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Comment by PythonicAlpha | Hacker News Reader

Not only pharma: What about ARM? As much as I know, they even don't have a chip factory. They just deal with their chip-designs (I am not sure, if it falls under copyright or the patent system -- but it is just a chip design, some ideas and such they are selling).

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The ARM holding company makes designs and maintains the ARM instruction set and licenses them to manufacturers or designers under a processor license, (for a specific processor without modification), a POP license, (a processor optimized for you if you can't do it yourself), or rarely, an architecture license. Architecture licenses allow you to do whatever you want as long as it implements the ARM ISA. Apple holds an ARM architecture license for the Cortex A15 used to develop the Swift core in the A7 and A8.

See http://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-ho... for more information.

I think there's a couple of distinctions to be made between trolls and more legitimate IP owners:

- trolls usually aren't the original IP creator,

- trolls' patents often cover trivial material, or ideas which are included in prior art.

I'm gessing that ARM patents are not trivial.

Yes, you are right. But the distinction that should divide trolls from non-trolls (at least, as much, as the big corporations wanted) was mainly, if a company produces something related to the patent. And that is in my opinion the worst classification you can find (it is handy of course for the big corporations).

But does the link make that distinction? I didn't think it did.

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