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Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

> With bad patent-troll legislation, it could be possible to make things bad for legit inventors. Just think, somebody has invented something and is seeking investors. Now comes a big corporation and steals his invention and builds it. With a patent reform that does ignore such people, he even could be blocked to defend his patent (what is currently difficult enough, because he needs much money to do that).

The problem with the existing patent system is the other way around. You come up with an invention only to realize that five of the seven components are each individually patented by the incumbents. Which means that if you do anything they don't like, including trying to enforce your patent against them, they can easily destroy you with litigation.

It is beyond silly to claim that patent reform would harm small inventors when it is the status quo that harms small inventors.

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>It is beyond silly to claim that patent reform would harm small inventors when it is the status quo that harms small inventors.

It might be, that the status quo harms small inventors. But I wanted to give a different perspective on the one thing that is in focus with the last patent reforms. What you describe, has nothing to do with that.

The problem is, that the intention of the reform was to prevent parties with no own production to sue other companies because of patent infringements. And such a move would of course block some patent trolls (not all) but also would massively harm small or single person inventors.

   "It is beyond silly to claim that" any reform will make things better.

I have seen so many reforms in other areas, that just made things worse -- I would even say most of the "reforms" I have seen.

> The problem is, that the intention of the reform was to prevent parties with no own production to sue other companies because of patent infringements. And such a move would of course block some patent trolls (not all) but also would massively harm small or single person inventors.

You're claiming that small inventors would be unable to enforce their patents against larger competitors, what I'm saying is that that is the status quo. Future passage of patent reform cannot cause that to happen because it has already happened and causality requires the cause to precede the effect. Patent reform could allow small inventors to better enforce their patents because they wouldn't have to worry as much about counterclaims using low quality patents that would currently cause them to be bankrupted with litigation costs.

> I have seen so many reforms in other areas, that just made things worse -- I would even say most of the "reforms" I have seen.

That isn't an argument. You're effectively saying that most change is bad therefore all change is bad. The premise is questionable and the conclusion doesn't follow from it in any event.

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