Patent Trolls Are Losing More. Will America's Supreme Court Change That? (nytimes.com)

jespada writes: New York Times has an article warning that the Patent Appeal and Trial Board is being challenged on the basis that patents represent real property and that a government agency is not empowered to take real property.
Here's a quotes from the Times article. (Non-paywalled version here): In the five years since it began its work -- a result of the America Invents Act of 2011 -- the Patent Trial and Appeal Board has saved companies more than $2 billion in legal fees alone, according to Joshua Landau, patent counsel at the Computer and Communications Industry Association, offering an expeditious and relatively cheap avenue to challenge patents of doubtful validity. The benefits of stopping bad patents from snaking their way through the economy have been even greater. Companies no longer have to pay ransom so the threat of lawsuits over dubious royalty payments -- filed by aggressive litigants known as trolls -- will go away... But for all the benefits of culling faulty intellectual-property rights, the board is under existential threat. Next week, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge that the patent office's new procedure is unconstitutional...

Comments

Property taxes?

[Just Some Guy]

If patents are real property, and a company testifies in court that theirs is with a billion dollars, then surely they’ve been paying property taxes on that $1B, right? Because if not, you and I are subsidizing their welfare queen asses by paying our taxes to support the court system that they are using to enforce their “property” rights.

I don’t want to hear a damn thing from a patent holding company until they show tax returns demonstrating that they’re paying their fair share to maintain the legal system they disproportionately consume.

Re:Property taxes?

[Just Some Guy]

Court fees cover a teensy part of the government that protects those rights. I pay all sorts of fees for my home, too, but that doesn’t get me out of paying property taxes on it. As far as I can tell, this is yet another way for corporations to avoid the taxes that the rest of us have to pay.