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Comment by novalis | Hacker News Reader

Patent troll company setup for nothing more than litigation, just one of the many problems with that.

Where does the patent troll company get the patent? Either they invent something or buy the patent from an inventor or from someone who bought it from an inventor.

The problem with patent trolls is that they are too often working with patents that shouldn't have ever been granted in the first place, and that it's so expensive to defend against a lawsuit, it makes sense to just settle silently.

There are many things wrong with the current implementation that can be fixed without throwing out the whole notion of intellectual property protection for inventions.

Especially now that the US has moved to a first-to-file system, there's no guarantee that the patent holder is the inventor. Separately from that, some patent troll companies file obvious, overbroad patents without implementing them (e.g. the classic case being doing <X> on the Internet, of course) to build up their stockpile. Just because they might end up with some patents when their junk sticks doesn't make them an inventor.

That is what I meant by "shouldn't have been granted in the first place"

How is that different from first-to-invent system?

Concept of prior-art still exists in first-to-file system.

If we reformed the system to force the patent holder to actually market a real product using the patent in order to be able to sue to defend the patent, making them more similar to trademarks, this would solve the pure patent troll problem. Unfortunately it wouldn't stop the mobile patent wars.

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