Champerty and Other Common Law We Could Use Today

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 26, 2010 @07:17PM from the officious-intermeddling dept.

pevans writes "Over on Red Hat's Opensource.com I found this neat summary of a few old laws that could really help us today with the patent trolls. The article 'What's wrong with champerty?' is brief, but full of legal goodness that seems to have fallen by the wayside: 'Let's bring back barratry, maintenance, and champerty for patent lawsuits. Combine that with a limitation on the assignment of patents and a lot of patent trolls would be out of business. ...do patents have to be freely assignable? And why can't we prohibit a cause of action for patent infringement where there is no net gain to society?"

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Re:The patent system exists for aiding innovation by starbugs · 2010-01-26 19:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

Software patents stifle innovation.
Yet they are still around.
Many of us hate software patents. (myself included).
They limit what we can do, so we have to find innovative ways to avoid them.
Meanwhile we are happy when some large companies get bitten by patents.
Besides litigation, how do software patents benefit their holders?