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How Patent Trolls Destroy Innovation
walterbyrd sends this story from Vox:
Everyone agrees that there's been an explosion of patent litigation in recent years, and that lawsuits from non-practicing entities (NPEs) — known to critics as patent trolls — are a major factor. But there's a big debate about whether trolls are creating a drag on innovation — and if so, how big the problem is. A new study (PDF) by researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas provides some insight on this question. Drawing from data on litigation, R&D spending, and patent citations, the researchers find that firms that are forced to pay NPEs (either because they lost a lawsuit or settled out of court) dramatically reduce R&D spending: losing firms spent $211 million less on R&D, on average, than firms that won a lawsuit against a troll. "After losing to NPEs, firms significantly reduce R&D spending — both projects inside the firm and acquiring innovative R&D outside the firm," the authors write. "Our evidence suggests that it really is the NPE litigation event that causes this decrease in innovation."
Fixed that for you.
"Patent trolls" is a propaganda term. It implies that there's a right and wrong way to own patents. In reality it's just that: Owning patents. Patents are a monopoly on ideas. That's the problem.
you need to fix your history line so it should correctly read, under Bush Jr the economy tanked then Obama got into power. I don't support Obama but I do hate it when people try to re-write history.
Patents are supposed to protect specific implementations, not vague ideas. If I patent a widget making machine, someone else can build a different machine that makes widgets in a different way and that's fine. Software patents are the equivalent of patenting the idea of a machine that makes widgets.
If I get the idea for a new valve design that uses some obscure property of gasoline to make direct injection engines five percent more efficient then I deserve to be rewarded for that
No you don't, and that's not what the patent system is for.
If you get the idea for a new valve design, and then go on to develop the valve in a way suitable for mass production, and then start a business selling those valves, then you deserve not to be undercut by rivals who just copy your design and go straight to market without having first paid the R&D costs. That's all you deserve. You don't automatically deserve for your business to succeed regardless of other commercial factors, and you certainly don't deserve money just for having an idea. Ideas are cheap, it's R&D that costs money.
And that is how the patent system is broken, because it directly rewards ideas and not development effort. The positive outcome of the system is just a side-effect of how the system works. The whole system needs refactoring so that it directly achieves the goals above within an ethical framework that acknowledges the value of straightforward hard work over simple ideas. This would mean that a patent troll with nothing more than an idea can't walk all over a company that had the same idea and then spend $10m developing it into a commercial product.
Hm, I don't quite agree. I think a 'use it or lose it' condition on patent claims would be both protective and productive. Oh, and I'd like to see that ideal applied to cybersquatters and their ilk, too.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Why should I start a business when at any time a troll could come by with some vague patent, and sue me? Fuck this country, and fuck the government.