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Every so often a patent troll story comes up on HN, and people like me bitch about how broken the system is and get group therapy from shouting into the wind on a web forum. What can we actually do . How do we start fixing this problem?
Or invest in seasteading.
If only 1 reader here on this HN thread ends up founding a unicorn company, you will have enough money & pull to get real patent reform thru congress, if you so wish.
Go out there, make serious money, then change the world of IP. Let that be your legacy.
That's your path forward.
At the risk of losing some karma here... and prefacing this with: I hate these patent trolls, they go entirely against my senses... I am wondering: is there a charitable view on the "other side" of this that I'm not seeing, in which these people have some (perhaps weird) way of morally justifying this practice?
"The little guys can't fight legal battles with large corporations. So either you work with lawyers that are labeled patent trolls or you lose your patent by default by lack of defending it. Or you can go broke fighting in court."
It was the first time I had considered the possibility that there may be more at play here and that I couldn't see all sides clearly.
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Watch The Patent Scam, by the X-Plane's (flight simulator) founder Austin Meyer. https://www.thepatentscam.com/
I always find "watch this documentary" to be pointless. If the person's already convinced that patent abuse is bad, they don't need to watch a 2 hour video to reconfirm their beliefs. If the person is sitting on the fence or not convinced, there are better ways to provide information to them than getting them to stare at a screen for 2 hours.
At the risk of losing some karma here... and prefacing this with: I hate these patent trolls, they go entirely against my senses... I am wondering: is there a charitable view on the "other side" of this that I'm not seeing, in which these people have some (perhaps weird) way of morally justifying this practice?
I don't see the problems with such non-practicing entities. They serve a legitimate purpose and advance the goal of patent laws by paying existing patent holders for their patents and suing companies for patent infringement. In this way, companies that would otherwise have to take on risks to mount an expensive lawsuit themselves can receive ready cash. If such non-practicing entities are outlawed, the inventors woul…
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I agree, but they stopped making them 25 years ago. This company is taking advantage of legacy laws. You couldn't replicate this business model today because it's already been outlawed.
Congress should just invalidate all submarine patents, full stop. When the 13th amendment was passed slave owners didn't get to "grandfather in" their existing slaves. Extreme example, but the point is sometimes old laws are so harmful to society we should not allow people to continue abusing them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Congress should just invalidate all submarine patents, full stop. When the 13th amendment was passed slave owners didn't get to "grandfather in" their existing slaves. Extreme example, but the point is sometimes old laws are so harmful to society we should not allow people to continue abusing them.
You're absolutely right, however let's note that no rational person would conclude that Apple actually infringed on any invention of this patent troll. This case should have gone nowhere, and the plaintiffs should have been sent home with a bill for the defense's legal counsel. I mentioned in another comment about the Eastern District of Texas which became effectively a giant grift operation (though a recent SC case…
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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.
Funny. New drugs existed before patents were a thing.