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Nortel Patent Sale Gets DoJ Review
gavron writes "The US Department of Justice will review the Nortel patent sale to the entity formed by Apple, Microsoft, and others. This is the same sale that the Canadian authorities declined to review because the $4B+ deal was valued by them at less than $328M. According to a (paywalled) Wall Street Journal report, 'The Justice Department wants to know whether [the consortium] intends to use them defensively to deter patent lawsuits against its members, or offensively against rivals.'"
How are either offensive or defensive patents better than the other really? They both make a joke of the patent system. The question should be: do they intend to use them to innovate or not? Isn't that the reason we have patents?
Buying defensive patents is, IMHO, worse than buying submarine patents and suing someone. I mean business-wise. You are spending millions to buy something that will not even help you make money or be more profitable. Use that to do R&D and innovate. Don't they have shareholders? At least patent trolls have a clear business plan...
This is the (corporate) cold war all over again: My arsenal is bigger than yours!
At least there's a silver lining there if we get to the state of Mutually Assured Destruction: they will stop attacking each others with patents and we will move on with our lives. Or so we can hope...
There are still libertarians here, they are just rarer and drowned out by the noisier people with ideals and no common sense or understanding of how humans work.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's how much $4B US will convert to Canadian dollars shortly.
The end to Google's IP theft is, known as Andriod is coming. Whether you like it or not there are 1000's of patents covering aspects of Andriod which Google knowingly ignored when it released the software as Open Source.
Google is a blatant IP theft and idiots who have fallen for their "open" agenda are just pawns. If Google was really Open it would make available it's Search Engine, Page Rank patents and software for everybody to use. It doesn't do that because it is EVIL and seeks to commoditize the Smart Phone and Tablet OS with free and open source Andriod software so it can push it's search engine and web apps to datamine private personal data to display adverts to the masses.
Google and Andriod are only interested in your personal information to make money selling advertising to all their users. This IS NOT the promotion of a free and open source ideals. It's about making sure Microsoft and Apple do not completely take over mobile computing operating systems and marginalize Google near monopoly on Internet advertising.
In the context of business one must "defend or lose it." So asking if they plan to become patent trolls will not give the answer they seek. Further, even if they say "no, we will be nice" there is nothing to stop them from changing their position in some way or even better, to sell patents to go trolling to another shell to go about trolling. Just asking them in advance if what their intentions are is just about useless.
If we want the patent and other IP systems to work the way they should, copyright, patent and trademark ownership should not be transferable away from the original creator. And in the case of a corporation, I think rights should remain with the original creators as well which is to say the people employed by the company at the time who were involved in the creation. This would result in the instant death of patent trolling and the instant reform of the copyright industry. It would force companies to be loyal to their employees once and for all instead of treating them as disposable peons while they reap the benefits for the life of the corporation + XX years. And the copyright industry, unable to rape artists now and in the future, will have to play nicely with the talent for a change.
If the patent system is supposed to benefit the inventors, then restore it to suit that purpose. If the copyright system is supposed to benefit the artists, then restore it to suit that purpose. If not, then I would rather the system and the people operating it stop lying to the people about what it is and what it is for.
The Justice Department wants to know whether [the consortium] intends to use them defensively to deter patent lawsuits against its members, or offensively against rivals.
As opposed to "innovatively, for the common good".
I don't have access to the paywalled article, but isn't this the DoJ publicly admitting that patents only serve two purposes, neither of which are the ones they're intended to serve?
Why would they care... is using patents offensively illegal? (not that I think it's right)
Patents, as formed in the US founding documents are intended to reward disclosure. They are a monumental failure at that: they are not written in a language that laymen can understand, and they are usually not even written in a language that an engineer would use...
Frankly, I think it would be quite generous if we allowed patents to exist for five years before pruning: Any patent not quoted or referenced in a scholarly journal or textbook in its field should expire.
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