Ugh, disgusting. Think of how much damage that troll will now be able to wreak.
With that kind of money it can buy all sorts of other patents and start the whole progress over again.
With that kind of money it can buy all sorts of other patents and start the whole progress over again.
The problem as I see it is: patents exist to allow innovators to get paid for their inventions (setting aside the USPTO not being able to do its job correctly due to under-funding and granting bad patents), patents therefore have a monetary value, however that monetary value in fact scales with the monetary resources of the company it's held by (i.e. small companies cannot legally afford to enforce patent claims against behemoths that decide to fight), therefore there is a market incentive to create patent trolls (which increase the value of all patents by pooling them and amortizing prosecution cost/risk over a larger number of patents).
It would seem like if you instead pooled patents in a co-op arrangement, retaining ownership by their original creators, but pooling them with others for efficiency / risk purposes and to obtain the necessary scale for optimal enforcement. Then work out some amiable proceed-sharing method on the backend.
Win/win, and reducing the incentive for patent troll companies by providing an alternative. (Caveat: bad patents still need to be fixed at the USPTO source via additional funding / subject matter expert examiner requirements)
Is something like this at all feasible legally? Or does something prevent the batching together of patents from various actual owners under a single legal proceeding?
But that's my entire point. Currently, selling out to a patent troll (ignoring patents obtained from bankruptcies) is honestly the smartest move if you're a small company with a great patent. We should give such a company more socially-beneficial alternatives.
That is not why patents exist. Patents exist for the good of mankind to convince innovators to share their trade secrets with the public. Paying those innovators is not the goal, it is the means by which the goal is achieved, making the inventions public. You've confused the carrot for the end goal.
Anyone wanting to think about how to fix patents needs to first understand what the goal is, and paying inventors is not the goal.
Unless you'd like to offer feasible alternatives?
The way it works now is that most defendants want to settle because the legal costs are too high for the defendant, and the patent trolls know this. If the defendants pooled their money for anyone who took them to court and won (not even a full patent co-op, which has its own challenges) - would that change how the patent trolls did their math - and diminish their ability to sue many parties?
I think the biggest problem with fighting patent trolls after they've acquired the patents is that they're not really businesses. So you win... who's to say they'll pay? They have a lot of organizational options available to them that actual, functioning businesses likely do not.
Aka don't fight a battle on terrain where your opponent has greater flexibility than you
I'd be more inclined to fight the actual trolls politically. A) They don't create jobs, B) they've got relatively small financial reserves compared to a larger functioning business, and C) they probably fly flag-of-convenience corporate registration with minimal interaction with the state (not that that's probably rare)
Of course, caveat about standards being written and covering parents held by larger players.
- A patent troll has no products, which could infringe on a co-op's patents - So they can still sue you without risk of retaliation.
- A patent troll often has a financial structure designed to protect any assets that it wins through lawsuits (For instance, maybe if they win a lawsuit they could immediately pay a dividend to shareholders). So even if you win a lawsuit against them the main assets they hold are dodgy patents.
Or just quit, $625 million is a lot of money. You can only do that much dirty work.
Plus you don't wan't to milk the cow to a point it bleeds and dies.