> 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'.

Yeah but that's a general argument against patents, not against NPE patents being enforceable.

I agree btw

> The NPE category includes universities and researchers.

Good point. Aren't they more likely to develop patents rather than buy them, though? Or are there more edge cases missing?

The patents have no value if the ultimate owners are unable to enforce them. Once the patent exists, it is a tradable asset like copyright.

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.

Well, if your dad came up with a great idea, but was getting a little old, wouldn't you want him to be able to pass it to you to see into action?

But an exception could be made for these

Or another idea, make patents non transferrable.

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.

Then people would just license them. It wouldn't change anything.

Most custom-written software is actually licensed, not sold (since the contractor is not an employee). It makes no real difference.

"The NPE category includes universities and researchers."

That seems utterly stupid. Universities and researchers by definition are constantly practicing, what's what academia is all about.

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).