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The History of the Patent Troll
An anonymous reader writes: Patent trolling is not a new problem, although recently it seems that the issue has captured the attention of a broader audience. Four years ago, NPR produced an episode of This American Life called "When Patents Attack!" And, four months ago, John Oliver devoted the bulk of his time on Last Week Tonight to raising awareness about patent trolls. "Most of these companies don't produce anything—they just shake down anyone who does, so calling them trolls is a little misleading—at least trolls actually do something, they control bridge access for goats and ask fun riddles," he explained. " Patent trolls just threaten to sue the living s*** out of people, and believe me, those lawsuits add up." In an article on Opensource.com, Red Hat patent litigation defender David Perry takes a look back at the history of patent trolling, as well as some possible solutions to the problem.
Use it or lose it. Sounds a good solution to separate trolls from inventors.
If they can't make the thing work themselves, then have they really solved the problem or just wrote a document with a claimed solution that does not work in the real world? Its easy enough to look around at whats happening in a market (e.g. self driving cars) and write a bunch of paper patents around that on "stopping a self driving car on detection of a barrier", "easy mechanism for switching to manual control on a self driving car".... you might think 'apply brakes' and 'button' are not inventive, but is single click ordering button inventive?
Plus you get a physical thing, to compare against previous real existing things, no longer can you re-interpret the vague lawyer wording in a document, there is an actual thing to be examined.
An invention is an INVENTION not a description of an invention written by lawyers on paper. It's a thing not the description of the thing. The law should reflect that.
Here's what The Economist had to say last week about patents and patent reform (August 8 2015):
"Today's patent systems have created a parasitic ecology of trolls who aim to block innovation"
http://www.economist.com/news/...
"Patents are protected by governments because they are held to promote innovation. But there is plenty of evidence that they do not."
http://www.economist.com/node/...
It's a well-researched and thoughtful position.