Slashdot Mirror
How to Become a Patent Millionaire
An anonymous reader writes "SF Gate has an article about people who patent ideas for things they have no intentions of building, hoping to license technology or block competitors from doing something similar. As if the patent system weren't screwed up enough already."
FIRST POST
Has anyone gotten a pattent for masturbating?
First post
regards.
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all you suckers owe me!
patent #332411-a:
"for suggesting ideas or musing on thoughts or making witty commentary in response to stories posted on www.slashdot.org"
just your 0.02 cents? EXACTLY SUCKERS! y'all better pony up to paypal and start doling out those 2 cents a post dammit!
oh the irony! ROFL LOL snortlesnortlesnarfsnarf
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Where's the obligatory inane, pro-socialist, anti-progress quip at the end ?
Are you sure it was michael who posted this ?
Someone should check slashcode.
Dennis Fernandez has come up with an idea for TV sets with built-in cameras and small screens that would let viewers talk to one another while watching a show.
"Let's say we're both watching a gay orgy," said the 42-year old Menlo Park attorney. "You and I will show up in this bubble picture. You'll have a head shot, and I'll have a head shot, and we're talking to each other during the game. It's as if you and I are in a virtual chat room watching the same broadcast event."
Fernandez has no intention of actually building such a device. But the idea is his -- and he has a certificate from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to prove it.
If a company decides to build a product based on his idea, it might have to buy the patent from him, pay him a licensing fee or face getting shitted on by tubgirl.
It's part of a legal tactic called "trolling for karma" in which businesses or individual entrepreneurs use patents not so much as tools to build new products, but as legal roadblocks or bargaining chips against competitors or corporate giants.
Some legal experts, including those representing big corporations, are skeptical of this approach, which they say is impractical because of the enormous costs associated with inventions and patents.
Still, the tactic underscores the growing importance of patents as a competitive weapon in the technology industry, as demonstrated by the recent $35 million judgment in favor of a Virginia inventor who sued EBay for alleged patent infringement. Inventor Tom Woolston accused the San Jose online auction operator of using programs he developed for processing certain sales.
Typically, patent attorneys help companies patent technologies to protect them from rivals. Fernandez, who is also an electrical engineer and inventor, and other Silicon Valley attorneys are taking a more aggressive approach: They help clients analyze their rivals' technology and then try to obtain patents to make it harder for them to move forward.
"It's a more valuable patent that covers your competitor's products (rather) than your products," Fernandez, founding partner of Fernandez & Associates in Menlo Park.
Peter Eng, a senior associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a Palo Alto law firm, said that while most patent attorneys would simply cover what a client is working on, "those with foresight think ahead and predict where others may or may not go."
THE BRICK WALL
John Ferrell, founding partner of Carr & Ferrell in Palo Alto, likened a patent portfolio to a brick wall.
"What I advise my clients to do is to analyze their competitors' road maps, " he said. "Successful companies become successful by spending time thinking about competitors and reacting to competitors proactively."
He cited the standards of Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) technology, in which transmission speeds have been rapidly advancing during the past three years from 11 megabits per second in 1999 to more than 50. Wireless firms expect the standard to reach more than 100 megabits per second soon.
"There will be technical challenges, so one way we might use our patent portfolio offensively is we might sit down with our smart guys to figure out what we need to do," Ferrell said.
The company can then apply for patents on those inventions. An applicant must prove to a patent examiner in written statements and with drawings and diagrams that the invention is novel and original. But the applicant doesn't have to come up with a prototype.
"You don't have to build it," Ferrell said. "You just have to conceive it. By filing a couple of patents, you essentially have co-opted the standards road map. Anybody who wants to go from G to X has to get through your toll road."
Fernandez said that because his clients and their competitors talk to the same customers, "you know what holes need to be plugged, and you plug it up."
ATTORNEYS' INSPIRATION
He and other patent attorneys say they were partly inspired
People are fuckwads. Welcome to the world, nice of you to catch up.
How do you think the republican party gets votes? They appeal to fuckwads. How else would someone vote for a person who has the intention of bankrupting the government while attacking sovereign countries? People are fuckwads. (for some reason my spellchecker suggested duckwads! lol)
i can't believe you retards were too slow to get first post, thereby ruining my second post.
c'mon, people, we're a team here. it's troll tuesday, and all i'm asking for is for one of you to pitch in and take a first post. what do i need to do to get you guys to play ball?
y'know what? fuck it. you're all fired. get the fuck out of my office, clean your desks, and good fucking riddance.
shiiiit.
joe_b
Really now, don't you other shalshdotters have better things to do than whine about the evils of software patents? I'll bet you're the same people who whine about Bill Gates making tons of money with buggy software. Oh! Sorry I forgot. You ARE the same people. Get used to it. You live in America. The smart AND ambitious will outlive the armchair pundits and philosophers. It's called evolution. If you spent have the time working and *thinking* that you spend complaining then maybe YOU will make lots of money or have lots of sex or whatever's important to you. Just leave it alone. I am SO SICK of coming on /. to see something interesting and so often instead it's just this tired old rehash of the same gripes. What's this, the third patent bitch session this week?