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Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

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Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#91

Post by r00fus »

tbrownaw wrote: post #59
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. This is quite obviously false, as there was innovation before patents were invented and not all innovations nowadays are patented. It isn't even at all clear that the existence of patents increases innovation.

Without patents, there is indeed innovation, but it's not "controlled".

Patents allow the existing power structure to sanction, spur and hobble innovation.

Patents are all about control.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#92

Post by DaniFong »

acdha wrote: post #35
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

God damn; PATO is exactly my proposal. I shall sue him, having come up with it 15 years after his publication... ;-)

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#94

Post by neurotech1 »

Ilmesnkie_Jones wrote: post #45
chime wrote: post #5

If IPR for screen-rotation ends up with nullifying the patent, can organizations like EFF start doing that pro-actively for other ridiculous patents like One-Click-Buy and Swipe-to-Unlock? Or does the patent-holder have to be proven as a troll?

The patent holder would have to sue someone first or there would be no standing to bring a case.

Anyone can file a re-examination request ex parte. The EFF have done this occasion, without an actual filed lawsuit from the Patent Assertion Entity(PAE="troll") but it still costs thousands of dollars in fees and the EFF lawyers time.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#95

Post by Kliment »

charlesjshort wrote: post #64

I've worked as a patent prosecutor for a top ranked patent prosecution firm; and I know first hand that most patents are 'pencil patents' worthless subtle distinctions that are allowed because 'obvious' arguments do not stand up. However, some innovations, maybe 1 in 1000, are really worthy. And if the inventor did not have some way to protect their research - google or microsoft or anyone else could usurp the idea f…

It's much more likely that google or microsoft would absolutely annihilate the average joe with a countersuit rather than license anything from them. They hold a much bigger patent portfolio and can afford to pump money into a case for several years. There is absolutely nothing that makes patents attractive to the "lone inventor" type. The innovations may be worthy, but patents do nothing to help there.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#96

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

FTA: [The IPR is] a new proceeding made available under the America Invents Act.

The new patent legislation is very recent, and patent trolls are still operating under the older model. I think it's worth seeing whether and how this fix operates.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#97

Post by anigbrowl »

hkmurakami wrote: post #78

>Patent trolls then follow each filing with a settlement demand “at a price far lower than the cost to defend the litigation.” (Id. at 1326.) This allows trolls to use the high cost of litigation as a club against operating companies. This smells like another ugly practice by "rightsholders". Namely, the RIAA/MPAA litigation against individuals.

It's a common pattern in almost any litigation, not specific to IP rightsholders.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#98

Post by anigbrowl »

toasterlovin wrote: post #84
drakaal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For obvious things like this, there shouldn't have been a patent issued. If I however invent the first hyperspace engine, You shouldn't be able to buy one, take it a part and make your own. That is what patents are supposed to protect. Cotton Gins, and Hyperspace engines. Not Rotate your screen on your phone like you do on your tablet.

"If I however invent the first hyperspace engine, You shouldn't be able to buy one, take it a part and make your own." Why not? What is special about non-obvious ideas, that they should not be as freely transmitted as obvious ones? Also, why should the first person to file for a patent on an idea be the person who gets the monopoly on the idea? With 7 billion minds on this planet, even for non-obvious ideas, it seems…

What is special about non-obvious ideas, that they should not be as freely transmitted as obvious ones?

The sometimes-vast sunk costs of the discoverer.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#99

Post by CopyrightX »

Patent and copyright laws are both in serious need of radical reform in the US and globally. Thank you Rackspace for not caving in to the patent trolls, but as you wrote, it has become a never-ending game of "whack-a-troll".

That's because with existing legislation, the patent troll business model is financially very sound if also inherently corrosive to society as a whole. "The dynamics of local vs. global optimization" is jargon from the team-building and process-design communities that applies here: a successful business strategy for the patent trolls is a huge failure for the community as a whole. This could also be considered a perverse incentive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

There are perverse incentives in both copyright and patent law that undermine the original Constitutional goals of "promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts..." that are especially powerful in our age of ever-increasing innovation where digital computers and The Internet have created a radically different "landscape" than that which existed when the first such laws were drafted.

Ideally, thoughtful legislative reforms would prevent such perverse incentives in the future so that both copyright and patent law would once again be aligned to serve the common good rather than the good of a few.

Large and democratic communities (such as those Joel Spolsky helped create) full of good questions and answers could go a long way towards helping to craft such thoughtful legislative reforms. See Ask Patents http://patents.stackexchange.com for such a community on patents, and http://goo.gl/5YDHa for such a proposed community on copyright.

Anyone who feels strongly about these issues, please go get involved by "Follow"ing the proposed CopyrightX community and submitting 5 Example Questions. With enough voting and other participation, the CopyrightX community proposal can graduate to an actual community like Ask Patents.

And with two vibrant communities full of good questions and answers related to IP law, perhaps future legislation will be free of perverse incentives, and we can once again rely on our laws to serve ALL of our best interests.

In the interim, thanks again Rackspace for being willing to continue the costly game of "whack-a-troll" on behalf of all of us.

Re: Abolish The Patent, Vanquish The Troll

#100

Post by wojonstech »

These sort of things are scary to me, I am planning on starting a business, using money from my own pocket and the fact that random companies are going to sue me just cuz they they can makes me not want to start one which just lowers then innovation that takes place.
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