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Government Lawyer Says Patent Trolls Are a 'Concern'
New submitter gale the simple writes "While it is fairly common for the jaded and cynical to ride on the lawyers these days (often including Henry VI's famous line about them), every now and then we can see that they are not always the plague and scourge of the earth. EFF again shows that even lawyers can do good in this world. (PDF) All jokes aside, something seems to have moved. Maybe all that bloodletting between the major corporations (Apple vs Samsung) made the leaders recognize that MAD world of patents might not be very stable."
From the EFF: "The Congressional Research Service (CRS), the research division of Congress known for its objective studies, recently released a report on the effects of patent trolls on innovation and the economy. ... According to the CRS report, 'The vast majority of defendants settle because patent litigation is risky, disruptive, and expensive, regardless of the merits; and many [patent trolls] set royalty demands strategically well below litigation costs to make the business decision to settle an obvious one.' Businesses lose both time and money, and innovation suffers."
MAD only works because everyone dies, no one profits. The patent situation is almost an inverse MAD... the worse things get the more profit there is to be made and the more risk there is to not playing the game. Any public company basically has to behave this way, otherwise their shareholders will string them up or one of their competitors will become more profitable because they ARE playing.
Sure, this report may say that current patent law stifles innovation, but that is a long, long way from rewriting the law. In my cynical view thes report will get shelved, and if any legislation does occur, the large corporations and lobbies with an interest in maintaining the status quo will line enough pockets to make sure it fails or gets watered down and altered enough to suit their needs. Remember entrenched power, money, and "it will hurt the economy to change", trump common sense and innovation.
Silence is a state of mime.
Last night my wife was commenting that the guy who wrote 'Modernist Cuisine' had a new book coming out aimed at non-professional chefs..
I said "Isn't that the one by Nathan Myhrvold?" "Yeah, how'd you know?" "You know who he is, right?" "Well, he's a french chef who likes liquid nitrogen." "He owns Intellectual Ventures."
"Oh my god, he's a fucking patent troll!" "King of the patent trolls, dear." "Can I just pretend he isn't and buy the book?"
Great, identifying the problem is the first step. However, what are the odds of our benevolent government doing anything about it? Unfortunately, without the second step this news is meaningless.
Humm, so the government (and therefore it's industrial masters) have now decided that patent trolls must go. I somehow doubt if this will benefit us one bit.
Most likely planned end scenario (still years of lobbying away) is that large tech firms will be allowed to 'take over' patents of anyone who lacks the resource to fight them.
A few of the bigger patent farmers might well survive this, but the wannabees will go under. Unfortunately, so will any real engineer with a genuinely good idea they have patented.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
This story has been filed in violation of my patent on Patent Troll stories posted to Web Sites, patent no. 7640598 D607176 PP20622 RE41067 H002234. I am requesting $5.40 to cover my Veggie Sub at subway for lunch.
This summary mentions many things I don't like about the world today -- lawyers, governments, government lawyers, patents, patent trolls, Samsung vs. Apple, Apple vs. Samsung, the Congress...
It's a party tray of yuckiness.
For those of you unfamiliar with Shakesphere:
In Act IV, Scene 2 of Henry VI Part 2, Dick says "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Wow, it only took Government lawyers how many years to figure this out? People have been screaming this to the heavens and all over the internet, and they are only now seeing Patent Trolls as a 'concern'. Notice, not a problem, just a 'concern'. AUGH! /facepalm
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I thought the point of Henry VI's famous line about them was that to take over and trample on people's rights, first you have to get rid of the lawyers.
Both companies bring products to market, so by definition they are not patent trolls.
Oh wait, mentioning iOS vs Android results in clicks!!
Continue on.
And Patented. Or something.
that isn't spelled out in the sig...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Doesn't that comment really mean something like "Yeah, it's obvious it's a god damn problem but we have to be careful how we say it lest we piss off our corporate overlords." ?
There are many "good" objective people who work for the government and submit reports to Congress (lawyers, scientists, accountants... Even IRS agents), however, it is important to understand that "objective people" do not make decisions for congress. They are not the "leaders" that the submitter is calling them and they have no power. The "leaders" are the representatives and senators, whose job is to cherry pick the reports for facts/out-of-context-statements that agree with their opinions. This has been going on for quite some time... After all, Benjamin Franklin wrote of the three degrees of lies, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics."
It too profitable accept any patent, prior art or not.
-The USPTO get fees paid for every submission
-If the patent is invalidated, the USPTO is not affected in any way.
-The USPTO has a monopoly on the situation.
Whenever you have a business doing something that the government should be doing you get issues like this. (e.g. The Fed, Private Prisons, etc.)
Oh, the USPTO *is* part of the government?
It sure doesn't act like it.
http://www.longest.com/2011/05/11/federal-government-slows-innovation-on-intentionally/
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
The vast majority of defendants settle because patent litigation is risky, disruptive, and expensive, regardless of the merits
Note that patent cases are not unique in this regard. In 2011, only 1.1% of civil cases in federal district court reached trial. Some of the other 98.9% were disposed of through summary judgment or involuntary dismissal, but the great majority settled. The statistics are not skewed by a large number of patent cases, either. In 2011 there were only 3,337 patent suits filed, compared to 301,474 total civil cases. In other words, patent cases made up 1.1% of federal civil cases. And of that 3,337, 868 (26%!) of them didn't involve any court action past filing the suit.
Now, it is true that patent litigation is one of the more expensive kinds of litigation, and I favor a strong fee-shifting policy in order to reduce the leverage that plaintiffs have to extract nuisance settlements (i.e. settling for just under the cost of litigation). But it's not as though patent defendants are unusually likely to settle rather than go to trial. In fact, the patent trial rate is one of the highest in federal litigation, at 3.2%.
None of this patent mess would be happening if Einstein still worked at the patent office.
Perhaps patent law needs to become more like trademark law. To retain a trademark, you have to use it in trade. To retain a patent, the change would require you to actually be using the patent or actively licensing it. Patent holders couldn't lurk under the bridge like a troll, waiting for an idea to become popular before leaping out and demanding tolls for their often vague and general idea. They'd have to use it from the start of lose it.
It'd also help to rip down any 'corporate veils' between patents held by holding companies in various, contrived entities. Those who get sued for patent infringement and win wouldn't be restricted to getting their legal fees from a virtually worthless entity. They could pursue the far larger holding firm, including going after its patent assets.
Fark apparently got one to back down by threatening to pierce the corporate veil and go after the executives directly as individuals. How about start ups bring their cases forward and crowd source their defenses with a promise that they will pierce the corporate veil and directly attack the trolls' executives and their families? The only way to legally stop this short of legal reform is to make it clear to the trolls that their wives/husbands and kids will be put into abject poverty.
And depending on how frivolous, I'd even add crowdsourcing an assault on the bar licensing of the troll's lawyers and a campaign to run their law firm's name into the ground.
That happened because 11 out of 12 were not peers. Therefore they believed the one patent owner as being correct.
In Europe, patent cases are seen by specialists, not juries.
Just make a generalization and blame the republicans like always on this site.
Oh, another conservative whining about bias. You are such a victim. I should now change my political opinions, because otherwise I am not a good person. And I thought liberals were the guilt-trip-guys.
A mature person takes ownership of their crap, instead of whining like a child about how much of a victim they are. I wonder if the GOP will ever grow up?
... so by definition ....
The world is not so black and white.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
According to the CRS report, 'The vast majority of defendants settle because patent litigation is risky, disruptive, and expensive, regardless of the merits; and many [patent trolls] set royalty demands strategically well below litigation costs to make the business decision to settle an obvious one.' Businesses lose both time and money, and innovation suffers."
How about making the party that looses the lawsuit autimatically pay the costs for the winner. Wouldn't that ruin the business case for the trolls and make people think long and hard about what they patent? ... Just a thought ....
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Prosecutor says he will go for the maximum sentence if you don't take his deal.
Based on my experience as a juror, they specifically do not want people who know about the issues involved. The idea is that a juror will use basic judgement entirely on the facts presented by the lawyers during the proceedings. I was on a simple burglary case, we had jurors dismissed just because they had law enforcement relatives. Even knowing the place where the burglary took place was considered prejudicial, after selection we were told to not even go to the shopping mall where it had taken place and had to judge some distances (crucial to the testimony) based on some photographs of the scene.
The need for only basing on the evidence presented was mind-numbingly tedious. We had one man testify, the state's expert in glass shard forensics. This man was presented as an officer, but the lawyer spend (no lie) three hours asking him about his background, what cases he has worked on, just lots and lots of tedious questions to establish that, yes, he in fact does know what he's talking about. This was also the case with the arresting officer, we weren't allowed to assume anything about anyone. Real courtrooms are dreadfully tedious.
That the jury foreman for Apple/Samsung had his own patents should have disqualified him straight up, that lawyer messed up. Civil cases are different that criminal, of course, so maybe the restriction is more lax.
Instead of just complaining about this stuff on /. and lobbying about these things, we need to write these reports the government likes. It seems to get shit done or at least gets the ball rolling.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Someone seems to stick to twelve angry men movie... I am not sure that there is any patent trial that has 12 jurors in the past few years.
But Microsoft said such IP was the backbone of innovation...
While the results are indeed generally better, the system is not perfect because those specialist have their own agenda. That's why the "programs as such" loophole works.
The lawyers are able to weed out anyone with brains. They should get the first dozen that do not have a personal stake in the outcome of the case, and who do not know the players personally. NOT the results of some 100+ page questionaire or P.I. background check.
The other problem is that judges/courts have trampled on the USPTO so many times that they have given up doing serious investigations.
A patent is hardly worth the effort, when a court case can/will over turn it.
just that wish those lawers a good morning.
Simple solutions are best. Let Judges judge, and not just do the sentencing.
Coincidentally, I was talking yesterday with one boss from one of the world's leading forensic institutes. His point was simple: Jurors many times misunderstand what is presented to them, or the implications, in terms of forensics. Jurors are also swayed by the theatrics of the lawyers and prosecutors.
Judges see these tricks all day, so they are not fooled as easily. They know what forensics can and cannot deliver, etc. In short: Being judged by a Judge, who understands the system and the law, is not foolproof. But gives you a better shot at having justice done.
Patents are supposed to be a trade where the inventor tells the world what he did in exchange for getting the right to exclusively do it for a limited time.
It is natural for an inventor to try tell as little as he can get away with but still get his rights.
Even to the extent that he can partially describe things he has no clue how to actually build.
The standard is that he tell enough so that someone skilled in the art should be able to understand and duplicate what he did.
If there is not enough detail for someone to do this, then perhaps the inventor should have to answer questions about what he did.
Failure to answer reasonable questions should be grounds for dismissal of the patent on the grounds that he didn't teach what he did.
(Either in the patent or in his second chance to do so.)
This would shift the burden of figuring out how to implement the patent from the reader to the inventor. (Or at least to the reader with the inventor's help.)
This is more in line with the original bargain in patents and IMHO something that's broken in the current system.
Someone that does not actually practice what they taught would naturally have a harder time answering real questions about how their invention works.
(This would both raise the bar for what constitutes an invention and may cause trolls to rethink their business plans.)
Seems like the patent office could be a clearing house for publishing frequently asked questions about patents.
No doubt, lawyers will make a great deal of money deciding what questions and answers are 'reasonable'.