21–30 of 109 posts
We dealt with some patent trolls back in the 2010-2020 era, for those who have not experienced it, it is absurd. In our case, the patent "troll" was an LLC w/ ~5 members - 2 lawyers, 1 person who owned the original patent, and some spouses. The only "asset" of the LLC was the patent. I think it was around scrollbars or some CSS overflow thing - they sent us a demand/cease-desist letter saying they will sue for $1M an…
Why do we keep moving toward a system where being ahead is the most viable way to get ahead?
Why do we keep moving toward a system where being ahead is the most viable way to get ahead?
We dealt with some patent trolls back in the 2010-2020 era, for those who have not experienced it, it is absurd. In our case, the patent "troll" was an LLC w/ ~5 members - 2 lawyers, 1 person who owned the original patent, and some spouses. The only "asset" of the LLC was the patent. I think it was around scrollbars or some CSS overflow thing - they sent us a demand/cease-desist letter saying they will sue for $1M an…
The correct course of action in situations like this is to name and shame.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For what purpose? If it's for prior art, the prior at must have been publicly available, so a private LLM wouldn't work. Perhaps I'm missing your point, though.
I think the idea is that if an LLM trained prior to the patent date can reproduce the invention, then either the idea is obvious or there was prior art in the training set; either way the patent is invalid.
Would we even be able to tell if the machine reproduced the invention covered by the claims in the patent?
I (regrettably) have my name on some US software patents. I've read the patents, have intimate knowledge of the software they claim to cover, and see nearly zero relation between the patent and the covered software. If I set a skilled programmer to the task of reproducing the software components that are supposed to be covered by the patents, I guarantee that they'd fail, and fail hard.
Back before I knew about the whole "treble damage thing" (and just how terrible many-to-most software patents are) I read many software patents. I found them to offer no hints to the programmer seeking to reproduce the covered software component or system.
Why do we keep moving toward a system where being ahead is the most viable way to get ahead?
Maybe it's time for a patent pool for non-trolls covering patent to behavior.
Why do we keep moving toward a system where being ahead is the most viable way to get ahead?
> Congress Created IPR to Protect the Public—Not Just Patent Owners For this administration, this is a problem to be solved. Big business are the masters now and we need to make it easier for them to step on small business by any means.
Big business isn't really monolithic when it comes to patents. Some large tech companies love patents (MSFT, e.g.), while others (Google, e.g.) seem to abhor them. Also, the troll problem is a problem for big business, not a benefit to big business.