>>Pays what? They will create a few LLCs for each case with next to zero assets. If they lose the case the patents are almost by definition worthless, so they get nothing.
Sounds like fraud to me. I'm sure this loop hole could get closed.
Sounds like fraud to me. I'm sure this loop hole could get closed.
Where is that $30k going to come from? It doesn't exist. If you think that this is a case where you should breach the limited liability provided by incorporating, you're opening a pretty huge can of worms - it's pretty much the basis of our economy.
It's a lot more complex than "you can't do that".
Especially when the possible costs are basically known (you have no customers except yourself, and you control your own costs), you are deliberately underfunding. Maybe that's not even so bad. Doing so specifically to avoid the intent of an act of congress, is, well, a bad idea.
Courts make factual distinctions between cases all the time when deciding whether to pierce the corporate veil, and i can't see why they wouldn't do so here.
Note that limited liability corporations are fairly new. The world got along just fine when shareholders were responsible for the actions of companies. It made the shareholders more careful in investing.
You act as if this is a slippery slope where if we differentiate here we've given up the ball game. If that's what you think, well, that ball game was given up long ago. We already have different pleading requirements for different types of lawsuits, etc. This is all done to serve various end policy goals. The business model you give is not the end goal of patents. It's not clear why supporting it should be a policy goal, and as of right now, it isn't. The end goal is to encourage innovation as well as R&D, not to create license revenue. These are separate things.
This scheme seems to be solving the wrong problem (The right problem is to answer the question "What is patentable?").