> So-called non-practicing entities — or holders of a patent for a process or product that they don’t plan to develop — often use them to sue companies that would sooner settle rather than pay what can add up to $1 million by the time a case reaches a courtroom.
Why on earth aren't non-practicing entity patent lawsuits outlawed? Seems like a no-brainer, and I can't imagine these firms being big enough to have any seriously lobbying power.
> Why on earth aren't non-practicing entity patent lawsuits outlawed?
The NPE category includes universities and researchers. Many inventions can't be brought to market without significant capital, and not all inventors are interested in commercializing their inventions themselves. Just because you're not personally going to build a billion dollar chip fabrication facility to implement the new silicon etching process your research group patented shouldn't prevent you from licensing it to Intel and suing someone else that uses your invention without a license, IMO.
> Just because you're not personally going to build a billion dollar chip fabrication facility to implement the new silicon etching process your research group patented shouldn't prevent you from licensing it to Intel and suing someone else that uses your invention without a license, IMO.
I completely disagree. You're now squatting on a useful technique and preventing someone else from using it even if they invented it in parallel without your help. That is extremely unethical.
Why would it be squatting if you're open to licensing your technology at a reasonable cost to whatever manufacturer is willing to implement your state-of-the-art technology?
Why should the manufacturer have the incentive to fund parallel invention efforts to avoid paying such licensing fees? What if the upfront capital availability for such R&D funds created differential overhead profiles across industries, such that massive up-front R&D costs were now required in order to keep an acceptable op-ex profile?
This is a bit more nuanced than 'you aren't using your patent, you're clearly a vampire'.
I'm pretty sure I don't like the idea that patents or copyrights can be transferred. There is the issue in both cases of cooperative invention or writing thought, and I'm not sure how to deal with that.
Even if they weren't tradeable this would still happen. The troll law firms would approach holders and ask to represent them in defending their IP, on a 'no win no fee' basis.
This proposal doesn't fix anything. If it were enacted, the current NPEs would just consult with the patent owners for a commission.
There are two major classes of problems as I see it:
(1) Many patents are granted but can be invalidated ("weak patents") if someone is willing to invest in the time in taking the patent holder to court.
(2) Patent fights are / can be extremely expensive, so the threat of litigation makes for great extortion material. If patent threat victims could petition the US PTO with evidence of prior art that the PTO missed during the original grant (bypassing the court), this would put a significant dent in the threat that NPEs use and would benefit both the industry that the victim is in and avoids paying 2x attorney fees in litigation.
Universities do research, but rarely release commercial products. E.g. an university may design a novel audio compression algorithm, but it usually won't make a commercial encoder/player software or encoder/decoder chip to sell to audio-gadget manufacturers.
Practicing in this sense means using the patent to produce some product or service. Researchers are non-practicing by definition until they stop researching and start utilizing (assuming the patent is not something related to researching itself).
Because there's a Grey area. As an inventor, you might develop something for the express purpose of licensing it to other companies, or sell it to a company that does that for a business for a nice up front sum.
The problem is when patents last too long or thing are patented that are obvious and should have failed that criteria.
> The problem is when patents last too long or thing are patented that are obvious and should have failed that criteria.
This. Particularly in software, if someone who doesn't know about the patent comes up with the idea independently, that should be prima facie evidence that the patent doesn't meet the criteria of not being obvious.
Of course, the lack of knowledge of the patent may be subject to challenge, but this would eliminate a lot of ridiculous patents.
IMO the system needs to work on getting a better deal for the public in exchange for granting the monopoly that a patent holder gets.
For example after 5 years the renewal fees could relate to gross revenue from any device including that patent, or actual licensing fees. I like the former as it seems harder to work around [though you'll get components sold as products to companies residing in the same factory, I guess] and means that patents that don't contribute considerably to revenue will be dropped. This means people can still profit from useful inventions.
You could also underpin renewal fees with an exponentially growing base cost.
Wouldn't that basically eliminate groups like the MPEG? They don't create software or hardware, but they license the technology to everybody else. Should they be forced to compete with their licensees?
There should be a "sh*t or get off the pot" clause in patents, if you've not done anything with the patent in the 5 years since filing for it, it gets opened up to the public. In that case the MPEG group has done something (licensed it out to people doing something with it) so would be fine
However, if a university invents something, it can sell that patent. It won't itself commercialise it. Therefore they are a non-practising entity, but you can see how that encourages innovation.
I think that would have a significant impact on how research universities are funded. The University of Wisconsin recently won a $200m patent lawsuit against Apple, coincidentally (?) just as they were losing $200m of state funding.
Why on earth aren't non-practicing entity patent lawsuits outlawed? Seems like a no-brainer, and I can't imagine these firms being big enough to have any seriously lobbying power.