Losing the War on Patents

theodp writes: "Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly's once-hyped BountyQuest.com takes a beating in a Salon article today that takes note of Amazon's recent decision to license one of the few patents BountyQuest claimed to have found winning prior art for, a patent held by the InTouch Group, who had sued Amazon for infringing on the patent prior to Bezos' reported $1+ million BountyQuest investment. In the article, professional patent buster Greg Aharonian provocatively remarks that "BountyQuest was always a joke...Bezos and O'Reilly were never seriously interested in patent quality...Bezos just used O'Reilly to help Amazon...That Amazon ended up licensing the InTouch patent just shows how stupid the whole thing is.""

Comments

Licensure does not Mean What You Might Think

[euphline]

Amazon.com's decision to license a patent simply means that they did a little bit of math to determine whether the cost to litigate the patent suit, combined with the odds of winning were greater or less than the cost of licensing the patent. Clearly, they determined that it was simply cheaper to license the patent than to litigate it.

The legal system in the United States is (unfortunately) often used by unscrupulous companies that know that settling their lawsuit will be cheaper than litigation... regardless of the merits of the case.

That said, settling lawsuits (also known as ADR, Alternative Dispute Resolution) is a *good thing*. This gets the decision making out of the hands of judges and juries and into the hands of the parties. It allows folks that are at odds to come together on something where they both have *some shot* of going home happy. At the end of a lawsuit, often everyone loses because of the high cost of litigation.

-jbn

Please note: Part of the cost of litigation is lawyers. They are just doing their job. Part of the cost of technology is hiring techies. Don't fault lawyers for getting paid any more than you fault yourself for getting paid.

Re:Licensure does not Mean What You Might Think

[SirSlud]

> settling lawsuits (also known as ADR, Alternative Dispute Resolution) is a *good thing*

No it's not. It only means that trying to do the right thing (that is, figure out who really owns a patent and whether or not its valid) is more expensive than paying wallet-service to unsubstantiated claims.

If thats the pinnacle of achievement of the market based economy, count me out. Like how the IMF bailed everyone out of the Asian market crisis, nobody ends up learning anything, and stupidity is allowed to reign. Market based tactics always place the interests of the few (private interests, natch), above those of a soceity at large, which is why in this day of wealth-stroking penetance, the social costs of systems supporting private interests are huge. So long as you blindly stroke the market with your narrow minded rhetoric, it will continue to do so, instead of serving the broader social interests (ie, barrier to market, equality in market participation) that it was designed to do.

Money talks louder than Right. If you claim thats a good thing, you're too far gone to save.

Unusable legally?

[interiot]

Speaking of the BountyQuest prior art discovery:

• "It was never used in the case," says Joshua Kaplan, founder of InTouch. "The defendants didn't bring it up."

Simple answer: it wasn't viable as legal evidence in a court of law?

If It's broke don't fix it!

[Gopher971]

The US Government seems to have a very blinkered approach to patent reform. Blindfolded in fact.
However some of the cures seem worse than the disease. For Example:

Others are calling for more radical government reform. Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, argues Congress should exclude software from the patent system. "That," he says, "would really solve the problem."

or

"One reform is to require applicants to do prior art searches, as opposed to the current rule that they disclose what they know," he says. "The current rule allows them to wimp out by saying, 'We didn't know because we didn't search.'"

They do not tackle the underlying problem. The Patents system was never designed for software and code. Patent legislation and practice law has been distorted to accomodate them and this has led to "bad" patents.

If this can be resolved is up to FTC but going on past experience I wouldn't expect too much progress.

What can we honestly do?

[JohnDenver]

20,000 software patents a year...

That really bothers me. As a software developer, I've always aspired to make some really cool killer application, but I wonder how many infringments of obvious patents I would encounter if I attempted to do so.

So what am I going to do? Drive down to DC and hold up posters and distribute leaflets in front of the USPTO while the people who are taking advantage of the patent office laugh at me as they work on receiving thier government sanctioned monopoly on an IDEA???

Wait a minute... I thought we were capitalists. What's this crap about the government sanctioning monopolies? On ideas non-the-less.

I don't know about you guys, but I feel helpless in this situation. I grew up actually believing that this civilization was about real prosperiety and the creation of wealth.

I had one idea. I figured that with 20,000 some patents a year, we could assemble them and demonstrate how easy it is to infringe on obvious patents.

The way I would probably demonstrate this would be by writing a VB program in front of a group of people, much like the seminars. As I add features, I would tally the number of patents I infringed on.

Hell, you don't even have to show any code, just the natural evolution of ideas. Maybe as you're improving the software you could poll the audience for the next improvement and to thier surprise, they would discover thier obvious solution had been patented.

That's one idea, but it's fill with a ton of flaws. Ex: Who wants to watch me improve on a software program? Where am I going to do that? How am I even going to get people there?

I don't know about you guys, but I want to stop bitching about this and do something. The question is: What can I honestly do?

Re:Lawyers are all evil bastards

[ichimunki]

Market economy? Lawyers are a guild whose practice it is illegal to perform without joining the guild. That's an artificially restricted supply, hence not a free market. Try again.

Re:Goes to show, you can't be too cynical

[Jahf]

In my mind, the system that would work best is:

a) Plaintiff wins, legal fees covered by individual parties since the Plaintiff was shown to be "in the right".

b) Defendendant wins, all legal fees are covered by the plaintiff since they were responsible for bringing the suit to court and wasting everyone's time and money.

That way the defendant, who did not call the court to action, never has to pay for the often exorbitant plaintiff's legal fees. Additionally, plaintiffs have an incentive to only bring to trial issues that they are "in the right" on.

We'd still have problems, but far fewer lawsuits would be brought on just to threaten someone into submission.

Re:Goes to show, you can't be too cynical

[Animats]

Sure, it's farcical that the USPTO is funded through granting patents....

That's a good point. Maybe the issue fee ($1280) should be folded into the filing fee ($740).