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Patent Troll Attacks Cable, Digital TV Standards
DavidGarganta writes "A patent troll firm in suburban Philadelphia, Rembrandt IP Management, is trying to force large cable operators and major broadcasters to pay substantial license fees on the transmission of digital TV signals and Internet services. The firm is apparently trying to get 0.5% of all revenues from services that supposedly infringe on the patents. The targeted companies include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Charter and Cablevision. According to MultiChannel News, Rembrandt's assault is especially aggressive, even for a patent troll: 'It is attacking two key technology standards used by the cable and broadcast industries, CableLabs' DOCSIS and the Advanced Television Systems Committee's digital-TV spec. "If they're successful, this could affect everything from the cost of cable service to the price of TVs," said the attorney close to the litigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.'"
What the hell is a patent troll?
When I first read it I assumed it had something to do with internet trolling but the articles describes it as some sort of legitimate enterprise.
"I didn't go to Patent Troll medical school to be called 'Mister'."
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Havent they learnt anything from SCO and other Patent Trolls. It never works... but the again they have nothing else to do.
Aren't patents wonderful? Spreading innovation everywhere!
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
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Sooner or later, we'll save ourselves untold trouble if we vastly scale back the notion of Intellectual (imaginary) property to something relatively sensible.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The targeted companies include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Charter and Cablevision.
just look at the list of companies.
they may not get along with each other, but the last thing you want to do is force them to unite against a common enemy.
i think they just opened a can of woop-ass.
In their careers section they have the following description.
http://www.rembrandtip.com/careers.html
"
Analyze markets and companies to assess IP commercialization opportunities
Develop and model business cases and royalty analysis for specific licensing opportunities or industries
Perform competitive analysis breakdown and strategic direction of leading industry companies
Supporting analysis for new business opportunities around targeted patent acquisitions
"
Give me a freaken break! This company goes out looks at what are up and coming industries. Then it "creates" ideas and patents the heck out of them so that they can license and throttle an up and coming industry.
This is not even funny. Imagine coming up with some really cool idea, but to have it patented away from you. This is how industries are broken. Part of the problem with this is that lawyers can sue without restrictions. Lawyers can go fishing in the industry. They can patent, sue and see what sticks.
To make that go away, you can do the following:
1) Make lawyers work pro-bono (as they do in many countries). That is they can only charge so much.
2) Make lawyers pay if the lawsuit fails. For example, if say somebody brought up a lawsuit where they wanted 50 billion say, "if you loose you need to come up with say 1%". That way you can still sue, but you better have a good case. Otherwise it is going to cost you quite a bit.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The concept is called adverse possession. In real property someone can aquire possesion of abandoned property
by open and continous use. Now you wouldnt want someone becoming the new patent/copyright holder but the negative part
"extinguishing the rights of the prior holder" would make perfect sense and help deal with both the problems
of patent trolls and abandoned copyrights as well as legalizing abandonware.
If a reasonable person knows or should have known their patent or copyright was being infringed on and takes
no action within say 3 years, their patent or copyright becomes null and void. Also a system could be set up
to allow "notices of intended infringement" to be filed with the copyright office, if the copyright or patent
holder does not respond within the required time then the copyright or patent would lapse and the work
would go into the public domain.
I knew this girl from my college that worked at Rembrandt.
She explained that the way that these operations work is they hire students with slightly above rudimentary technical skills from the local universities in technical courses of study. Their "discovery" process simply entails these students trying to reverse engineer the mechanisms that they hold patents for. However, since they're not trying to actually build the device, they usually stop when they have a guess that suits their needs.
To put it bluntly, they do not really know; it is a wild guess, and hope that they can litigate it successfully.
I agree. What makes this troll particularly disgusting (for the benefit of the non-RTFA'ers) is that it is based upon patents originally owned by AT&T which had agreed to license the patents to all for Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The patents got bought up by this troll company which is now refusing to honor those terms. If this is allowed to stand, then no company can ever rely on FRAND as a business assurance. Any patented process could get sold to an IP management company and be fair game for extortion.
I propose two short-term fixes.
First, FRAND terms should be able to be added to the patent itself, either originally or through some amendment process. That way, if it gets bought or sold, the IP holding compnay has to adhere to the original terms.
Second, companies that are developing open standards should be allowed some kind of superpatent, where (presumably for higher fees) there is a public hearing at which the final standard is vetted, and challengers are given sufficient time to come forward with their own patents which may encumber upon the proposed open standard, and they can negotiate whatever terms are in their best interest, without restriction. Afterwards, though, if the superpatent is granted, no more challenges will be entertained. Anyone who finds a prior patent in their closet or falling out of their portfolio five or ten years hence will be out of luck.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
In Soviet Russia trolls patent you!
This sort of thing is good. Cable and media companies have a lot of muscle, and sooner or later, they are going to tire of this and demand that the patent system be changed so that there is some clarity.
A simple "enforce it or lose it" requirement, just like for trademarks, would eliminate a lot of this patent trolling.
Hey, what's not "Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND)" about 0.5% of all cable revenues?
I like both ideas, with the addition of some kind of compensation for the target of a baseless suit.
Unfortunately, it seems all of the candidates in the upcoming presidential election want to "fix" the problem by hiring more patent examiners. I know the argument is that with more examiners they can do a better job of researching the applications, but that's not where the system is broken.
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Always so friendly towards unnovation , I am proud of the patent system!
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
"Drawn to Invention"
There's got to be a joke somewhere in there...
And I hope the costs go up.
All the more reason for my to continue my non-TV watching, non-TV buying ways.
Let these monsters eat each other. I'm happy to be the rat watching the elephants dance from far away.
Work smarter, not harder, right? I'm just putting the finishing touches on my patent for respiration....
The Admin and the Engineer
This is exactly what we need at this moment. This might be the straw that broke the camel's back because with so many potentially affected, and with HDTV the new "standard", we are going to see a backlash not from a single company but an entire industry that is now being forced to pay ransom to stay in business thanks to that standard. The way I see it is that the FCC(and any other FCC-like organizations in other countries) will take a decent portion of the heat for forcing the industry to use a non-open standard, that will then put pressure on the USPTO to make some real reform. Where it goes from there is a bit cloudy but I suspect this will be enough to force the Supreme Court to rule on this type of behavior; after all, patents are supposed to promote innovation, not stifle it.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
I suspect that this is something they'd be likely to lose in court. Afterall, the court took Xerox's patent on
photocopying away, even though there was more effort in development and no trolling nor as obvious wide-ranging
impacts, just the monopolization intended by the system.
Were that I say, pancakes?
patents that are deemed harmful to competition
I think you can strike the words 'that' and 'deemed' from that sentance. The entire mechanism of patents is to prevent competition.
The only way to allow a competetive free market and still reward innovation beyond what the free market does is to have the patent office be the ones actually paying the patent holders (according to level of use, maximum payout, etc). Then we could have an actual useful debate about levels of financing, patent trolls would no longer be a problem for anyone and we'd have a whole lot of other issues automatically solved (such as having a system that actually promoted adoption of new and (theoretically) better products as they would no longer carry a patent-price penalty, increased dissemination rate, more rapid building on other technology, more readable patents, no more 'small inventor' troubles, etc, etc, etc).
...Bastard Sword of Troll Slaying +10
Third, the attorneys who pressed this action should be disbarred at the state and Federal
level immediately and permanently and be required to reimburse the victims from their
own personal funds.
Why didn't one of these companies buy the patent to begin with? It is not like they can't afford it.
Wouldn't that effectively remove the patent system? I mean
Inventer invents product
Corporation steals patent, and creates product
Inventor sues to protect patent
Patent is invalidated due to it being harmfull to competition....
The whole idea of patents is to forcefully remove competition for a limited time, to protect the inventors invested resources.
Besides this case isn't a problem, as far as I can see there are two outcomes:
A. They win the case, in which case their patent was violated and they rightfully deserve to win.
B. They loss, in which case the system works and we are all happy.
Something going to court isn't a problem, since that's where thinks should rightfully be desided. At least I much more trust a competant judge who's dedicated his life to desiding such matter, then alot of random slashdot posters who've just read an article and now think they know everything there is to know about the case.
It's time to kill software patents once and for all. This is not what the patent system was intended to do. There's no investment by the litigant, other than monetary. It's not like the company involved is offering any value to the TV broadcast industry. It's nothing but a tax, worse than a tax because at least your tax money has some return. What Rembrandt is doing is a legal extortion racket. In any other setting this would be a crime.
Gotcha capitalism at its finest. Sickening. Enough is enough already.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Why should someone who holds the patent get a percentage of revenue not generated by the patent? Even if they win the suit on the point of ownership, etc. There is no legal reason for broadcasters to pay a percentage of revenue they generate from the combination of all the technologies and content they use.
At most they should get a percentage of sales of the devices that use the patent directly.... not Ad revenue or other licensing revenue for syndicated shows, DVDs, etc.
What actual devices implement this patented technology?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
invalidates patents that are deemed harmful to competition
All patents are harmful to competition, some more than others.
it is based upon patents originally owned by AT&T which had agreed to license the patents to all for Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms
If so then it is likely the troll will be held to those terms in a court - provided they had notice of the license prior to purchasing from AT&T.
There is no reason to have to lard up patent agreements with contractual terms and worsen the problem at the USPTO with the already-overworked patent examiners (the reason that bad patents get through in the first place). You would just do this with a clause in the license or contract, where the licensee or the purchaser would agree to whatever the terms are that you say, and then also agree to include that exact clause in any downstream licensing or sale, the same as the GPL works. Anyway, the article is vague but seems to say that AT&T licensed the patent prior to its purchase by Rembrandt. That license is presumably still valid. If the license was revokable, then the licensee is stupid for relying on a revokable license for their whole business.
Analog TV is set to be turned off, rendering many TVs useless next year, unless a convert is purchased.
So instead of turning off Analog and going all digital, leave analog on until the patent expires.
I'm sure a lot or Analog TV owners will be happy.
Third, the attorneys who pressed this action should be disbarred
What about attorneys that represent people who committed crimes? That is even worse, should we disbar them as well? Perhaps we just pass a new law that applies to all lawsuits and criminal cases that says"
"Winning attorney gets to stay an attorney. Losing attorney must be disbarred"
That will teach the sorry bastids. After all, almost every attorney should be assumed evil and that only the "good guys" deserve an attorney. If we just get rid of all the attorney's that represent the bad guys, the world will be a better place. Right? Doesn't that sound fair?
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The article didn't give details regarding what patents are at issue. I went to PACER and searched for patent cases involving Rembrandt filed since January 1, 2007. Most of the cases were filed by Rembrandt Technologies, although one of them was filed by Motorola seeking declaratory judgment that it was not infringing on any valid claims owned by Rembrandt Technologies.
The complaints were not all the same, but here is the list of patents cited in the complaints:
An important question is whether it really matters whether Rembrandt Technologies hired the original inventors or not, or whether Rembrandt Technologies practices the inventions or not. Rembrandt Technologies purchased the patents and is trying to license, not practice the inventions, thus it is considered to be a patent troll. But, would it have been better had the original patent holder had been the one to file these suits?
The rights involved would not be any different, just the entity able to enforce those rights. If the original patent holder was a competitor of the defendants, then there would be more incentive to file these suits to stop competitors from practicing the invention altogether, rather than trying to obtain licensing fees. At least with a third-party patent holder, there is an incentive for the patent holder to license the patents broadly.
One way of looking at suits and transactions is that the original patent holder capitalized on the potential value of enforcing the patents by transferring those enforcement rights to a buyer willing to take on the enforcement risks. There are plenty of risks involved in enforcing patents (e.g., the cost of attorneys fees or the possibility that an adverse construction of the patent rights will destroy their enforcement value). Whether the original patent holder or a third-party takes on those risks changes who takes on those risks, but doesn't change the scope of the patents themselves.
- Manufacture a product, and use the patent to keep others out of the market. I call this the 'passive' method, since the patent is not directly used to make money, the manufacturing is.
- License a patent to someone else, earning royalties. I call this the 'active' method, since the patent 'property' itself is the source of the money (rental fees).
The first proposed short-term fix ignores the passive method, which is the traditional way patentees use patents. It penalizes the 'good guys', who are just trying to recoup R&D costs, etc. And since R&D costs are involved, cue the pharmaceutical companies. They would never go for mandatory licensing, so this 'fix' will never happen.Second, if someone is developing an open standard, it's for the benefit of the public, right? So just take open standards out of the allowable subject matter -- no patents at all on open standards, and everyone can use them right away. Otherwise they're not really 'open', are they? Or is that too radical a proposal?
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
A number of people are saying that this patent troll company will get its ass whooped because of the companies they are trying extort. Perhaps. But here's a rather more cynical view that I consider at least as likely. It has to do with the other end of the incentives -- profit and loss.
Most if not all the cable and media companies have a virtual monopoly on providing you service. Consider, how many of us have any choice in which cable provider to bring service to the home? So, what happens in this situation is that because the company can pretty much raise your rates or reduce your service by say, shifting channels currently on the cheap "Basic" bundle over to the pricier premium bundles. They can pretty much write their own profits. So now patent troll company comes and wants $X piece of the pie. As a cable provider, they'd look at the cost and risk of legal action vs. shelling out the money for a new agreement. Result: they just jack up rates for the consumer and pay off the extortionist, safely keeping the patent system alive for their own future interests.
We the consumers would see another jump in cable rates or some such service change, but there's not going to be a straw to break the patent camel's back on this one.
If patents are meant to make sure an inventor benefits from his original work, then why is it possible to change ownership of the patent to some other entity, say a corporation.
I propose to limit the ownership of a patent to the neural network that originally came up with the idea with no possibility to transfer to any other entity. Also the patent should immediately expire once the neural network that owns the patent has reached halting state.
I know I'm late here, but can someone check the ties of this company that is the patent troll? I'd be really curious to find out who is playing puppet behind them getting them to litigate in this case.
Are you familiar with the fact that patent litigation takes YEARS, and millions of dollars? Sometimes a legitimate company may only be able to afford a single lawsuit at one time. The patent office can already reject your application on the ground of prosecution laches, and the court can rule an issued patent unenforceable due to laches for unreasonable delay. Actively suing someone else isn't unreasonable delay, so it can take many years before a patent holder gets around to suing you. I don't have a cite for that exact proposition, but I recall reading it while doing legitimate legal research. Also, read Symbol II and Symbol IV.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
http://wwwfail.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uspto.gov%2Fimages%2Fuspto_seal.jpg
The companies who collect it from the customer (YOU & me)will need to collect more for the overhead. think 100% to 200%, so the acyual increase will be more like 1% to 2%. Adds up fast over 10s or 100s of millions of customers. Troll's investment in the research, marketing, and development? 0%, %0.00. Why is being a parasite encouraged?
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
It should be enough to stop patent trolls from being able to "buy" patents. Original inventor should be allowed to sell the patent just once, then the patent should become invalid if the new owner sold it again to someone else. Just fix the friggin patent system.
The real problem, aside from patents themselves, is that patent trolls are immune to retaliation. Think about it. They have complete immunity. John W. Campbell, the editor of Analog magazine in the 1960s and 1970s had an interesting take on immunity and corruption. The old saw has it that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Campbell suggested that was wrong, that it is not power that corrupts, but immunity: "immunity corrupts and absolute immunity corrupts absolutely." If I can do anything whatsoever that comes into my head, without there being any any chance of retribution, what is there to stop me? ... Nothing. Nothing at all.
... absolute corruption.
Unless some way is found to make patent trolls seriously liable to massive (and probably personal) financial retribution, they will continue to sink further into parasitism and corruption
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
From your post, it appears you don't understand what a patent is. A patent simply allows you to prevent anyone else exploiting your idea. There is nothing analogous to the idea of a derived work in a patent. If you file a patent on a machine, I can file a patent on an accessory for your machine with no problems. Manufacturing the accessory may require licensing both patents, but you have no control over who I license my patent to. If you allow everyone to use your patent, they may still need to license mine for some things. You can not license your patent in such a way that prevents me from charging whatever I want from my patent unless I am manufacturing something that infringes your patent (in which case I need to license your patent, and you can make licensing my patent a requirement on that).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Because that .5% will be passed along to we subscribers as a 5% bump. An excuse is an excuse but I'm a little interested that they're now attacking DOCSIS since my cable modem has been using it for almost a decade now.
They would never go for mandatory licensing, so this 'fix' will never happen.
True, but I wasn't talking about mandatory licensing. Simply the *ability* for companies to codify "FRAND" into the patent app if they wish, so that someone can't come along later on and attempt to weasel their way out of the contract, leaving an entire industry on the hook, as we see happening here. I'm not saying "FRAND" should be required in those cases where the patent developer has no intention of offering it. Except possibly for "open standards" (see below).
no patents at all on open standards
I think we're basically in agreement here, but just to clarify: Say Alice invents a technology which, as things turn out, winds up being of importance to an entire industry. Now Bob and a bunch of other investors decide they want to use Alice's technology. Does Bob's consortium then get to make up an "open standard" which conveniently tramples on Alice's patent, leaving her uncompensated? I would be against that. I think at the very least, there still needs to be a hearing at which time Alice can attempt to contravene the "open standard" designation. That's really all I'm saying. There should be a reasonable window for the original patent holder(s) to exercise an absolute right to disallow an infringing open standard, but if he, she or they fail to act during that window, the patent should thenceforth be unenforceable with respect to that standard. I agree that the best course at that point would be for the open standard to be entirely without encumbrances, but if that is too much, then at least FRAND should be built into it, as a matter of public policy and not merely contract law (as another poster suggested).
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
To be allowed to sue for patent infringement, you should be required to be using the patent yourself, or have valid licensees of it from the time it was granted, if not filed. If you're not using it, you have no rights to stop anyone else from using it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"If they're successful, this could affect everything from the cost of cable service to the price of TVs," said the attorney close to the litigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity."
.50 BMG rounds for all fortune 500 companies.
I would like to point out, that in America when cable was first offered to the public, the ONLY purpose of buying it was so that you can watch TV WITHOUT commercial interruption. Else, it was the typical bunny ears with tinfoil wrapped around them, watching General Hospital on ABC or was it CBS, and have to watch a commercial every five minutes or so.
I think it happened in or around this order....
MTV proved to attract quite the audience, but most importantly, impressionable young soon-to-be Consumers. Marketing types, shall focus in on this, "untapped" market... or rather, the bucket for which they might shoot the fish; made of gold, with complimentary
MTV used to play music videos, as might be suggested by the name. Then came the trends focusing on teen appeal; the first commercials on MTV were Noxima commercials and they even used one of the female VJs.
As MTV was being raped by Capitalism, not to mention the Musicians and Artists--as by this time, it's been established that if a band can get a video to be played on MTV, they are as good as gold--other major networks soon followed suit.
HBO trying so hard to maintain the original concept, of a Home Box Office (hence the HBO), first resorted to in-house production, heavily laden with product placement or other dung such as plots or lines conforming tightly with social trends; like anti-racist tears, or commie-bastard themes...
Then with the marketers pouring so much money into Cable Television, a market they would have loved to defeat for many reasons, let alone the fact that it was a product that freed the Consumer from Advertisements to begin with, Cable television exploded.
Advertisers were SO ADAMANT in penetrating cable television, they did everything from attempt to bankrupt the networks (by means of connections, such as getting buddy buddy with the utilities companies--gas, electricity, phone--and all sorts of other avenues) to outright attempting to sue them for not allowing them slots for their commercials. Forcing the cable television networks to start airing commercials in disregard of the fact that the Consumers were paying for the service, and had expectations of what their product received would be.
Now, this might shed pity upon the cable television networks. And maybe it should. However, for those who still might wonder how this "hurts" the consumer...
Cost of Cable Television, and considering inflation, has only gotten more expensive; it never got cheaper, and that's likely by demand of the Advertisers who insist that if a Consumer has to pay for something, they'll take it more seriously.
So there is something amuck with the whole OP, as when I hear Attorneys blabber stuff like what I quoted... what garbage to fool the Consumer into a reason to jack up the price of Cable Television. When, the fact is, they make so much money from the Advertisers, they can afford to revamp their entire infrastructure twenty times and still come out heads over toes all the while giving it out for free to all those who might have a coaxial jack in their house, outhouse, doghouse or whateverhouse.
And where would the extra money go to; if they do raise prices under this false pretense? Who the fuck knows; but what I do know, who it will go to you probably didn't vote for.
One other thought, Marshall Texas needs to be completely wiped off the map.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Long-term, though, I believe that "any patent that covers part of a formal industry standard cannot be used to sue people for adhering to that standard" is the best option for this particular problem.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Just a thought that occurred to me. In *some* (probably not all) way, patent trolls might be helping open source software. The reasoning is this. Patents are currently used in two main ways: 1) by big corporations trying to shut out competition from smaller companies (or OSS projects) 2) by trolls trying to make money off the big corporations. Considering that the laws in most countries are mainly bought for by the big corporations, we'll be stuck with patents for as long as 1) is worth more to the big players than 2) costs them. So I'd say the more trolls, the likelier it is we'll get rid of software patents. Example: see how the whole mess around the Blackberries has helped convince people that giving out injunctions right away is bad?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Ha!
The US should have gone with DVB-T(and S/C variants), with its international and widely-supported set of associated standards (and yes, well known and recognised patents in various countries).
But no, they had to be Different and Special. Cooking up their own, home grown standard to use, incompatible with just about all of the rest of the world, leaving themselves wide open to crap like this.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The analog to digital switchover only affects over the air transmission. TVs connected to cable systems or coming through satellite services will keep getting their programming.
What if I were to patent "patent trolling"? Could I sue Rembrandt?
-Troll, Flamebait, and Offtopic are NOT equivalent to disagreement.
What's happened now is this: One company, AT&T, apparently offered certain favorable terms essentially gratis to anyone who wanted to use their technology.
This encumbered the patents to the extent others relied on that.
All these other companies RELIED on that to run their businesses.
These other companies made their entire businesses based on that offer.
The litigation will consider whether you can "take it back" or not.
I would say no, you can't "take it back".
It's not really fair for Rembrandtip to come back and want to change the terms of the offer, saying "I own the patent now, and I want more".
This after millions had been spent developing the technology by perhaps dozens of companies. Hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment made and sold in reliance on AT&T's offer.
In the case of the ATSC broadcast technology the federal government has now forced *everyone* to go to that technology.
They wouldn't have done that if the technology somehow was unavailable.
And Rembrandtip would not have bought and paid for those patents if they were essentially encumbered by AT&T offering those favorable terms to all comers, years ago. That's Rembrandtip's argument. That they are not bound by AT&T's offer. I would guess they are bound by it.
I am hoping Rembrandtip got screwed on those patents, and they are not worth much at all since AT&T essentially gave them all away and others relied on that fact.
That is what will be litigated.
.
They can't. The analog bands were partially sold in the most recent FCC auction. Someone else owns them as of like 2010 or something.
but for patent trolls, who have created NOTHING and who bring NOTHING to the table, I'd make an exception.
Fuck 'em where they breathe...
These carrion feeders, these disgusting example of oozing, sporing fecal matter need to be utterly and absolutely stamped the fuck out.
I think that they deserve the same fate as Derle.
I can't think of a term low enough for them.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
What's wrong with a firm specializing in buying patents from inventors, and then enforcing them?
There's a widespread belief that the USPO gives out patents too easily for "obvious" patents, hence gratuitous comments that "patent trolls" can make it impossible for enthusiastic entrepreneurs to do business in a growing area. But pish: the complaint is against bogus patents, not whether a private inventor brought the case or whether a hired gun took on the risk (and the healthy reward) of doing it for him.
These discussions seem ignorant of real inventors whose work was stolen, and for whom high-powered attorneys would've been a godsend.
One such is the inventor (Robt Kearns) who was unable to interest Ford Motor in his interval windshield wiper design, then found them using the technology a few years later. Seventeen years in the courts, more than most of us could hold up without substantial financial backing. Indeed, his victory was hollow; news accounts show him as having gotten divorced and otherwise overwhelmed by Ford's (and Chrysler's) theft of his work. Alzheimer's eventually forced him to stop his efforts to be paid for his ideas.
Another famous example is Edwin Armstrong vs. RCA over Armstrong's invention of FM; he committed suicide in despair of gaining his fair recognition and it took his wife several years to finally prevail in the courts. Armstrong's other cases went to the Supreme Court, where his case for the super-regen circuitry is generally perceived as having been misunderstood by the Court. (A fabulously talented engineer, he also invented the Superhetrodyne receiver that is the basis for ALL AM, FM and TV circuits. Still.)
These men clearly and importantly advanced the state of engineering in their days (and ours!) yet had a Hell of a time getting compensated for their prodigious efforts, and in some cases, huge engineering expenses. Those who would throw out all patents, or individuals' rights to assign their patents to others, should explain why we don't need to encourage people like Kearns and Armstrong.
Should we just have all the developments be done by big corporations, or contract our entire country to China & India?
Another would be
"Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
Sure; all correct; I was responding to the parent post's idea that there should be licenses and contracts somehow attached to patents. No need to claim I don't know what a patent is.
patent trolls ARE providing a service. By purchasing patents, these patent trolls provide a market for patents which puts money in the hands of small time inventors, who don't have the resources to commercialize their inventions
You are outright "WRONG".
Patent TROLLS do not provide the service of "commercializing" patents. Patent trolls put no more money in the hands of inventors because they buy up patents that have, already proven technological worth because they are already included in technology. That's the TROLL's leverage. If the patent didn't already have proven or provable worth, the TROLL wouldn't have ever have been interested in the patent. Your fantasy that TROLLS help inventors commercialize anything is just that: a *fantasy*. Get over it.
The problem is *both* the patent system, AND those who abuse the system (TROLLS and those who use patents to put other companies out-of-business).
It's one thing to award a patent as a reward for inventing something and to give the inventor a reasonable time to obtain compensation for their ingenuity. It's patent abuse to use them for most other purposes.
Stop claiming patent and copyright bogosity protects or rewards "the little guy", the garage inventor or a garage band. It's the corporations and trolls who benefit -- and they benefit WAY too much.
Sorry if my tone is harsh, but abusive corporations need to be STOPPED. At the very least, they need to have their "personhood" status revoked. Inventors & creators should be rewarded to encourage them to continue in order to benefit society -- that's was the entire point of exclusive licenses (patents and copyrights). They've gone way beyond that intent, to the point that entire artificial markets have been created solely to manage these non-physical, "Intellectual Properties". It is a drain on society, benefiting society very little, but hurting society forever into the future by limiting, draining and destroying resources that could have been used to benefit society in NEW ways, rather than by researching new ways to extract money from older patents and copyrights.
No one of this generation really cares because they'll all be dead, but all the resources we waste in pointless legal wrangling and warring will end up costing humanity dearly in future decades and centuries. It's all so much a waste!
I salute you, sir!
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Since the Australian National Patent Troll recently won a patent battle on OFDM (which DVB-T uses), going with DVB-T wouldn't have worked. Not to mention that the switch to 8Mhz channels vice the 6Mhz channels US analog broadcasting uses would have been much more disruptive.
(never mind that OFDM was invented in the 1960s and that CSIROs patent claims were limited to "above 10Ghz", the courts didn't care)