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US Patent Trolling Costs $29 Billion a Year
New submitter Bismillah writes "This piece of research from Boston University seems to put an end to claims that patent trolling is 'socially valuable,' and instead is a social loss. 'We estimate that firms accrued $29 billion of direct costs in 2011. Moreover, although large firms accrued over half of direct costs, most of the defendants were small or medium-sized firms, indicating that [non-practicing entities] are not just a problem for large firms.' The total cost to society could be around $80 billion, according to the researchers. What's more, the costs have gone up fourfold since 2005."
'We estimate that firms accrued $29 billion of direct costs in 2011'
not the law firms.
There are many reasons why small businesses don't start; the vague threat of patent trolling is WAY down that list. In fact I'd go as far as to say anyone worried about this before even starting a business is an idiot, so those businesses were probably better of not starting anyway.
I guess I'm an idiot then... every time I think of turning an idea into a little bit of an extra revenue generator for myself my second thought is that somebody from the US will just sue me and it's not worth that.
There are a few problems in your line of thinking:
1. You seem to think that "ideas" are somehow unique enough that only one person can ever think of them and all others can only acquire the same by "stealing".
2. You seem to think that any great new ideas that have not yet been implemented are "new ideas".
The amount of registered IP today probably covers nearly anything anyone could possible come up with, unique or not, just by the mere fact that ideas are inherently very generic and most registered IPs are very badly evaluated.
Anyone talking about "intellectual PROPERTY" or "innovating" by registering new IP, makes me sick. Turning intellectual products into property is the death of intellectual innovation, and anyone that thinks otherwise has deluded themselves or hasn't thought it through.
Innovation would happen when LOTS of people innovated using the SAME intellectual product. Then there would be competition. Customers could choose considering things like price and quality. This choice would drive implementers to innovate more than their competition. It would drive the whole economy.
Turning intellectual products into property denies it from the competition and effectively breaks the whole foundation of capitalism.
``OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?''