Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

Not having a patent doesn’t _prevent_ you from bringing your invention to market, it just accelerates _someone_ bringing it to market, and that’s a net good for society if the invention is useful, no?

... and copyrights should last no longer than software patents.

Nice to see Cloudflare fighting the good fight, but patent trolls aren’t the only issue with software patents. A major issue that people talk about way less is well funded/large companies getting bullshit patents, and using them to sue their small startup competitors into the ground. It doesn’t even matter if they win - when a company with billions in the bank sues a company with millions in the bank, the small company is basically just screwed no matter what because they can’t afford the legal fees. It’s a cheap way for big, bloated, slow moving companies to eliminate fast moving, lean, disruptive competition.

A major source of this problem IMO is the granting of bullshit patents in the first place - patents that should never have been granted because they’re obvious and/or there was prior art. Patent clerks aren’t actually subject matter experts in the field, and there’s little incentive for them to deny bullshit patents. They maybe deny them once or twice, but dedicated companies just keep applying and eventually get them granted, because the applicant has a major incentive to get the bullshit patent, and the patent office has only minor incentives to deny bullshit patents. I think these incentives need to be changed - for example, if company A sues company B over patent C, company B spends $10 million on their defence, and wins with the patent being deemed invalid, I think company B should get MAJOR financial rewards from BOTH company A and the patent office, on the order of 10x+ what they spent on their defence. If granting a bullshit patent was a $100 mil mistake, patent offices would be WAY more careful with the patents they grant, and applying for patents would be WAY more expensive, and those are both good things!

The right incentives could keep the good parts of the patent system while eliminating the (currently pretty massive, out of control) downsides. Patents are currently a mediocre idea implemented incredibly poorly.

I second the abolishment of patents.

The reasons people are for/against patents are political. A rightist view would be that patents allow first-to-the-finish-line inventors to reap financial awards that lead to success and freedom. A leftist view would be that the opportunity cost of patents is an increased cost (analogous to a tax) on everyone else in the form of licensing fees and barred entry to markets as improvements in science and technology make patents more obvious than innovative.

If we don't reform the system by at least reducing patent durations to something reasonable like 3-5 years, then that will create an incentive to operate outside the market. People will just use open source and 3D printing to build their own stuff, rather than purchasing it from someone else. In other words, more patents = bigger black market and smaller market/profits for those operating legally.

It's not a good look anymore to favor policies which encourage corruption. Other examples of unintended consequences include the War on Drugs, the Citizens United decision, NAFTA, etc etc etc. We know better now and we can do better, rather than letting special interests dictate the manner in which we do business.

There's obviously inefficiency in the system - a big cost every time a decision involves lawyers and even more if there are juries.

So we should understand that we don't have a way to be perfect and think about where to balance the trade-offs.

We want to give people a chance to make money before they are wiped out by those that copy them but I don't think we have an interest in someone "cornering the market" indefinitely.

We could reduce their lifetime - that would cut a lot of decisions.

We could limit the amount of money a patent is allowed to return based on an estimate of what it cost to create plus a reasonable profit rather like a kickstarter campaign.

We could cancel software patents altogether.