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Patent Trolls Getting the Attention of the Feds
crazyvas writes "The New York Times has published an article on the FTC's plans to investigate the patent system, and likely patent trolls such as Intellectual Ventures. From the article: 'To its defenders, Intellectual Ventures is a revolutionary company unfairly viewed, in the words of its co-founder Peter N. Detkin, "as the poster child of everything that is wrong with the patent system." To its critics, it is a protection racket otherwise known as a patent troll. This summer, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to begin a sweeping investigation of the patent system after the agency's chairwoman, Edith Ramirez, urged a crackdown. She has singled out a particular kind of miscreant, one that engages in "a variety of aggressive litigation tactics," including hiding behind shell companies when it sues.'"
They should invent a rule that requires you to file your patent lawsuit in the county the business has its headquarters located in.
Let's see, how many Wall Street executives are in jail due to the Fed investigating the irrefutable evidence of fraud at the highest levels perpetuated by Goldman and others which led to the collapse of the economy.
Oh yeah; 0
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Sounds like this may trigger legislation. When legislation is written, big corporations frequently have at least a virtual seat at the table, "helping" to get it written.
The true fear hear is that any sort of reform to solve the problems of patent trolls will tend to favor those big corporations in ordinary matters. The problem is the new person or company with something new and disruptive to the existing market. Though it's a little painful, in the longer run it's for the better when the market gets disrupted this way, because new opportunities emerge in the process. If the "reforms" give big corporations more power to "manage" the disruption, preserving their own markets and business models, we all lose. (The disruption will happen anyway, outside the US.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Enough people who own congress are getting pissed off.
But at least they made the mosquito laser zapper before they patented the hell out of it and are apparently demanding enough royalties that nobody's even bothering to try.
Hopefully they'll come up with some sensible changes that will address 96% of the problem.
All too often, a headline grabbing bad guy like Intellectual Ventures results in a demand for HUGE new laws, smashing to bits a system that needed a tune up. The Patriot Act is an example - a few words needed to be changed in the law regarding how the NSA, CIA, and FBI can and cannot share information. 9/11 was big though, so people demanded big change, and ended up with the constitution shredded.
Oh, little self-professed "Patent Troll" Bobby Zeidman isn't going to like this one bit. Not.One.Bit.
software patents need to be cut down as well as well the patents on basic stuff.
O's administration might be a cluster fuck.
The this wouldn't even be considered under Romney's administration.
Remember the last Republican's administration?
The preceding Democrat had a conviction and breakup against Microsoft. But the Republican administration said "The case is without merit". and rolled over.
Not Goldman and nowhere near enough but some little ray of sunshine: http://www.justice.gov/ag/Hayes-Tom-and-Darin-Roger-Complaint.pdf
Another "industry" will have to start making them if they want to survive.
I came to a different conclusion(spin) to the summary presented by the New York Times; this is not about protecting "software designers, smartphone makers and the like" (and definitely not in the case of Microsoft, Apple and Nokia who are both PAE as described in the article and form have created mega patent pools with each other).
This is about those same companies (Microsoft, Apple and Nokia) attacking start-up companies; stillborning competition; competition within the IT industry or as the linked article describes outside the industry for simply purchasing consumer products...or building a web page(the example is one that includes a calorie counter). Ballmer threatening Linux users...like that.
I find it depressing that Intellectual Ventures are being scapegoated...when as I see it the worst offenders of the computing Industry(with their own PAE) are portrayed as Victims when they are the worst offenders, and is not the thrust what Edith Ramirez says http://ftc.gov/speeches/ramirez/130620paespeech.pdf
Cancel any patent that contains the word "plurality" in the claim section.
Next season on White Collar....
I think the AC was talking about making the suing company sue the business in the business's home county.
IE let's say the patent troll wants to sue Bobcat. Given that, as best as I can tell they're incorporated in West Fargo in North Dakota, that would mean that the troll would have to sue them in West Fargo, ND not East Texas.
It means that the patent trolls can't judge shop anywhere as well.
I don't read AC A human right
it can start by not issuing bullshit patents.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Here's my favorite quote:
PAEs may generate even greater indirect costs by distorting incentives to innovate. Patents asserted against existing products raise the risk of patent hold-up, which can discourage investment in product development. Particularly in the high-tech sector, where patent notice is notoriously difficult, licensing fees are likely to reflect investments the implementer has made to bring a product to market, rather than the true economic value of the patent. And because licenses are always negotiated in the shadow of the law, the problems the Commission has previously identified with the framework for patent remedies – including the uncertainty associated with damage awards and the threat of an injunction or exclusion order – add to the risk of hold-up associated with PAE activities.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
> there are a lot of patent trolls out there
When you said that, it got me wondering, how many patent trolls are there? A little research suggests there are about 16. They filed 62% of the patent suits last year. It shouldn't be too hard to take a look at how those 16 trolls operate "successfully" and find a few ways to ruin their business model.
That's encouraging to me because it means that a) it should be quite fixable and b) we don't have to take the risk of screwing over all the hard working people by adopting some new, untested system. We just need to throw a monkey wrench into what those sixteen companies are doing.
If the FTC is serious about innovation, they'll look into everyone who uses patent portfolios to block innovation by competitors.
If they are merely helping large corporations with a problem, they'll focus on patent trolls only.
Reinventing history I see. The DC Circuit Court that ruled unanimously that the case be remanded was made up of 1 Carter appointee, 3 Reagan appointees, 1 Bush Sr. appointees and 2 Clinton. So blaming Clinton is quite disengenuous since the majority of the justices were Reagan and Bush appointees. Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the district judge it was remanded to never heard the new case because the Bush DoJ dropped the breakup plans and chose to settle 2 months after the Circuit Court's ruling.
Robert Byrd's KKK membership that he dropped 6 decades ago? Strom Thurmond's fibuster from 1957? What relevance do either of those have to do with anything the GP said? Also what do the CDA and COPA have to do with anything? Especially when both passed with huge Republican support and COPA was defended by John Ashcroft when the ACLU brought a lawsuit against it.
Patenting software is not a fundamental problem. Patent trolls are not a fundamental problem. Instead, these are the results and effects of the true fundamental problem, which is that the patent system itself is patenting anything that comes along that has no obvious conflicts, if even that. It considers its duty to be simply to record the patent ... and take all the money. It's real duty is to separate truly innovative inventions from all the junk.
If something is truly innovative, then without the inventor having done it, it is likely to not have been done at all for many years (when based to genius thought), or for a substantial investment into the work needed to come up with it (when based on a huge amount of work). The vast majority of patents are not true innovation. Most of them are just broad brushes of things they see as inevitable and coming, anyway.
It doesn't matter if it is done in software or hardware, if it is innovative. We should reward true innovation either way.
It doesn't matter if someone comes along and buys out the inventor of true innovation. It's just like getting a cash advance on a time payment you expect to receive.
The real problem in the system is all the junk patents that get issued.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Did you click Reply to the wrong post?
I didn't say anything about large versus small defendants. I just thought it was interesting that 16 patent trolls file most of the suits - that the patent troll problem is a problem of a very few major assholes causing a lot of problems.
To your point, while researching how many trolls there are, I learned that they are targeting smaller companies than before. Most defendants had sales of under $10 million (meaning profit less than $1 million, probably). I also found that fully 90% of the cost to defend is discovery.
Putting those numbers together:
16 nasty trolls are causing major problems by bullying small companies with abusive discovery tactics.
One part of a solution, therefore, would be to limit discovery appropriately so companies can reasonably defend themselves. Maybe have plaintiffs put up a bond for the discovery cost, which they have to pay if the suit is ruled meritless.
news at eleven.
When mshit was threatening android they wouldnt even disclose patents allegedly infringed
How is this any different from worst patent troll ???
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/05/08/2046215/ibm-invents-40-minute-meetings. In the EU, for software to be patentable it must result in a new/unique/original physical enhancement to physical device.
Apple is the biggest douchebag trolls of them all. The way they aquire patents and sue everybody is kind off disgusting. The Samsung case is in recent memory.
In practice: "We'll go after you if you're not big enough to fight back."
More and more I see the actions of the federal government, and in particular those of the DOJ, as being largely career-driven and opportunistic. Which is why you'll never ever see them go after really big fish: because that could be a future employer.
Ironic how something that was meant to promote innovation is instead abused by these greedy entities to increase their wealth while stifling innovation.
I think it depends on your definition of patent assertion entities (aka patent trolls). The NYT article and the speech by Edith Ramirez define PAEs as "non-practicing entities", or entities primarily involved in patent monetization. Unlike Microsoft, Apple, and Nokia, Intellectual Ventures doesn't produce any products and therefore can't even be sued or served with discovery. (I consider Apple and Oracle to be patent trolls over their Android litigation, but many people don't consider them to fall under the strict definition.)
Certainly you're right that the source of the problem is bad patents.
Also, there have always been bad patents. It's become such a big problem recently because of big trolls. If 16 trolls file 62% of the patent suits, dealing with the trolls would eliminate at least 62% of the problem. Actually more, because some of the non-troll cases aren't a problem. So those 16 trolls are maybe 80% of the problem.
Any citation for "the vast majority of patents aren't true innovation"? It appears to me that of the hundreds of thousands of patents in force, a few dozen are being horribly abused.
John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, the person in charge of carrying on the lawsuit, was the one who said the case was without merit.
And Ron Paul, the 1988 Libertarian Candidate, had the most conservative Post WW II voting record in congress at until 2002. That puts him to the right of Robert Byrd and the KKK.
Am I the only one who read the name of company as "Intellectual Vultures" the first time?
I've always wondered if they could make it a requirement of patent infringement that the entity claiming infringement has to prove that the patent is a component of a product they make or can substantively prove they are going to make within two years?
Or make patents a two step process -- patent application and product verification. You get granted a provisional patent but have to come back and demonstrate the use of the patent in an actual commercial product. Failure to do the second step means no patent.
The idea behind patents is to promote USEFUL innovation -- ie, in the creation of products for the marketplace. Not for creating monopolies or extracting money from people for products the holder has never or will never make.
You can not comercialize your invention before your patent is at least registered, otherwise it counts as prior art. So it can be a two step process, but the one step option is clearly not viable.
Also, I'd disagree that this solves anything at all. Big corps (the ones that can create manufacturing lines fast) don't need more protection against small inventors. Extinguishing the patent system has a much better outcome.
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