Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the AIA 2011, there are some new post-grant opposition procedure that speeds up and reduce the legal cost such as PGR, IPR, CBM. Although opposition application is about $30k USD plus some paper work. This is not super cheap, but it is still a lot cheaper than going through discovery and superstar trial lawyers by litigating, which would be in the millions $$.
The problem here is that the parties that are going to get hit with those patents probably don't even exist yet. Your typical patent troll buys patents that have value, the filing was done in bulk in the past, then by the time the state of the art has progressed for a bit (much more than half a year) they look over their portfolio and decide which patents can be harvested. Some patents trolls will buy up selected pat…
PatentHackers – A new platform to help companies kill patent trolls
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Re: PatentHackers – A new platform to help companies kill patent trolls
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
That made me a bit paranoid at first, since my name is Robert.
Sorry man. Maybe I should fix this later, Bob. (Ok Robert I will fix this I promise)
Re: PatentHackers – A new platform to help companies kill patent trolls
#33Here's the real question though: does knowing that there exists prior art to a certain patent in question at all change the need to go through a painfully lengthy and exorbitantly expensive legal process to prove that one's innocent? Or does this still require a company to be as well capitalized as Newegg in order to be able to withstand a patent attack, and thus doesn't really matter for the majority of us?
Re: PatentHackers – A new platform to help companies kill patent trolls
#34Great idea. Also fwiw, kudos to Peer2Patent and AskPatents. Good to see more sites like this, organizing the world to fight trolls. [1]: http://www.peertopatent.org/ [2]: http://patents.stackexchange.com/
Re: PatentHackers – A new platform to help companies kill patent trolls
#35I really like the idea of the rewards though. Someone willing to spend some time on the research could stay in business with this.
Re: PatentHackers – A new platform to help companies kill patent trolls
#36Here's the real question though: does knowing that there exists prior art to a certain patent in question at all change the need to go through a painfully lengthy and exorbitantly expensive legal process to prove that one's innocent? Or does this still require a company to be as well capitalized as Newegg in order to be able to withstand a patent attack, and thus doesn't really matter for the majority of us?
Even with dead on prior art, you're still out of pocket $500k to $1.5 million in legal fees before you can kill the patent in court, which is why cost-of-litigation settlements are common. Newer procedures (begun last year) are killing patents at the USPTO with a high success rate for in the range of $100k to 300k.