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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The EFF is broken. They started as a First Amendment organization. Now they've become a front for the anti-patent lobby.

The EFF's own data on demand letters exposes their false claims about "patent trolls". [1] Only six patent holders on their list have sent more than two demand letters. There was one big patent troll who sent out hundreds of demand letters, and he lost in court years ago. With that one lawyer out of the picture, the "troll" problem went away.

Their legislative proposals are terrible. Allowing "independent invention" as a defense encourages companies to lie. A five year patent term is so short as to be useless; it takes about 3 years to get a patent issued.

Stop the EFF before they kill invention.

[1] https://trollingeffects.org/patent-owners

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> The EFF's own data on demand letters exposes their false claims about "patent trolls". [1] Only six patent holders on their list have sent more than two demand letters.

How did you reach that conclusion? As far as I can see, all that the data you cite shows is that only six patent holders on their list have had more than one recipient submit a copy of their letter to trollingeffects.org.

Lodsys, for instance, is only represented 3 times on trollingeffects.org, but they are known to have asserted those patents against dozens of defendants.

Most people who receive a demand letter do not submit it to trollingeffects.org. What most do is contact their lawyer, and their lawyer tells them not to make any public statements about the matter.

> Only six patent holders on their list have sent more than two demand letters.

The point is that monopolies on ideas are fundamentally unfair, and can only be justified if they provide substantial value over the norm. That might be true in some industries like Pharma, but it is provably false in Software.

When has something (in software) been invented by building on some text in a patent filing?

> When has something (in software) been invented by building on some text in a patent filing?

Hah! That's a great way to put it. Patents are supposed to be an exchange of (1) opening the idea to the public for (2) protection. Software patents, to my knowledge, do not do (1).

Arguably, other industries suffer the same trouble. Patent filers these days go to great lengths to disguise their meaning so that they are ambiguous enough to cover many things, and presumably, difficult to actually understand and borrow ideas.

> The point is that monopolies on ideas are fundamentally unfair...

I could just as easily say "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity is fundamentally unfair".

> ... but it is provably false in Software.

Citation needed? Many of the sources cited in OP have flaws and/or have been refuted elsewhere, especially studies by Bessen & co. Many of their other sources are from people who don't know the first thing about patents. They cite that "This American Life" episode where the clueless dude from M-CAM suggested there's a patent on toast, something that you'd know is BS with a glance at the actual claim and 5 minutes of research on Google.

On the other hand, there are studies showing that having patents increases the chances of software startups get VC funding and successful exits by a factor of four. How much innovation happens without funding? Even the majority of open source is financed by various industry sources.

> When has something (in software) been invented by building on some text in a patent filing?

And how often is something in software not been built by simply copying somebody else's ideas? Some ideas are harder to generate (e.g. RSA) than others (e.g. online pet store) and deserve protection.

> I could just as easily say "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity is fundamentally unfair".

You could, but it would be ludicrous. The very existence of human civilisation is due to "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity".

> And how often is something in software not been built by simply copying somebody else's ideas?

Who cares. Not copying ideas is not the purpose of patents, it's the exact opposite.

> On the other hand, there are studies showing that having patents increases the chances of software startups get VC funding

Again, irrelevant. Getting startup funding is not the purpose of patents.

If you want the role of patents to be to help startups then that should be their stated role. In which case, you'd probably only allow companies <5 years old to hold a patent, they'd only be valid for 5 years, and ownership could not be transferred. Of course then you have something very different from our current system, but frankly it sounds a lot better.

> free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity is fundamentally unfair

Ideas are not a rival good. When you share an idea with someone, you don't lose half of it. You both get the whole idea. So it's not a zero-sum game.

As long as the genius gets rewarded, free riding is fair.

> How much innovation happens without funding? […] Some ideas are harder to generate (e.g. RSA)

Well, the best and hardest ideas tend to be state-funded anyway. RSA for instance was funded by MIT salaries¹ (Rivest, Shadir, and Abelman worked there). ARPANET (now the internet) was basically a DOD project.

You're right, inventions need funding. Patent just aren't the only way —nor, I would argue, the most efficient.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_%28cryptosystem%29#History

Ah yes, the nefarious anti-patent lobby, attacking our freedoms again!

You seem to imply that patent trolls don't exist and are not a problem. Sure, there aren't many letters on that tiny web site you've cited. Why does this mean there aren't many patent letters going out in general? It's completely irrelevant.

As for the EFF's legislative proposals, you've seemingly cherrypicked one of the less interesting ones, and then argued that it won't work because the current patent system is so broken that it takes 3 years to get a patent.

They don't exist, yet they cost the industry upwards of $9B a year in settlement fees and legal costs.

I understand you're pro patent and your revenue might even depend on that. You also make useful tools which might be worthy of patents unlike many that the anti-software patent side fight. Yet, it's really, really biased to base your whole claim on how much patent holders are suing away competition & innovation based on some site I've never heard of that acts like only a handful of suits have happened.

Intellectual Ventures alone has pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of its investors... pro-patent, mostly-software firms... through a high volume of threats to other companies and lawsuits done with shell companies. They've contributed nothing to the market of value but sucked lots of money out of innovators. There's IPNav that sued at least 1,638 companies on behalf of its clients that largely aren't a blip on anyone's radar in market or straight-up failed in it. There's a number that are publicly traded specializing in nothing but patent collection and lawsuits to generate revenue w/ returns ranging from 8.59% to 71.41%. They're listed under RMBS, VRNG, PRKR, ASUR, NTIP, and UPIP.

These companies are collectively raking in billions off of firms making actual software and hardware. They often rip off the patent inventors, too, by given them pittances for these patents they later make big bucks off of. So, EFF is defending our liberties by saying something (patent law) designed to get actual inventions to the public while benefiting the little guy is being used as an extortion racket by one set of predators and to suppress competition from little guys by another set of predators. Most evidence is in our favor, esp with companies I listed.

Now, given Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, and the large public firms, are you still on the position that no threat exists to innovators from patent system and no reform is necessary to limit that?

http://www.businessinsider.com/revealed-how-giant-patent-tro...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/business/has-patent-will-s...

http://patentvue.com/2014/05/02/stock-performance-publicly-t...

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