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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

An exercise for hardy souls: Go into the patent database, and do a search for video or television over the Internet. (Networks, packet switched networks.) Note the number of patents that show up. Start reading them. Note how many of these are obviously pure trolls. It's just endless.

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How can one know from reading a patent whether it's a "pure troll?"

Ask: How is the patent being used?

If the patent holder is not manufacturing a product but is threatening to sue others based on the patent, it's trolling.

IV manufactures nothing. However, through shell corporations, they threaten to sue others. This motivates their targets to participate in the IV pools and IV takes a cut.

This idea of threatening enforcement where the patent holder has no intent to ever manufacture is not something new. But no one ever liked it when it happened. That's because it serves no apparent purpose in bringing products to the market.

What makes IV unique is that Myrvold used his own money to start IV and start acquiring patents from patent holders in bulk. This was no small investment. His idea is to make trolling a business. Instead of trying to fix a problem, he has opted to exacerbate it for his own profit. He is engaging in exactly the type of conduct companies like the one he worked for had to be in constant fear of: the small inventor who will never be successful in the marketplace but who has received some patents that she can, at her discretion, enforce against some large companies that are successful in the marketplace.

For an interesting approach to how patents might be used, consult the history of Hans Bessemer. He produced some of the most valuable intellectual property in America's history. He made Carnegie the world's wealthiest individual.

Also, note that Paul Allen, one of the wealthiest men on the planet, tried some pure patent trolling a number of years ago. Why? He failed miserably. But what drives someone to try this?

I'll ask again then. How can one know from reading a patent whether or not it's a pure troll?

Patents don't troll. People do. For example, people who run companies, like the shell companies IV incorporates.

It's not the patent that reveals trolling. Rather, what indicates trolling are the actions of the person running the company that controls the patent.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your question.

No, I think we understand each other. I was replying to a comment about reading a patent to see if it was a "pure troll" which is impossible.

Does it claim the entire problem (by handwaving around aspects which will necessarily appear in any possible solution) rather than a specific solution which might be invented around? Is it the solution any practitioner will immediately produce upon first facing the problem (i.e., what "obvious" means everywhere outside patent law), so devoid of creative steps that writing it down was considered a waste of time? Was it "disclosed" in the patent repository (that mountain of obfuscated drivel we're well advised never to look at, on penalty of bigger lawsuits) and nowhere else?

I'm not trained in these matters, but it seems to me, that attempts to patent general notions like "video over the Internet" were primarily there to cast as wide a net as possible and put there by people who had no real invention but who did have a vague idea that this would be an area of economic interest in the future. A lot of those don't even seem to have any specific mechanisms to bring benefits like better compression, though they might have claims to that effect.

The fact that the general practice is to make claims as broad (and therefore vague) as possible doesn't leave me with good feelings about the system. Neither does the weird legalese that the patents consist of.

You know as well as I do that you can't. It is an absolutely absurd statement. This is just typical of a lot of the completely misinformed nonsense that passes for comment on patents.

Yeah, but I thought I'd ask the question instead of just saying "You don't know what you're talking about."

It is pretty clear what he meant; any patent that makes a ridiculously broad generalization was created just to sue everyone and get money or to take its competitors out of business.

Example: I patent the way of moving my leg in front of my other leg when that other leg is my only limb supporting my weight in order to repeat this process to make a displacement of my body mass (AKA walking)

What I suspect monochromatic is trying to point out is that patents are not easy to read and understand. Not even for patent lawyers. Maybe even by design. And that even if you do understand a patent, this generally says nothing about why it was filed.

Or do you expect executives to regularly review potential patent applications to avoid those that are potentially "too good" for the business?

Even when a patent is clear as day, it's not obvious on the face of it whether or not it's being used for trolling, or will be used for trolling. Trolling is all about who owns the thing, and what they want to use it for... not about how the patent was drafted. (At least not mostly about how it was drafted.)

What I suspect monochromatic is trying to point out is that patents are not easy to read and understand. Not even for patent lawyers. Maybe even by design.

This seems to indicate that patents are written in a way guided by their adversarial purposes. This is broken.

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