When Patents Attack!

If anyone has an hour to watch this, please let us know what happened.

It's streaming audio and very interesting.

Is it really an hour to listen to all three? I would imagine it to be interesting.

It was pretty interesting. The article centered around alot of tech stuff (programming mostly), I wonder how much of the "patent trolling" has permeated the non-software things.

Here's a link to the transcript...

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/TAL441_transcript.pdf

The link doesn't work; it says damaged file: cannot open.

I got the same result when I tried the link in the article. Do either work for you guys?

It works from my computer...

here's the url without the http:// in front... I don't know if that'll be useful or not, but...

www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/TAL441_transcript.pdf

I just tried again, same result. I'll try again in a few hours. Thanks.

[edit] Hadn't thought of that... same results, though:

The link seems fine. The transcript itself is only 24 pages long.

That is so odd... I still can't open it.

I even closed out and rebooted. Maybe I'll cleanup the disk.

It's a story about the "Enron" of the patent industry. I hate this seedy little planet and all its greedy little trolls more and more with each passing day.

I'm only on Page 3 of the transcript and already I'm wondering:

1. why didn't Jeff from FotoTime didn't contact the other companies listed on the suit
2. why the patent agents/lawyers of the bigger companies haven't pointed out that in the patent world you can only get a positive outcome to your patent claim if you are exploiting the technology. If you're sitting on it and just preventing others using it, patent judges will often throughout your calim and can void the patent.
3. If there are that many companies involved, class actions / joint action would kepp individual costs down...

It's part of the contract - government stops others stealing your good idea so you can reap the rewards. If you patent an idea then don't use it and actively stop someone else who also has the idea for using it - i.e. benefiting the world with it - you have broken your side of the contract.

They claim to be promoting innovation by "monetization" of the asset. It would be a claim that would have to be argued in court that they weren't "using" the patent. Oh they're using alright, if you consider abusing use. You can tell the lazy greedy shysters have arrived when they start using funny sounding made up names for the "service" they provide. Remember "securitization" and "credit default swaps"? These are very smart people. Too bad their intelligence isn't put to honest productive use.

Agree entirely RC. Just like the mafia parallel refered to in the article, it needs someone to stand up to them and challenge it.

The later question I identified that the reporters appeared not to ask was:

How are the inventors "incentivized" - they only get a one off payment from what I could see and not a cent of the large settlements reached out of court.

Leaglised money printing is a description that springs to my mind.

What's needed is an undercover spy...

Yeah, I'm pretty sure most of the patents are bought off for a cheap one time fee. Personally, I find it to be DIS-incentivizing.

He was pretty sure they would have won the case if they'd gone to trial. But his client settled anyway. He says sometimes it makes more sense to settle and pay a license fee than to spend $2 to $5 million on a court case.

This was the telling quote from a defending patent attorney.

Looks like "the Establishment" needs to take on the trolls - and the USPTO (and probably others, I doubt it's confined to the US) needs to clean up its act over what patents it actually grants and what granted patents are actually valid.

My belief is that the patent holder must be actively producing or using the patent or it ceases to be valid.

That in one fell swoop would clear the markets to do what they do best. It would also clear the shelves of whole bunches of useless patents that people submit and then trolls purchase later to abuse people who actually work for a living. In the technical field, schools and universities churn out great numbers of patents for commercially useless stuff. The problem is that all these patents through slimely lawyering can be used to harass and extort from productive folks.

Reading your post, reminded me and oddly I have personal experience near to this I completely forgot about (and answers my earlier question to some degree about how much patents permeate non-software things).

During my college days I was taking structural dynamics as one of my senior level courses. I was playing around with a couple ideas and went to the prof to discuss them. According to him, I had two brilliant ideas in hand that "I shouldn't discuss with him." He offered this advice, 1) The school would most likely offer up the labs necessary to do the testing to prove the concepts. In return they would take part ownership from all the patents and hence part of the proceeds (seems reasonable). He said it is likely a majority of the proceeds (or I could simply turn the concept over, let them do the work and they would take full ownership and pay me a flat sum based on it's worth (essentially a certain percent of proceeds for the first few years), which still seems reasonable). 2) If I wanted sole ownership, I shouldn't talk to any staff of the school or work on it anywhere except property that I own. This would in turn force me to fund independent testing myself (roughly around $15k) to prove the concept. The caveat is this doesn't guarantee that I would be protected from the vultures. He said he'd seen this scenario many times. A student with a great idea gets a patent. The school strong arms him into signing over part of the patent rights by threat of litigation based on the likelihood he worked on it on school property. Whether he did or not doesn't matter, most students can't afford a lawyer so he/she signs over part of the rights.

So where are the designs today? Sadly, sitting in a notebook on my shelf.

The USPTO's last update to their MPEP (Manual of Patent Examining Procedures) appears to me to be trying to deal with this specific problem. It involves an update that mostly relates to software patents.

It is sad that there is an industry of "patent trolls" that are absolutely ruining things. Most of their work relates to how close software patents are to each other. There may be a real problem that there is too much patent overlap and more patent applications in the software field should be rejected based on "obviousness". Patent troll companies purchase portfolios of patents often very cheaply from closed companies that are happy to get any money for any left over assets. Then a "legal team" take those patents and look for similar patents used by people like Google, Cisco, IBM and smaller companies. They twist their arm for licensing fees or the threat of litigation. These trolls are making millions!

One tool available when a patent troll comes after you is "Ex Parte reexamination" or "Inter partes reexamination". You can cause their patent to be re-examined. You would only do this if you think you can get their patent disallowed. As you may imagine they might try the same thing against you.

Patent Troll companies have no interest in advancing science, medicine, manufacturing, technology etc. by putting their patents to their intended use.

Their only objective is to make money by suing or threatening other companies and individuals when their "legal team" find something they can exploit!

The Aug. 8, 2011 issue of Forbes magazine has an article about Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures (IV). With a $5 billion fund, 35,000 IP assets, and an impressive roster of long-term investors, IV is a game-changer. Giant companies can no longer count on overcoming the small-time inventor by stringing out the case and piling on the costs.

They will either have to pay a royalty or patent what they use. They will also have to live with an accelerated pace of technology development, which they don't like because any innovation is a potential threat to their dominant position. Instead of locking up their technology for an indefinite period by keeping it a trade secret, big companies will have to disclose the technology in order to have an exclusive right for only a limited time. If it were not so disgusting it would be comical to hear big corporate crybabies singing the blues about "trolls" who are inventing things which might make their inventory obsolete.

With respect to software patents, the issue is moot because after the Bilski case they are no longer considered patentable subject matter if they are bare algorithms unconnected to an apparatus. The difficulty of searching software patents is a good reason to ban them, because they actually do retard the progress of the field by increasing vagueness. But other classes of patents stimulate innovation and the diffusion of knowledge.

With the availability of online search tools, such as FreePatentsOnline.com and the US Patent Office, and with publication of pending patent applications long before they issue as patents, big companies can't make a case that they are victims of a surprise attack by a hidden monster. Hence the "troll" argument (like the "submarine patent" argument) rings hollow.

I hope it will never be the case that, in order to retain intellectual property, the inventor has to be in the business of making the goods himself or a corporate serf. An author does not have to publish his own books to have a copyright. Compulsory licenses (for a reasonable royalty, typically in the 3-5% range) are available in the case where the patent owner is abusing patent rights by going against the public policy of technological progress. The licensee does not get it free, and the patent owner can't imprison the invention, so public policy is served by this remedy.

"Property" is excluding others from use. Although there is a criminal class that feels entitled to enter your home and drive off with your car, the law is in favor of the property owner because of long-established social benefits of respecting property rights. Snarking about "trolls" enforcing their property rights seems like complaining about burglar alarms and police. Public policy is in favor of strong patents and penalties for theft.

Abraham Lincoln was the only president to get a US patent. As he put it, a patent "adds the fuel of interest to the fire of genius." Was Honest Abe a troll because he became President instead of going into business making a device to lift boats off sandbars?

Wilmot-

You are either a patent troll yourself, or you have never been involved in a patent issue.

Current patent policy as practiced in the US is detrimental to innovation. The independent inventor, unless very, very well funded, has no protection against those who wish to violate his rights. Major corporations (as well as the trolls) gang up on the upstarts to inhibit innovation. Example- the Microsoft/Apple/Oracle/RIM attack on Android...

My name appears on two patents- neither of which ever made me more than a dollar (which is what I was "paid" for my contributions). The really good stuff, the stuff that made some real money (back in the days when such was my motivation) was maintained as "trade secrets"- and was quite lucrative for a number of years, because I was able to stay one step ahead of all my competitors. Patent trolls had no chance of shutting me down, because I had sufficient documentation and proof of practice that I could claim prior art to any subsequent patent (an issue that did come up, back in the day). When I left the industry, I sold the "intellectual property" for a nice tidy sum, without the protection of any patent or other legal fantasy. I sold "know-how", and the buyer was as happy with the purchase as I was with the sale.

Patents, as they are implemented in the US today are totally useless. Probably the same can be said for other governments as well, but I don't have personal experience to inform on other countries' practices...

cwarner7 -- I agree with everything you say, except the first sentence. On Aug. 2 my US Patent 7,987,677 for a Radial Counterflow Steam Stripper issued. I wrote the application myself, and all of the claims were allowed, verbatim, on the first office action. I have 10 issued patents and I am admitted to practice before the US Patent Office (Registration Number 46,373). Will you grant me the point that the second half of your either-or is false? As to the first, I can't think of why you would call me a "troll" except that I expressed support of IV.

It has been the case that well-funded infringers could count on prevailing even when they were clearly in the wrong, so US patents had become an object of derision. Inventors were cast as "trolls" (whatever that means) by the defense bar and their chorus. But now good faith independent inventors have at least a chance to step up to the batter's box, thanks to IV and the ongoing patent reform.

Wilmot-

I apologize if I came on a bit strong and inadvertently insulted you. It was not my intention to attack you personally, or to disparage your character.

However, I have watched over the years as the legal profession (and I do not mean to disparage all practitioners of that profession- after all, I am married to one!) has totally destroyed the rationality of the Patent system- especially with regards to the software industry and the life sciences (how can one possibly justify patenting a DNA sequence? Copyright, maybe- but even copyright law has been rendered unworkable in recent years as well).

I have since posted a link to a discussion of some recent studies of the situation with patents which debunks some of the conventional myths around the whole concept if Intellectual Property ownership as regards patents. It is worth reading.

You make some excellent points. And in an ideal world there would be no argument about how dead on they would be. Sadly, I doubt that these players are following such utopian rules though they and you would seem to like us to believe it is so. There are just too many holes in their stories. Too much obfuscation, no transparency it all smacks of a royal scam.

CI's post 4link,
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/TAL441_transcript.pdf,
worked fine for me.

I listened intermittently to this interesting program a week or so ago, but did not follow it very closely. Whether this type of activity is legal or not, it seems well suited to sharia- or Mafia-type penalties. There is a big difference between genuine entrepreneurship and gaming some system.

Here, from LinkedIn, which further references a paper by Mark Lemley, is a discussion debunking some of the current myths about invention, innovation, and the patent system. Well worth a read by those interested in the subject.

Thanks for the link to this echo of the Lemley paper. He's being absurd; who knows why. Against this recent blizzard of pro-infringer propaganda, what can we do but say it's just not so.

As I can personally attest as a lone inventor, waste heat power harvesting from turbine exhaust steam is not evolving by tiny near-simultaneous increments. Read the patent I linked to, and see if that sounds like an evolutionary team effort. It is interesting to see to what lengths the jerks in the jets will go to grind down American inventors. Now we're supposed to believe that there is no such thing as an "inventive step." And all inventions are obvious.