Is this "the other shoe dropping", "blowback", or something else? I've long worried that; kudzu would replace all plants in the South East, a Bush family member would be elected President again, and that other countries would adopt the copyright and patent model of the US. I mean, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time; create nothing and patent everything and then make royalties more valuable and protected, unlike jobs and wages and edible paint on children's toys. Oh yeah, this is the "Chickens coming home to roost." We should enjoy our Just Desserts and eat our crow -- the Dutch Boy can't plug this leak with a fat finger and the cat is out of the bag of donuts.

I understand the need for the original owner of a patent to protect their ideas even if they don't have a working product but I draw the line when they "sell" their patent to a troll who's only job is to try and attempt to get whatever money they can. These patent trolls are like ambulance chasing lawyers who could care less about the law and only about potential income for themselves. Add to this the ridiculous nature of patent law around the world and you have a totally corrupt and inoperable mechanism for trying to protect the real originators of an idea. For those truly unique and revolutionary ideas I can see protecting them with a patent but for the other 90%, cancel them all and let the market decide. Apple is trying to protect both its patents and its use of ideas and processes supposedly patented by others. As this article states, others are taking the quick road to making money by not developing anything, instead just suing to get money. Get a life and a real job trolls!

The US government probably wont be alarmed until North Korea and Iran get in the game.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this once here a few weeks back, but China already pays subsidies to Chinese firms for successful US and other foreign patents applications, both utility and design. In fact a Chinese applicant can receive 10 times as much subsidy money from the Chinese government for being awarded a US patent than a domestic one.

http://chinaipr.com/2012/06/12/china-to-provide-financial-incentives-for-filing-patent-applications-abroad/

"earn"?

I dont know about the South Korea one but France Brevets is not a patent troll in the sense they dont acquire patents in order to sue.

It is the patent holders (IOW praticing entities and/or inventors) that ask the fund so that licensing revenues can be drawn from their holdings, and also be protected. The fund acts as an intermediate true, but this allows small companies which, on their own, would not have the means (expertise and money) to sue, to be on an equal foot with bigger competitors. More, the main assets of the fund are actually the patents which are the results of publicly funded research, which is a lot more important in France than in the USA proportionnally.

This article is complete hogwash, a 5 mn check would have found this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rob53 

I understand the need for the original owner of a patent to protect their ideas even if they don't have a working product but I draw the line when they "sell" their patent to a troll who's only job is to try and attempt to get whatever money they can. 

This. It's one thing to sell your patent to someone who can manufacture a product, but it's another to sell it to a patent holding firm. Why did you invent the thing you patented in the first place? The point of the patent system is to foster innovation. How is inventing something only to sue people fostering innovation? It's the exact opposite.

If I was King of the World(TM), any patent used in a lawsuit would become invalidated if the plaintiff could not show proof of it being used in actual products available on the market. After all, there's no stifling of innovation or damages if the patent holder doesn't actually use it to make anything.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 

The closest analogy involves physical property. Let's say that you inherit a widget factory from your parents. You don't want to make widgets, so you close the factory. You have the right to sell the factory or rent it out to someone who wants to make widgets - and no one would object. Or, if the real estate market is slow, you might simply hold onto your closed factory for a while until the price is higher. Or maybe you don't want to make widgets, but don't want to sell the factory for sentimental reasons. It doesn't matter - you have the right not to sell the factory.

If someone moved into the factory and started making widgets without your permission, no one in their right mind would defend them on the basis of "but you're not using it".

Patents work the same way. If you have a patent to make widgets, you can choose to use it, sell it, license (i.e., rent) it, or do nothing with it. If you choose to do nothing with it, someone else isn't allowed to use that as grounds for their infringing your patent.

You're analogy is severely flawed. No one is using the "factory" but the patents are giving that factory owner the rights to produce those widgets in the town (USA). So no one else can make the widgets in that town regardless. So if I truly make something revolutionary and I know it's a death pool of patents that would kill my idea and possibly end up stealing it (I put the hard work into making an ACTUAL product... software patents can die), now I have to base my company out of a country that has a patent available for me and is clear of trolls to sell out of and restricting sales to only "friendly" countries.

As stated before, patent system is completely pointless at this day in age... in the state that it is currently in. It cannot accommodate the needs that we have in the 21st century. It needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from ground up, period.

no bueno!

They can cause a lot of harm if they get away with this. I'm probably gonna get a lot of flack for this statement, but perhaps they shouldn't be able to sue unless they were actively making a product that used the patent they were suing about. It would prevent most patent trolls from making a case as the majority of them have no means nor the intention of making products at all.

That said there are congressman in the united states that are coming up with ways to battle companies like these. See the SHIELD act here: http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/why-you-should-support-the-shield-act-214071