped" to people who know something about the subject and each searches independently sometimes sharing results. Analysis is done to "reduce" the result to provable prior art. Further, I think they should remove the award. I would do this for free. Sites that pay people to contri…

About doing this for free: thought the same. Receiving money might even complicate things wrt tax or other employment contracts.

I wonder if they'd allow one to surrender any payments, instead having them directly donated to EFF, FSF or other non-profit organizations that are fighting with or are endangered by (software) patents.

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#8

Post by alttag »

arikrak wrote: post #6

I think the solution needs to be more ambitious. What if the "invention" is not prior art, but other people can come up with the same idea on their own? Does that deserve to be patented so that the company that was one week late will need to pay patent fees? Maybe the whole patent process should be crowd-sourced and patents should only be granted if no one can think of the same idea. (I discuss this more here: http:/…

  > What if the "invention" is not prior art, but other 
  > people can come up with the same idea on their own?
Then at the very least, it's evidence for obviousness, which (although a tougher sell) can also invalidate a patent.

EDIT: IANAL

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#9

Post by pwg »

seanc wrote: post #5

If only defending a patent suit was as simple as finding the prior art. Most patent trolls will happily invite you to take your prior art claim to court, knowing full well you can't afford to do it.

> Most patent trolls will happily invite you to take your prior art claim to court

If you (the defendant) has found good prior art (either by this method or some other method), you can also file for a re-examination with the USPTO using that new prior art. Still somewhat expensive, but significantly less expensive than going to court, and if the patent is found invalid it is just as dead.

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