The Patent Troll: Making a fortune off other people's ideas | Hacker News Reader

The Patent Troll: Making a fortune off other people's ideas

good.is

52 pointsjakarta25 comments

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. A patent is a tool for doing 1% of the work and then waiting for someone else to do the other 99% so you can sue.

I'm being a bit extreme there... I think there should be something like a patent. But, it should be very hard to get. Maybe only 1% of current patents should have been allowed. It might be lower than that.

A patent should only be allowed on something fundamental, conceptual, highly novel, and unprecedented, and there should be a significant burden of proof on the patenter to prove all that.

A patent should only be allowed on something fundamental, conceptual, highly novel, and unprecedented, and there should be a significant burden of proof on the patenter to prove all that.

Agreed, except I would substitute "tangible" for "conceptual," as the current laxness in the system could, arguably, be attributed to a departure from a tangibility requirement.

Patents work very well in more traditional arts, for example mechanical devices. They're not perfect, but they're good enough at stimulating innovation that most countries have a patent system and they actively encourage their citizens to use it. They're also time tested: the US framers thought so much of patents that they wrote the patent system into our tiny Constitution.

> Spangenberg argues that companies such as Microsoft and Ford know patent negotiation is one of the costs of doing business.

I really, really hate this argument. "This negative thing is accepted as inevitable, so why is it bad that I am proactively part of that negative thing?". I don't know how to explain why, but I do know it screams complete and total lack of ethics, only justification.

I'm just waiting for another patent troll to troll one of his legitimate businesses.

It's rationalization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_%28making_excus...

The statement is just as much a way of convincing himself that what he's doing is right as it is a way to convince anyone else. It's like a murderer who justifies murder by saying "They were going to die sometime anyway." People don't want to live with the knowledge that they're bad, so they come up with justifications for it.

When it comes down to it, patent trolls are only a symptom of the real problem - the fact that far too many obvious patents are granted. If the only patents granted were ones that companies would be unlikely to come up with of their own accord when they faced a given problem, patent trolls would be substantially less common, and more justifiable.

Exactly. If it makes business sense to wait for someone to accidentally infringe on your patent, you clearly shouldn't have that patent.

Very well put! I shall be snagging that line for future use, if you don't mind.

I used to hate patent trolls. But now I realize that they are actually doing a public good. Basically they are sticking it to the big companies that created this patent mess to begin with. Love it! Karma is a bitch...

Um, er, the trolls go after the small fry, too.

True, but how much money can you get out of a small fry 30 million dollar company as opposed to a 30 billion dollar company? It may be that paying 100 million or 500 million dollars for a settlement may not be that much for a 30 billion dollar company but the cost is a lot more than that. They spent several million dollars paying the lawyers and then there is the cost of the distraction. Thrust me, if I'm a patent troll, I rather go after the big fish where the payoff is so big. And the more lawyers and resources they have the more it costs them to defend the lawsuit to the point were it makes more business sense to just settle for several millions of dollars. Otherwise defending the lawsuit would cost them more than the actual settlement amount. Makes a lot more business sense to go after the big boys doesn't it? I love it that the big guys who pushed for the current patent system were too stupid to realize this big flaw in the system.

It's not that simplistic. It's important to go after a mix of companies (of different sizes, strength) so that you can set precedence, get quick settlements (i.e., funding to help playing chicken with the deep pockets), etc.

This is an entertaining and timeless story. "Trolling" is, alas, inevitable due to the transferable nature of patent rights. (Troll-like cases are perhaps 1/20 of patent infringements filed.) But, the victims of trolling are not entirely without blame -- small inventors and start ups are frequently told to "scram" by large companies when they are informed of their potential infringement. Without a bankroll, contingency litigation is the only option for the small guy.

The problem surrounding the current patent regime is not that those being sued are blameless, it's that patents do not encourage innovation anymore. As you stated, companies that actually bring products to market are not ideally suited to launch patent lawsuits.

Only non-practicing entities (i.e. patent "trolls") can sue with great abandon because they don't sell anything that they could be counter-sued for.

They call it patent trolling; I call it poetic justice.

The companies that are extorted by patent trolls are the same group that agitated for today's over-broad patent system in the hope that they could wall out smaller competitors with thickets of mutually cross-licensed defensive patents. They created the conditions for parasites to thrive - now they have to live with the consequences.

...or they could support patent reform.

Well, sort of. Not every company that's a victim of patent trolling is to blame for the overzealousness of patent law. So not everyone got what they deserved.

Indeed. I feel kind of bad for Hyundai. As best I know, they weren't even here when all the patent law stuff was going down.

That's a true in a scorched earth sort of way - the smaller competitors are still collateral damage.

I do hope you're right, that the companies that agitated for this system will realize their mistake - better to go up against smaller nimbler competitors, many of whose exit strategies include getting bought out - than against well-funded patent trolls whose only strategy is force a tax on you and provide no value in return.

I disagree completely. The biggest patent bullies have a gigantic portfolio to kill or milk any possible competitor. In particular some of the big software houses. Patent trolls don't bite IBM/Microsoft/Oracle just like piranhas don't prey on each other. They go attack/bully weaker prey. Most patent trolls seem to rarely go against any corporation with a big legal team/budget.

IBM vs. Sun: http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html (It's great this was published on Forbes, else I'd be dismissed as a waco lefty, just like their reporting on Enron at about the same time.)

Is that true? The troll in this article seemed to be going up against some major companies. I'm no lawyer, but it seems like if you're looking for 8-figure payoffs it would be better to hit up companies for whom that's a minor expense, not an existential threat.

Competitors don't go after them because the competitor has too much to lose. Patent trolls do, because the shell company has nothing to lose, and no products to protect from its target's patent portfolio

I would draw a distinction between patent trolls who target multi-million dollar companies, and patent trolls who target small independent entrepreneurs who are crushed by the litigation.

A lot of multi-million dollar companies were started by a small independent entrepreneur at some point. I'm sure those entrepreneurs aren't any happier about patent trolls just because they've met with some level of success.

Do you see many of these? I don't...seems like it's only worth it if the in infringing party has money.

I'm going to guess that there are very few patent trolls that target small independent entrepreneurs. Not out of the goodness of their heart, but simply because that isn't where the money is.

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