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World's Largest Patent Troll Fires First Salvo
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Yesterday the biggest software patent troll of all finally woke from its slumbers: Intellectual Ventures filed patent infringement complaints in the US District Court of Delaware against companies in the software security, DRAM and Flash memory, and field-programmable gate array industries. Intellectual Ventures was co-founded by Microsoft's former CTO Nathan Myhrvold, with others from Intel and a Seattle-based law firm." We discussed IV's potential for patent trollery last spring.
Good, I think. Hopefully this will finally cause big companies to fight to get rid of software patents and patent troll companies as a whole.
You've been troll'd!
You've been troll'd!
Have a nice day!
Troll'd
They'll "let" other people use them.... and then sue them. Without even looking at it, I'm sure some of the patents are so broad I'm violating one by breathing.
Well, the original Slashdot article linked in TFS indicates that "it doesn't actually use these patents – except to threaten people with. In other words, Intellectual Ventures is a patent troll". They only license their patent portfolio. Expect this to basically be a shakedown.
Man, I hate that a company can exist just to own patents and sue people.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, it's not good directly, but if the big companies start getting hit by patent attacks, then we might soon see absurd patent laws and approvals get an overdue overhaul. Previously, they've seemed like an advantage to the big players because they form a barrier to entry that keeps out new competition. The big players have armouries of patents and, much like nuclear weapons are supposed to protect through a principle of MAD, they didn't use them on each other much. But it seems there is rampant proliferation and we're seeing patent fights between big players erupt despite this (e.g. Nokia and Apple). So maybe disillusionment with them will creep in. And unlike nuclear weapons, disarmament is simple - big companies can't advocate for a change in the laws of Physics, but changes in the laws of the land, they can do.
Maybe it's optimistic. Maybe it will all settle down into a cartel and the patent threat to small players will remain. But if the patent trolls are greedy enough to really take a bite out of the hand that feeds them, perhaps not.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Will IV allow licensing of their patent portfolio, or will they do like a lot of companies, just get patents so nobody else can use them?
Well, from their their website they list all their "products" and services:
The first bullet appears to answer your question that yes, they do. But when you say "patent portfolio" I don't think you'll find anyone with enough cash to access to the whole portfolio, most likely it's one license to one patent at a time. I think their big "product" is providing a service to liquidate your patent very easily (like a pawn shop for patents) so far. This salvo may change that.
My work here is dung.
Corporate leeches like this are why American capitalism is in the toilet.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Good, I think. Hopefully this will finally cause big companies to fight to get rid of software patents and patent troll companies as a whole.
Actually, the response has not been to rid the world of software patents as you so hoped and the threat of Intellectual Ventures has long been affecting companies. From the article:
The threat posed by Intellectual Ventures helped prompt the rise of firms like RPX Corp. It is paid by companies to buy up potentially threatening patents; the companies receive licenses to those patents, and RPX pledges never to sue over them.
Think about that for a second. The system for software patents is so screwed up and backwards that it's cheaper to pay someone to buy up a patent and promise to never sue over it than it is for you to build a patent war chest and wait for the big one to hit. It's like patent insurance. Easily the most interesting thing in the article to me. Unfortunately this shows tolerance and a way to move forward.
My work here is dung.
My biggest gripe about patents is that they're kind of like legal blackmail. "Pay me money or I'll ruin your company in a large number of frivolous lawsuits." Patents were originally intended to protect inventors, but companies like IV have provided an evil twist.
I thought the justification for continuing tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans was that it would help the economy, because investment would trickle down through innovation / job creation. Here is a wonderful counter point to that argument.
If we want to entice the wealthy to use money to create jobs, why don't tie their rewards directly to job creation? These people are actually killing the economy and making people poor by creating a money-sink in the economy where no value is added. They are not only hurting these big companies with their greed, they are helping to force a divide in wealth distribution and indirectly making real people go hungry.
The article states that Intel is one of the investors of Intellectual Ventures. The article also says that one of the lawsuits was filed against McAfee, which Intel recently bought. So in this case, Intel is hiring someone else to sue itself - it would be much easier to hold an employee venting day if that's all they wanted to do.
They only license their patent portfolio.
Oh, how I wish that was all that they did. As you can see from their site:
Intellectual Ventures has been actively inventing since August 2003. The company has filed thousands of patent applications in more than 50 technology areas and has thousands of ideas under consideration.
Since 2003 they have been gumming up the USPTO as well. Note that they've filed thousands of patent applications. No mention of how many were issued. It's entirely possible that they were issued to the actual people working at IV and not to IV but a search shows nine patents issued to IV on the USPTO.
So remember the TED Laser Mosquito/Malaria technology? That's just a patent waiting to be issued then licensed but until then I wouldn't recommend building any.
My work here is dung.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/10/1651236
You make two mistakes in asking what /. thinks are the correct answers. One is assuming that Slashdot has a group mind, the second is that the most vocal are the most representative. But with those caveats:
Sure, you could sell your patent if that's the best way of capitalising on it. But whether that's good or bad depends on other factors - mainly the validity of your patent. If you just patented an idea that would likely occur to other people and sat on it until someone else did think of it and then sued over it... That would be bad. You've contributed nothing and caused a destructive effect. If you were an independent research chemist who came up with an innovative new process after much testing and it's far from obvious, then by all means approach another company and sell or licence your patent. But you see the difference between the two examples is not whether or not the patent has been sold. It's whether the patent has been originally awarded to someone or some group that actually added to society with their original contribution. What companies like this do, is file as many stupid obvious or natural ideas as they can and then look for someone else to independently stumble into the same area before pouncing.
The answer to the question of whether you have the right to sell the patent, is actually more, do you have the right to a patent. I.e. did you come up with something genuinely original, either through your unique genius or more likely careful testing and research, that has added to society's capability, or did you write down "a website could have a 'one-click' button that lets you buy things" and wait for someone to implement it.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Imaginary property like patents and copyright always consolidates power over information into the hands of the few. They do not protect the creators, they make ideas a commodity to be traded.
Great Intellect...
Below are links to background info, but keep in mind that trolls create a tax, but they're not the big problem. They're generally not the patent holders that break standards or exclude free software projects. They're just after money, so they are parasites to the rich. The MPEG-LA patents, for example, are much more harmful (they blocked HTML5 from including a standard video format) and are held by "real" software companies.
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help welcome.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
And even if you aren't, you just gave someone a foul idea.
I have no problem with what IBM does. They are a practicing entity which is directly opposite of what IV does. The difference is that a high rate of IBM's patents are granted. This is proper use of the patent system because IBM then makes those products.
I suspect Intellectual Ventures spends a nice chunk of it's money on forcing patents through the system. Thousands of patents that evidently have little business being patents. But their legion of lawyers persists pushing these patents and revisioning them. Yes, they pay thousands of dollars on each patent to do this but this is an abuse of the patent system if they do this just because they have money.
Imagine if this first salvo results in hundreds of millions of dollars going to IV. Then what? Then that money goes into putting more strain on the USPTO and more lawyers are hired to push unwarranted patents through the system. Then those win more suits and more lawyers are hired in a classic breeder model of lawyer propagation. If my calculations are correct, by the year 2054 the Earth will be a mass of patent lawyers expanding outward at the speed of light only to eventually collapse back in on itself causing a "Big Crunch" and ending the universe until the next big bang. Intellectual Ventures must be stopped (with apologies to Stanislaw Lem).
But seriously, the two are totally different in that one produces and one sues.
My work here is dung.
Again the difference is in the production. Universities, colleges and research labs still produce things. IV does not. They file patents based on "ideas' (as opposed to something they've developed - which makes me wonder if every patent they file shouldn't violate the whole "you can't patent obvious things" rule) and sit on patents they've purchased. No original research and development goes on there - they are lawyers, not creators.
As for your questions - yes, companies that develop something and choose not to pursue the technology have to eat the cost of R&D. Alternatively they can attempt to sell it to another company which will use it to defray the costs, but they key test, in my mind, should be active usage of the patent. If you patent something which is completely useless but which someone takes and makes obscenely useful and profitable ten years down the road I have no moral objection to saying nuts to you. Same goes for bankrupt companies. If someone purchases it with the intent of using it within the next - lets say five years - then that's fine. But to purchase and sit on it until someone else makes a killing off it? Nope - sorry, you had your chance. Now its someone else's turn.
She's already been reported to Anonymous as the lead prosecutor in the Assange case. She will feel my love yet.
My work here is dung.
Man, I hate that a company can exist just to own patents and sue people.
Under the current patent system, this company type is likely to be the most profitable. By not actually utilising any patents, they are free from any claims of patent infringement. This means that all of those companies which have built up huge patent war chests with the aim of a "mutually assured destruction" if they are ever sued suddenly become vulnerable. There is no "patent war" defense against a company that doesn't make anything. If you don't make anything, you can't be countersued. From a business perspective it's an awesome idea. If Nokia were to set up an independent legal entity and assign ownership of their patents to that entity, that legal entity could then sue Apple without any fear of being countersued. Apple could do the same. I'm surprised we haven't seen any large companies doing this earlier, but if IV is successful, I bet we'll see a lot more of this company type in the future.
Intellectual Vultures
The normal practice in these sorts of things is to "sell" the asset off into a shell company which racks up the lawyer debt, if they win they pay some insane percentage to the parent company as residuals, if they lose there are no assets to come back on for the counter party lawyers fees or any countersuit.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Even if there is, do you go to the patent office every time you do something obvious just to check whether the idiots granted a patent on it without having a clue just that they just patented the equivalent of the wheel?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.