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The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

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Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#271

Post by yossarian1408 »

Ygg2 wrote: post #223
yossarian1408 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He means idea in the broader sense of nonphysical concept. For example, the patent for a drug is not private property in the same way that a plot of land is. One is a physical entity which can only be owned/utilised by one person or group at a time, and another has no physical properties and can be utilised by literally every single person alive had they the inclination. Patents/IP/etc only have 'scarcity' because th…

Just because it's not physically present doesn't mean it's not real. Patent represents compensation for time spent researching and developing it. Without it, you would resort to greater degrees of secrecy.

Sure, it's real, but it is not affected by scarcity. Monopolies are never a good idea, they suit oligarchs at the expense of mankind.

First-movers already have an advantage in the market, this seems to be a natural incentive for R&D. And then also consider that many innovators and inventors do what they do for reasons outside of gaining monetary compensation.

Any consequences of greater secrecy would be largely overshadowed by the advantage of having an actually competitive market in film, tech, healthcare, and etc. Imagine if any manufacturer could produce insulin, or if any film student could shoot their own Star Wars movie.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#272

Post by henvic »

gruez wrote: post #267
henvic wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it has to be unbiased? Alas, there's no such thing as unbiased.

>Alas, there's no such thing as unbiased. So basically, neutrality nihilism? ie. "every source is biased so it doesn't matter whether I'm getting my climate change facts from the IPCC or InfoWars".

No. It's more along the lines of:

It doesn't make sense to give conspiracy theorists any space for the sake of neutrality.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#273

Post by crispyambulance »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #264
crispyambulance wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The temporary monopoly is awarded in return for publicly disclosing your invention. Reading patents is perhaps one of the WORST and most inefficient ways to discover "new ideas". Even ignoring the turgid legal language, the actual central ideas of the patents are either so vague they're useless or they apply to utterly obsolete scenarios or they just poorly describe something that has already been in existence/usag…

You’re really just restating the claim that we don’t need intellectual property protections, without making any attempt to explain why. Your suggestion that the global economy could shift towards an isolationist model is frankly enough to dismiss your idea without much further scrutiny.

> ...suggestion that the global economy could shift towards an isolationist model...

Not at all. There's "global isolationism" and then there's outsourcing everything to the point where all that's left is the C-suite and a few supply-chain jockeys.

It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#274

Post by Black101 »

seaman1921 wrote: post #180
Black101 wrote: post #20

if "patent trolls" would only go against monopolies, I would be fine with it...

you fail to realise that you are the one paying for it in the end - blindly hating innovative companies who make amazing products just because they make too much money for your liking is quite immature

If they are so innovative, why do they need to use somebody else's patent? I think that the monopolies are the immature ones if they complain about the price of patents owned by others...

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#275

Post by nl »

henvic wrote: post #272
gruez wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Alas, there's no such thing as unbiased. So basically, neutrality nihilism? ie. "every source is biased so it doesn't matter whether I'm getting my climate change facts from the IPCC or InfoWars".

No. It's more along the lines of: It doesn't make sense to give conspiracy theorists any space for the sake of neutrality.

I agree with this.

But this is different to conspiracy theorists. There is a range of reasonable, good faith positions to take on this issue (eg, some on this discussion advocate the abolishment of copyright - not just patents - which is a position many in the software industry would disagree with).

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#276

Post by fomine3 »

cletus wrote: post #256
joemullin wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many internet companies, including Google, have used patents only defensively (so far). However, there are plenty of tech companies that do assert patents offensively, including Apple, IBM, Qualcomm (famously), Oracle, and lots of others.

Qualcomm and Oracle are clearly bad actors. IBM? Probably. But I have no idea honestly. But Apple? The only patent suit I'm aware of that they initiated was against Samsung and this is a little more complicated. First, it was primarily a design patent suit. I'm a little more sympathetic to design patents than software patents (which I'm 100% against). And, let's face it, Samsung did pretty much just rip off the iPhon…

Apple sued Samsung with scroll bounce back effect. Yes Samsung is a big player, but the lawsuit means other developers also avoid to implement same thing.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/appeals-court-re...

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#277

Post by waterhouse »

crispyambulance wrote: post #224
AmericanChopper wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the patent system has some problems doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any value. These troll patents might contain a high number of ideas you might just casually come up with, but the actually valuable ones tend to be comprised of innovative ideas that usually require significant R&D investment to come up with. Without patents there’s very little incentive to invest in coming up with those ideas. A lot of the…

> The temporary monopoly is awarded in return for publicly disclosing your invention. Reading patents is perhaps one of the WORST and most inefficient ways to discover "new ideas". Even ignoring the turgid legal language, the actual central ideas of the patents are either so vague they're useless or they apply to utterly obsolete scenarios or they just poorly describe something that has already been in existence/usag…

Not to mention, it's my understanding that tech employees are generally instructed to avoid reading patents, because if the company ever gets found in court to have infringed on the patents, then them having read the patents will be used to show wilful infringement and therefore to award triple damages.

I suppose they could read expired patents, though.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#278

Post by conanbatt »

JamesBarney wrote: post #36
conanbatt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or dont do patents at all.

You still need patents. Healthcare is an obvious example, if we eliminated patents we'd have 0 new drugs pass FDA approval over the next decade. But software is very different from medical patents.

> You still need patents. Healthcare is an obvious example, if we eliminated patents we'd have 0 new drugs pass FDA approval over the next decade.

That's only if you look at how the system is today and evaluate as it is today.

Software mostly doesn't have patents: theres no patent to an uber, to a paypal, to an amazon. You would have a different business model to fund medical innovation, for example, advance payments from prospective patients.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#279

Post by conanbatt »

TomVDB wrote: post #60
monocasa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our current system uses incredible amounts of public funding for drug discovery. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329

The article references mentions $100B over a period of 7 years, or $14B per year. That’s a decent chunk of money, but it’s important to put it in perspective. Pfizer alone spends around $10B per year on R&D. J&J: $12B. Merck: $13B.

The coronavirus probably shows patents to be a thorny mechanism for innovation. Pfizer might have a vax patent but then can't freely make money of it. If there were no patents, but they were the best manufacturers, might have been easier to have a freer market on it.

Patents necessarily put more capital investments into patentable work than unpatentable work, but that doesnt mean it is more efficient. I understand the principle of patents, but eventually you end up in heavy interventionism, state funding, litigation, etc. Best to do away of all of that imo.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#280

Post by RobertRoberts »

lostdog wrote: post #157
matsemann wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the argument doesn't seem any good if you completely misunderstand it.. Let's say you're a small player with a legitimate patent. A huge entity is infringing. In order to make any money of your invention, you have to fight. But that can be very costly and risky. Instead, you sell your patent to someone specialized in this, a "patent troll". You get some money, they use their expertise to fight the big playe…

Ok, I see, you're just saying the NPE is justified, and not the rest of the patent troll system.

I would agree with your assessment. The system sucks all around, but there is at least some value for small time patent owners.
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