http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/worlds-leading-patent-troll-sues-motorola.ars

Quote :

"In the beginning, Intellectual Ventures presented itself as one of the good guys. Founded a decade ago by former Microsoft honcho Nathan Myhrvold, it made the rounds to Silicon Valley's largest tech companies, convincing them to pony up millions of dollars to buy up patents in order to keep them out of the hands of patent trolls. According to Business Week, by 2006, the investors included Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, and eBay. But as IV's patent arsenal has grown, the tone of Myhrvold's sales pitch has changed. Companies began to wonder if they might become a target of IV's own patents if they declined to sign up. Myhrvold used to emphasize that IV itself hadn't sued anyone, but he refused to rule out doing so in the future. Recently, IV has faced accusations that it set up shell companies like Oasis Research and LodSys so it could engage in patent trolling without leaving fingerprints. In the last year, IV has dropped any pretenses and started filing lawsuits itself. The latest salvo came on Thursday, when IV sued Motorola Mobility for patent infringement. The complaint names a wide variety of both Android and non-Android phones as infringing six distinct patents. IV says it has been trying to negotiate licensing terms since January, but apparently the firms weren't able to reach an agreement. Ironically, Google, which is acquiring Motorola Mobility, was an early IV investor. IV differs from ordinary patent trolls in several respects. Most patent trolls are paper corporations with empty offices and a skeleton staff. In contrast, IV has a famous founder and a well-staffed Seattle-area headquarters. The firm also built an impressive-looking science lab where IV scientists and engineers develop potentially patentable ideas. But like all patent trolls, it has been careful not to commercialize any of those inventions. That means that IV is not vulnerable to the threat of retaliatory lawsuits that has helped keep litigation among large technology firms in check. And that calls into question the value of Google's acquisition of Motorola for its patents. Motorola's patents will serve as a strong defensive weapon against companies like Microsoft and Apple that make products of their own, but defensive patenting is helpless against firms that have no products. Myhrvold was one of the first to recognize this vulnerability, and it appears to be making him a very wealthy man."

That's right people. Patent owners must be careful not to commercialize their inventions, lest they lose the ability to profitably sue others for violating them. I waffle on this issue over time, but I am becoming quite certain these patents are a completely deadweight loss for society and Congress should make them all disappear. Does anyone here disagree?

10/7/2011 4:40:59 PM

I thought this thread was going to be about Intellectual Ventures.

Oh wait.

It is.

10/7/2011 5:06:30 PM

what about patents in pharmaceuticals? I read (somewhere) that there are quite a few drugs that are hard to find right now, many because they are generic and the companies claimed they were unprofitable.

[Edited on October 7, 2011 at 6:20 PM. Reason : I'll go hunting for some links later]

[Edited on October 7, 2011 at 6:26 PM. Reason : http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/10/news/economy/drug_shortages_fda/index.htm]

10/7/2011 6:20:02 PM

I was thinking about this the other day in a sort of back of the napkin type way. Couldn't we accomplish the same intent of patents with a type of pyramid licensing scheme? It would work something like an MLM does.

You invent a product and is granted a patent, which is good for some flat number of years, say 10. Part of the condition of a getting a patent is that your patent becomes licensable from the patent office for some rate which is pegged to inflation, and varies inversely based on the number of items using your patent the licensor produces. So for example, you patent something and someone else wants to use it in a production of say 1,000 items, so they would pay a license that year of $100,000, where as someone making a production of 1,000,000 might have a license fee for the year of $5,000,000. That's for straight up usage of the patent in question. In addition, say the licensor comes up with some new novel invention that qualifies for a patent, but uses your still patented tech, they would owe some percentage of the licensing money they make off of their patent to you.

You would probably still have patent trolls arguing that you use their tech so you should have to pay some thing, but I think it might even reduce the drag that patent trolls have on the system. And since the patents are a fixed and expiring term the people at the top of the pyramid are always changing and you're always moving up.

As I said, all just random thoughts from a few nights ago, but thoughts?

10/7/2011 6:30:36 PM

Recent laws have changed that will fuck over small businesses that want to commercialize their patents (my business).

Patents will now be awarded according to the first to file, not the first to invent. So now, while a small overloaded company tries to file a patent and has fewer hours per day to do so, a full powered corporation with a team of patent lawyers can quickly file a patent and win out, not to mention an army of technicians and research drones to churn out supporting data. This is in spite of the fact that a smaller company might have actually invented (and documented) first, which used to be the determining factor for who gets a patent in conflict.

10/7/2011 7:13:35 PM

first to file is complete bullshit. but the OP isn't so much a problem with patents. rather it's a matter of what is allowed to be patented. I forget when, but it used to be that computer code could only be subject to copyright law and not patent law. Changing that is what has allowed this patent war to rage. I mean, how the fuck do you get a patent for the idea for a search algorithm? that's total BS, and I say this a computer programmer.

10/7/2011 7:49:46 PM