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Companies Asked to Donate Unused Patents

Posted by Hemos on from the bring-out-yer-dead dept.

Radon360 writes "There are countless patents that are promising but sitting idle, stowed in the corporate file room. In fact, about 90 percent to 95 percent of all patents are idle. Countless patents sit unused when companies decide not to develop them into products. Now, not-for-profit groups and state governments are asking companies to donate dormant patents so they can be passed to local entrepreneurs who try to build businesses out of them. "

11 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Why donate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The whole goal of filing tons of patents you won't develop is to wait for someone else to do the work for you. If you donate the patent someone else will complete the work but you won't get to capitalize on their success. (as was I'm sure the original goal)

    1. Re:Why donate? by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      they could have enter sharing agreements with anybody willing, so they would split the money between the owner of the patent and the entity that actually does the work of implementing the patent.

      Or they could just sit on the patent and sue the entity that actually does the work and get all of the money.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  2. Hmmm by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is good. I was wondering what I was gonna do with my peanut-butter-powered horse launcher.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  3. Is this really a good idea? by J.R.+Random · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Take an old, dusty patent that isn't doing anyone any harm, and then give it to an entrepreneur who now has an incentive to sue anyone else whose product violates the patent.

    The only reason it's possible to do business in the United States at all is because 90% of patents are left lying in a drawer rather than being rigorously enforced.

  4. Invalidate them by simm1701 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to make patents only valid while the holder is actively exploiting them (ie using them to build the device in question - filing suits against anyone that looks like they might be using it shouldn't count) - allow a 3 year grace period between filing the patent and when they first start using it to cover developement to market window

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    1. Re:Invalidate them by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to make patents only valid while the holder is actively exploiting them

      Bingo!

      Let's be clear about this, for the benefit of the libertarians: patents (and other forms of protected IP, i.e. trademarks and copyrights) are government interference in the market. They are a form of government-granted monopoly which interfere with the normal operations of a free-market economy. As a matter of principle as well as practicality, this should only happen when the benefits clearly and greatly outweigh the costs -- "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts," as the Constitution defines the purpose of IP law. Granting government protection to unused patents clearly does nothing toward this end.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    2. Re:Invalidate them by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Doh! The USPTO already has a mechanism for this - maintainence fees. If you don't pony up $$$$$$ every few years the patent automatically expires. Companies, being greedy bastards don't maintain patents that they have no interest in. Which is probnably why this entire article and discussion thereof is stupid.

    3. Re:Invalidate them by PinkPanther · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Companies, being greedy bastards don't maintain patents that they have no interest in.

      Maybe small companies where the CEO or CFO are signing off directly on such expenses. But in larger corporations where "legal" is nothing more than a faint blip on the accounting radar, these types of decisions have been lost in the process.

      Who is going to go to all the trouble of tracking down which patents in the portfolio are actually not in use (and that would mean completely unused). In a large organization, tracking that down could be nearly impossible, especially when patents are coming from aquisitions, etc. The individual would have to have pretty good grasp of the technologies covered by the patent, the technologies used in all of the company's products (and those of its subsidiaries, etc...), have a good grasp of who in the organization "owns" the patent, the history behind its application, etc...

      This would be a daunting and expensive task. It may simply be cheaper to pay the annual renewal fees rather than (a) do the legal and technical research to know that the patent is truly unused, and (b) understand the risk that someone else (e.g. a competitor) could not use the patent against the company giving up the patent.

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      It's a simple matter of complex programming.
    4. Re:Invalidate them by DirePickle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The maintenance fees aren't really all that enormous, though. The first 11.5 years of maintenance total $3200. Also, the fact that 90-some percent of patents lay unused suggests to me that companies will, in fact, maintain patents that they have no interest in.

  5. Defensive Patents by diablovision · · Score: 4, Informative

    Many companies use patents defensively (or counter offensively). The company will patent technology or process X, though they may decide that it is better done internally with process Y. Or they may simply make the strategic decision that the effort and resources expended in pursuing profit in the patent are better spent pursuing something else. Nevertheless, the patent still has value to them because it gives them more options.

    1. It helps deter competitors from launching patent infringement lawsuits against them, because they have patents that can be used in a counter suit.
    2. It prevents competitors from utilizing the technology that they developed.
    3. It gives them business options that they would not otherwise have if they didn't have the rights to the patent.

    I doubt that most patents that are classified as being "unused" or "sitting around" still aren't providing some kind of value to the company that pursued them in the first place. It tends to be the nature of business that companies will look for ways to leverage their assets maximally. Besides, if the patents were valuable, the company would already have pursued licensing the technology to another person/company who can develop it into something viable.

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    120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
  6. Re:Tax break for donating patents by mpe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Perhaps giving companies a tax writeoff equal to the amount in revenues that a donated patent generates would work out.

    The original article mentions that tax breaks were actually stopped because they were abused.