Slashdot Mirror
When Patents Attack — the NPR Version
fermion writes "This American Life is running a story this week on Intellectual Ventures, a firm some consider the leader of the patent trolls. The story delves into the origins of the term patent troll and the rise of the patent troll industry. Much time is spent presenting Intellectual Ventures both as a patent troll firm and a legitimate business that allows helpless inventors to monetize patents. It is stipulated that Intellectual Ventures does not in fact sue anyone. It is also alleged that Intellectual Ventures creates many shell companies, presumably to hide such activity. Intellectual Ventures is compared to a Mafia protection racket that may never actually burn down a business that does not pay the dues, but does encourage such burning to occur."
But it would be nice to, at least in theory, RTFA. Is it just me or do I have to wait until Sunday at 7:00 PM (timezone unknown) to download the MP3 and LTFA.
Or should I just whine about how bad patent trolls are without benefit of absorbing any new material? It's not like we haven't been down this road before.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
While much of the slashdot community is aware of the insanity the way software patents work, this show does a pretty good job of explaining the process for the uninitiated. I tried to explain the problems associated with software patents to my girlfriend last week and she could barely believe how screwed software patents are. Thanks to NPR, I can send her to a more clear and thorough explanation than I was able to give.
Hopefully this helps to convince non-technical Americans that patents should rarely, if ever be awarded for software.
Facts have a liberal bias.
I listened to the whole thing live streaming from my NPR station. I was interested to hear that almost everything considered "common knowledge" here on Slashdot held up under their scrutiny. They visited a company that makes software to find duplicate patents, and they said that about 30% of patents granted are duplicates of the same idea. They also said that the one case Intellectual Ventures gives as their "poster child" of an "inventor whose idea was being used illegally until IV came along" actually had over 5500 duplicates granted in the same time frame (nevermind all the prior art that existed). That one patent, by the way, was traced to a patent troll company that is obligated to give Intellectual Ventures a cut of their revenue from it...and the creator of the patent is trying to sue them, IIRC. So much for "encouraging innovation by helping poor inventors".
Another interesting statistic is that they cited polls claiming that 80% of software engineers say patents hurt their business and creativity. I know we've been repeating this to each other for years, but it's nice to see it backed up every now and then.
Yeah, the guy from Intellectual Ventures said there were two cases, TWO CASES out of their 35,000 patents, that had actually been licensed to manufacturers. And he couldn't even remember what industry they were involved in, much less which patents. When their entire spiel is that they "take languishing ideas and put them to good use", that is a pretty piss poor record.
No, because the public will never be able to spend as much on bribery/lobbying as most large corporations.
In the case of software patents the lobby in favor of them isn't really the corporations. It's the lawyers.
Think about it: If software patents went away tomorrow, Microsoft et al wouldn't be able to collect patent license fees anymore, but neither would they have to pay them out. For most companies it comes out as a wash, give or take. And if software patents went away, none of those companies would have to continue paying their armies of patent lawyers, which would save them each millions of dollars.
But that would put all of those software patent lawyers out of business, so it is the lawyers who supply the driving force behind the status quo. What confuses people is that they frequently hear corporate lawyers advocating software patents and assume that they take that position in the interest of their employer rather than their occupation.
Excuse me, Sir, I happen to represent the local honorable family in legal matters. Please refrain from comparing a traditional family mafia business with patent trolling. It besmirches the good name of the mafia. My client would be very grateful for that, if you know what I mean.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.