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Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

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Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#31

Post by ncallaway »

drakaal wrote: post #16

Patent trolls suck. But with out patents there is no incentive for innovation. The issue is not that Patents are bad, it is that you can patent a "unique way to swing on the playground" and be awarded a patent. Patent officer often don't know what they are awarding a patent for. This is supposed to be kept in check by the fact that you can fight a patent. I think that if you file a patent, sue someone over it, and lo…

"I also think that patents should only be allowed to be resold twice. This would limit the number of patents which could be used to extort money."

I think patents should be entirely non-transferable. You should be able to license them to others, and perhaps designate a third-party that can manage the patent and license it on behalf of the owning entity.

The right to sue over the patent should never leave the original inventor.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#33

Post by jlgreco »

tomp wrote: post #28
a_p wrote: post #22

If you cannot understand how people could possible think that software patents are acceptable, I recommend reading this article. [1] Not because it will convince you that software patents are good — it won't. But it will help you understand the thought process of lawyers who do think that there should be some software patents. For example, Goetz writes that he supports "patents where the preferred implementation of a…

Personally, I support software patents. I'm just against idea patents, as opposed to invention patents. Screen rotation is no invention. It's an idea; once you have it, it's trivial to implement. That, IMO, does not afford patent protection. However, certain things can, and should be patents. RSA, for example. It's a non-trivial procedure that was non-trivial to invent and there are not very many alternatives.

Would you have been okay if Feynman diagrams were patented?

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#35

Post by acdha »

arbuge wrote: post #7

"IPRs can be risky and costly. We know this IPR will cost us more than the $75,000 that Rotatable wanted to extort from us. But we are not just fighting for us; we are fighting for all the app developers who are also in the line of fire." Clearly the patent system is defective and needs to be fixed radically (or patents entirely eliminated in the software space, which I personally believe is preferable). Nevertheless…

Check out John Walker's PATO proposal from 1993, following Autodesk getting hit with a bogus patent: http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#36

Post by larrys »

arbuge wrote: post #15
larrys wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wondering about a) antitrust issues with that and b) standing to file the IPR from an entity such as an association. (Question, not a statement to which I know the answer.)

I don't see the relevance of either. Antitrust deals with breaking up colossal monopolies like AT&T and Standard Oil... not sure how that relates to this in any way. IPRs are a new concept to me, but I don't see why any entity can't challenge the validity of any patent. If there's a problem with that, which I doubt, the company receiving the troll attack could presumably be the challenger, with the association reimbu…

"Antitrust deals with breaking up colossal monopolies like AT&T and Standard Oil."

Not true there is also collusion to consider, price setting, dividing markets etc. For example web hosting companies can't band together to set pricing or to determine certain things as a group. (Obv. companies get together to set standards etc and other things).

I'm just raising the issue but I know this from back at the beginning of ICANN registrars we had to be concerned with what we did and what we said to each other when we had group meetings on the advice of attorneys in our registrars constituency. And I'm not saying that the lawyers weren't over reaching or that particular behaviors had merit I'm merely mentioning it as a point of discussion and consideration.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#37

Post by breck »

I like this approach. I would be mathematically surprised if there exists any patent that cannot be invalidated via prior art. It seems there is a strong correlation between the amount of information online and the probability of there existing easily accessible prior art for any arbitrary patent.

In other words, if the amount of information on the web doubles every year, the probability of finding prior art that can invalidate any patent doubles as well. By this point in time, with the amount of information that has been moved online, the probability of having a patent not subject to prior art claims seems astronomically low.

As an anecdote, I just saw "The Mother of All Demos" (1968 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs), for the first time the other day. That video alone contains dozens of inventions that I thought were relatively recent.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#40

Post by spartango »

angersock wrote: post #27
drakaal wrote: post #16

Patent trolls suck. But with out patents there is no incentive for innovation. The issue is not that Patents are bad, it is that you can patent a "unique way to swing on the playground" and be awarded a patent. Patent officer often don't know what they are awarding a patent for. This is supposed to be kept in check by the fact that you can fight a patent. I think that if you file a patent, sue someone over it, and lo…

"But with out patents there is no incentive for innovation." What a merry little idea. Has it occurred to you that there are a large number of people who invent, innovate, and develop because it's simply not an option not to? That it is a sort of compulsion, a reason for being? In a market without patents, I'm sure capitalists will find a way to keep making money, just as I'm sure that inventors and makers will conti…

It totally depends on the field. In software, perhaps this would work nicely, because rapid iteration and expansion prevails.

That said, in the pharmaceutical or material science worlds, the cost and pace of research require that protection be afforded to those who choose to invest and disclose the fruits of their labor to the world.

It's not so black and white that there are no incentives for disclosed innovation, but patents are a big booster in some areas, for good reasons.

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