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Startup Seeks To Preempt Patent Trolls
anaesthetica writes "The WSJ reports that a San Francisco startup is buying up patents with the promise never to assert them in order to help large corporations hedge against patent trolling firms. The company, RPX Corp, receives an annual fee in exchange for licensing the patents it has purchased. Cisco and IBM have already signed up for this service of 'defense patent aggregation.'"
By being one..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Company buys up all other patent trolls, seeks funds from major companies while saying "we don't use them against you (if you pay us), honest!"
News at 11.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Interesting business plan, I wonder if they patented it.
Won't this just encourage patent trolls?
As I see it, patent pools like this turn patent law against the patent trolls in much the same way that the GNU General Public License and other copyleft licenses turn copyright law against some publishers of proprietary software.
If they "won't assert their claims" then why do you need to buy a license from them?
A contract, such as the purchase of a patent, requires some sort of consideration in order to be binding. This consideration could be a token amount such as one dollar, or (more likely in this case) it could be only as much money as is needed to maintain the patent pool.
that's a nice military base you've got here...
"If for any reason you're not satisfied with our service, I hate you."
Plot^H^H^H^H History:
1. Government develops the concept of patents to protect the little, lone creator from amoral, robber industries - because even in groups, the creators have no defense against amoral industries. Government protection against business.
2. Developments soar - we're beyond the end-of-day-almost-off-air programming of the 60s that warned one day technology would double every year - technology doubles faster than we can measure.
3. Characters arise to be lionized and demonized in the tech age. They are given primary credit - in the mass mind (including on /.) - for their companies' successes and failures. Creation still in the hands of individuals, despite mass mindset.
4. Charlatans seize upon the opportunity, start trolling patents like crazy. It gets out of hand.
5. A business develops the patent-license-protection-clearinghouse to protect the large, rich businesses from the amoral, robber trolls' abuse of the law - because even in groups, corporations have no protection against the amoral trolls. Business protection against government.
If I invoke the name of Calculon does it help illustrate the point? It's a multi-year-long plot, very boring, very circular, and I'm calling it: Days of Our Patents.
I don't know about you guys, but I signed up decades ago to be a part of this thing called tech - not to become a forced extra in some asinine soap opera - which I fear we are all going to become part of, like it or not, know it or not.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
The best and cheapest defense against patent trolls is defensive publication.
Isn't this, like, the same thing... only cheaper?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If this isn't a wakeup call to Congress that our patent system is entirely and completely broken, I don't know what is.
Probably the only voices left saying that patents are OK belong to certain ''well funded'' politicians.
What you do is you have them sign a contract. The contract says thing like "You can never sue us." When you buy a company, you buy their obligations too. You don't get to say "Oh look, we are a new company so we can just ignore the contracts." Nope, you bought all that as well.
Remember: If you could get out of a contract with a sale, people could do this with houses. For example I buy a house, I sell it to you for a dollar. I then don't pay the mortgage. The bank comes to repossess the house and you say "It's my house, you can't take it, the contract is void because of the sale." No, not the case actually. Turns out if that mortgage isn't paid off, the bank gets to take the house (this is what title insurance is for, in case the sale is invalid). You can't just eliminate the contract like that.
So all companies have to do is make sure when they sell patents, it is done with a good contract. Then if a company buys it out, well then they'll be bound by the contracts too.
From TFA:
The company, called RPX Corp., buys up patents to keep them from firms that might use them as the basis of lawsuits or to press for licensing payments. Companies that pay a fixed annual fee receive licenses to the patents purchased by RPX...
(emphasis mine)
So they'll buy patents and try to sell you licenses to them, in order to prevent other firms from buying patents to try to sell you licenses to them?
Sounds to me like the only difference between this company and the nasty patent trolls is that they've embraced the One-Bill business model, a la Verizon. I wonder if that's patented...
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
OK, I wasn't convinced at first, but you won me over with your well-reasoned arguments.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."