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"Fair Trolls" To Fight Patents With Patents
FlorianMueller writes "Can a patent troll ever be fair? Yes. The primary concern over the upcoming Defensive Patent License — a GPL-like non-aggression pact for patents — is that it might be too defensive to have the desired impact. But actually the DPL could grow very big if one or more 'Fair Trolls' are brought to life and enforce patents against companies that don't support the DPL. The 'Fair Trolls' would commit to the DPL's terms, so they would have to leave other DPL backers alone. In exchange for this, the community would gladly feed them with patentable ideas (financial rewards for contributors included). Over time, staying outside the DPL alliance would become a costly choice for companies whose products might infringe patents. The bigger the DPL pool gets, the more valuable it becomes to its members. The more aggressive the Fair Trolls are, the better for the cause."
(something you know all about!)
This assumes that those with vested interests in for-profit patent prosecution can't get the laws changed.
There are some great things about this planet, but I'm occasionally stunned by the filth and villainy of some of its residents.
That this is the plot to "Colossus: The Forbin Project"; but with lawyers instead of ICBMs...
...software patent. So there can't be a thing called a fair patent troll regarding software.
Maybe on non software patents.
All software patents are acts of fraud and public deception.
Software is not of patentable matter
The benefit would be limited to non-aggression between DPL members. By agreeing to the terms of the DPL, they effectively accede to a multilateral non-aggression pact.
...
What's needed is at least one (ideally more than one) entity that will assert patents from the DPL pool very aggressively and systematically against entities who don't support the DPL. By acceding to the DPL once they are attacked, the pressured parties could limit the problem to backroyalties (paying for past infringement of the patents in question) because once they make their own patents available under the DPL, they will have access to the patents in the pool.
How is this not a cartel agreement?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The big rewards lately have gone to Non-practicing entities. Those with no products. AKA Patent Trolls.
This provides no relief against someone that has no products.
Work bio at MMWD
and in the darkness bind them?
Sounds like they’re taking a bunch of small trolls and defeating them with a mega-troll, but it’s okay because this one’s a nice troll. It’s our troll.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
So imagine you're a small-time inventor. You come up with something cool, which unfortunately infringes on a few common-sense patents that the DPL has pre-emptively snatched up (to keep them out of the hands of the actually evil trolls).
Do you have to commit your patent to the DPL to keep them from suing you? And in return, they'll give you a cut of the profits? That sounds...well, it's starting to sound evil. Less evil, but still evil.
... is derp.
Seriously. What the PTO needs to do is throw out any patent on a software implementation on anything. MPEG-4 for example.
Viva la GNU!
"There were seven and a hundred Trolls,
They were both ugly and grim,
A visit they would Justice make,
Both eat and drink with him.
Out then spake the tiniest Troll,
No bigger than an emmet was he,
Hither is come an honest man,
And manage him will I surelie..."
I think the idea is that the people in the DPL are "good" and so if you asked them, and told them about your project, and you were not some large corporation trying to steal their work, they would grant you use of it.
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
why doesn't someone patent the business plan of, buying up patents and suing companies when they try to actually produce it? then put all the trolls out of business?
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
The trolls don't need to license squat thus they won't be bothered by this. It is somewhat rare for the larger companies to beat tiny people up with their massive patent portfolios and that is why it makes the news. Even the "evil" microsoft has a massive patent portfolio and it is infrequent when they beat people up. The FAT patent nonsense is sort of odd for them. I suspect their marketing department is more responsible for the lawsuits than their legal department.
But patent trolls are just evil lawyers who don't need to cross license patents seeing that the only patent they might genuinely try to use would be a patent on ruining lives through the courts.
Except for real killer inventions most large companies patent the crap out of what they do for defensive purposes more than anything else.
A patent troll love affair where the only ones protected are other patent trolls. It's like all the wolves of the world unite to divide and concur the rest of us sheep. Makes me sick. TheWitness
There is no such thing as a fair gun. So there can't be such a thing as a fair gunfight. So I'll just bring this knife.
Um, yeah, here in the real world, we have software patents. Yes, I agree they suck. You are preaching to the choir here at Slashdot on that one, champ. Having to shoot someone in the head sucks too, but if I've got to do it, I'd like a gun, thank you very much. The other guy has one. You are asking us to bring a knife to a gunfight here. But you aren't even going to this gunfight, so sit down, relax, and open up a frosty can of shut the hell up.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No matter how good the intentions may be here, I just can't see how this system could wind up as a force of good. You want some sort of benevolent dictator wielding the axe of patent infringement over the heads of everyone as some sort of deterrence system. That seems ripe for abuse. A good system has no head to cut off and no central authority to be corrupted.
Even at it's best, it's still sort of a colluding of the powers that be.
If such a thing got going strong, one or more detractors might accuse it of being an anti-competitive practice. I'd be curious how that would play out in court.
Ah, but who trolls the fair trolls?
And as it gets bigger, the administrators start looking to pay themselves a salary with a small fee. And then it gets bigger. And then it pretty much turns into all of the other patent pools like the BluRay pool.
I feel like I'm trapped in a Samuel Beckett play.
As long as everyone gets one.
Why might I want an automatic weapon? Hunting my ass, that argument should never have been raised.
You just never know when you might need to kill a non-trivial number of people in rapid succession.
That is neither a jest nor a threat. The express purpose of the second amendment to the constitution can be found in any civics book when reading about the actions of the British Red Coats as an occupying force. This is actually true of virtually all of the bill of rights. The citizenry is _supposed_ to have the right to be individually at _least_ as well armed as any member of the government.
As for guns, its supposed to function as the voting right of last resort. There are always more citizens, and if it comes to it they have the right to oust the constabulary or the government if it gets out of control.
The constitution was, after all, written by a bunch of Revolutionary Idealists who, by definition believed in the right of popular revolt.
But then again yea, if only patent trolls are allowed to have guns then only criminals will be patent trolls or something... 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Sounds too much like racketeering to me.
This is pretty much exactly what the protagonist, Manfred Macx, does as he contributes to the Free Infrastructure Foundation (or something similar). The foundation exists just to hoard patents and then go after anyone who tries to hamper real innovation.
, no matter how cowardly he may be, will not fall for the virus falling over /. today!
Ah shit...
Wouldn't be better to make patents non-transferable and therefore only those who actually created them could enforce the patents?
Manfred Max would be proud.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Fight fire with fire. Nice, how about fixing the patent system instead.
If they want to protect inventions from patent monopolization, they'll just publish the invention with a declaration that it's in the public domain. Which prevents anyone from patenting it.
The rest of this posturing is nonsense.
--
make install -not war
The alternative is paying taxes to a government formed by We The People, to defend the Constitution. Since the current regime refuses to do that, such a benevolent organization of patent trolls would be the equivalent of that branch of the government charged with enforcing sound, Constitutional intellectual property. The agreement and/or whatever relatively modest means required to fund the organization would be like a tax.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The way to get participation is to offer the heart and blood of the enemy to eat and drink in a lust of carnage. This "patent commune" sounds too "milk toast" for that. We all know the road to hell is paved with pure souls and funded by good intentions.
The big rewards lately have gone to Non-practicing entities. Those with no products. AKA Patent Trolls.
Which is why IP law - not just patent law but also copyright (though possibly not trademark) needs to be completely rethought. Bandaid solutions aren't going to work for a system that sees the original inventor or creator of a work not rewarded AND others seeking to create or invent thwarted. The current system is madness and guarantees stagnation and corruption. This is the opposite to the stated goal of such law for the whole of society and the only ones seeking to uphold it and ever increase draconian punishments for failing to comply are profiteers who belong on the B ark.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Business methods and software and patent trolls don't matter anymore.
At this point, ideas are patents, not how they work. That is why there are so many patent trolls. If you had to actually design a specific device, it become a lot harder to patent troll and it's not nearly as cost effective.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes, it is evil.
The whole patent system is evil.
Until it can be abolished, any practical solution is going to involve 'getting your hands dirty' as the phrase goes.
The alternative, continuation of the status quo, is infinitely more evil.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Just set these people up with a huge portfolio of patents and they'll look after you. Yeah, right - would you like a bridge to go along with that?
This kind of deal is how trusts / cartels are born. It always sounds like a good idea at first, but once the combination is established it does what every other combination of this type has always done. Power corrupts, and the leaders of this cartel will have a large amount of power. They'll use it for their own benefit - not ours.
The patent system is meant to encourage innovation and knowledge sharing. Your system is designed as a means to socialize the patent system. By socializing the patent systems you eliminate the incentive to innovate and share knowledge. You might as well just eliminate patents.
And how long until the Patent Trolls buy off the Fair Trolls, especially when they are Major corporations withe billions of dollars to piss away on this?
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The way the US patent office works is that they check their data and any data that the submitter has provided. They aren't allowed to use search engines to find out if the thing had been done before since they would be leaking information out to the search engine provider. This means that the 1st software patent issued could have been for something very common if the patent office didn't have any reasonable documentation showing that it existed.
I think a solution to this problem (as it rolls into other countries) and the open source problem is a huge patent for "Processing information using a computer system" where everything anyone can think of is lumped in as a claim. Then the patent office will spend years knocking back every single claim and at the end of the process a patent may be issued with a few claims left but the patent office will then have lots of prior art on software patents. A good starting point would be to take The Art of Computer programming and add an useless extension to each algorithm in the books so as an example a claim could be done for "a method of sorting data about ice cream cones and other things by using a bubble sort"
We are the BORG! You will be assimilated
I think the idea is that the people in the DPL are "good" and so if you asked them, and told them about your project, and you were not some large corporation trying to steal their work, they would grant you use of it.
No, no... the idea is that you contribute your patent(s) to the DPL pool, but you can still use it -- just not against anyone else who has contributed all their patents to the pool. It's a defense pact that doesn't prohibit offense against those outside the walls, which gives everyone outside a huge incentive to come inside, especially as more people join and the set of patents they can collectively assert against you if you don't join becomes larger and larger.
If you invent something that infringes upon a patent, then yes, you need to license the mechanism from the patent owner. This is true whether DPL or not. Patent law is not a moral issue, its a legal one.
The lesser of two evils is still evil. However is it less evil. Absent patent reform, (go ahead, hold your breath, I dare you...), I think it is a good thing to have less evil. Fuck!
Social Credit would solve everything...
If I don't own a patent but infringe a dozen (i.e. I am a free software developer) what happens ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
no?
There is one reason that the NPE ("patent troll") business model has become increasingly popular: it works. It is also legal, and often helps protect independent inventors and SMEs from exploitation of their intellectual property by larger, more powerful entities. Notably, it is almost invariably such multinational corporations that complain most about NPEs -- because, before the latter became so prevalent, greedy corporations could more often infringe SMEs' IP with impunity. Although abuse of the system should be condemned, most so-called trolls do nothing worse than Wall Street traders, for instance. Like it or not, NPEs are here to stay. And that may be a good thing.
http://www.generalpatent.com/media/videos/patent-troll