Where did I say it could be perfect? The breadth of a lot of these is troubling. The few business method patents I'm familiar with were little more than a flow chart of vague systems.
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Patent Trolls (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Idiot Boxer
- Start date
SacramentoBob
Footballguy
Otis
Footballguy
I'm just saying I don't think this is the right place to address the issue. I believe patent examination quality is improving--Kappos during his tenure did quite a bit to increase the size and strength of the examiner pool, cut way back on delays, expanded the budget, focused on examiner training, etc. Examination is getting better, but I don't think that's the best place to address the issue. Most of these abuses are abuses based on the assertion of the patents, not the patents themselves.
I looked at a patent the other day that was originally drafted 20 years ago with then-current technology in mind, and now it's being asserted against every website out there. The patent as properly construed may be valid, but he's overstretching the bounds of it to extort payments. It's not an examination issue, and these are the kinds of patent troll cases that come up all the time. It's pretty clear that the infringement argument is bogus, but when he's only asking for 50k per party to settle out, he's making money hand over fist. But if someone can meaningfully challenge that infringement claim for something south of 500k, suddenly it starts to become interesting, and someone will have balls enough to step up and stick it to that guy.
I just don't think the problem is with patent quality as much as it is with the cost of defending a weak patent assertion. Just my .02.
I appreciate your perspective. What is your opinion on the whole Apple/Samsung saga? It seems like this is a place where assertions keep getting held up despite being overly broad (at least to a layperson).
commisholio
Come out with your pants down!
Patent examination is really, really hard and way more expensive and time consuming to do right than we are willing to pay.
Todd Andrews
Footballguy
Prenda are copyright trolls and they were crushed. Righthaven are another scummy group of copyright lawyer trolls who have been properly schooled.
Chaka
Footballguy
Hastur
Footballguy
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GroveDiesel
Footballguy
This is freaking unreal. These trolls are suing a company because they assume that most businesses that size infringe their patent. They have absolutely zero proof that the company in question actually infringes. They don't even know what equipment they use. A total outrage.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/after-a-year-of-threats-first-suit-is-filed-over-hated-scanner-patents/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/after-a-year-of-threats-first-suit-is-filed-over-hated-scanner-patents/
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cstu
Footballguy
Otis
Footballguy
GroveDiesel
Footballguy
You mean the free market where the government assigns and enforces goofy process patents like hooking up a scanner and computer in order to scan to email?
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
I don't see how any government assigned monopoly is a free market. It's pretty much the opposite.
Otis
Footballguy
There's a free market in obtaining/buying/selling those monopolies, no? It's really no different from a real estate market.
GroveDiesel
Footballguy
You can't obtain, buy or sell an idea. You can only obtain, buy or sell the government created rights to it. Real goods like property can only be possessed by a limited number of people. An idea can be possessed by everyone quite easily. The only thing preventing everyone from using that knowledge is the government.So no, it's not a free market at all.
I think that there are perfectly good arguments for why patents/copyrights/trademarks/etc. benefit everyone more than not having them, but let's not pretend that it's actually part of the free market.
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NCCommish
Footballguy
munga30
Checkin' my email
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
[SIZE=medium]I think property rights are distinct from the question of whether there is a free market in something or not. I could create a property rights scheme that was solely possessory right now. Everybody has an absolute property right to the items that they possess, right now, on their person. Everybody has property rights, but they don’t have a free market (because I’ve made no allowance for alienability). [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]So we have a paradox. Property rights are necessary to a free market, but they are also restrictions on a free market. I may be able to produce cheaper, better wine from your vineyard, but your property rights grant you a monopoly over the use of your vineyard. The more we extend that monopoly, the more we intrude into free market principles. If we give you a monopoly over the production of wine in Sonoma County, the market is less free. If we give you a monopoly over the production of wine in the Northern Hemisphere, it is less free still. And each expansion of that monopoly power will also (within limits) expand your ability to extract monopoly rents over the price of the marginal cost of making wine, defeating the purpose of the free market. The entire stated premise behind IP, is that a certain departure from free market principles is necessary for innovation.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]I realize we’re all kind of saying the same thing, which is to be a #### to CSTU. If he had said “Why does Goodlatte hate innovation?” we wouldn’t be down this rabbit hole. But it’s just a weird comment.[/SIZE]
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
[SIZE=medium]You’ll have to explain your thinking here.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]I can understand the argument that, in theory, no consumer is forced to pay monopoly rents, which is why I mentioned in my hypothetical that there were limits to Otis’ ability to charge monopoly rents on wine. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]But if you’re somehow arguing that patent rights do not tend to grant patent recipients market power, I have to strongly disagree. Anything that decreases competition increases market power. Government granted monopolies reduce competition. Anyone who’s ever tried to buy a prescription drug before a generic is available understands that.[/SIZE]
munga30
Checkin' my email
Maybe I'm mixing up the law and the econ, but I thought market power was needed to have a monopoly. I could be wrong about that and I'm thinking about the requirements for an illegal monopoly (e.g., sufficient market power).
I do know that there's no presumption in the law that patents confer market power, unanimously affirmed by the Supremes in Illinois Tool Works. And you also seem to be arguing against that.
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Otis
Footballguy
We could all share the same land, just like we share the same ideas. But that pesky government stepped in and made laws, and now there's no longer a free market in my backyard because I can tell everyone trespassing there to get the hell out. And the government will even back me up on it if I need them too!
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
[SIZE=medium]A patent is a monopoly. It grants market power, by definition, over the market covered by the four corners of the patent. That market, of course, may be very small or even useless, but the patent holder maintains market power over that market. In other monopoly cases, where we’re not dealing with an express monopoly grant, we try to determine whether a monopoly exists by determining whether market power exists. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Illinois Tool Works is a tying case. Stevens isn’t talking about market power in the “market” covered by the patented invention. He’s talking about market power in the market containing the tied product. So just because I have an exclusive right to license, say 3D printers, that doesn’t mean that my policy of making the licensees of those printers purchase consumables from me grants me per se market power in the market for 3D printer consumables.[/SIZE]
cstu
Footballguy
I agree and was pointing out that Republicans seem to be against regulation except when they're in favor of it.
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Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
[SIZE=medium]I want to be clear. When I say that patents are anti-competitive, I’m not saying that they are wrong. I’m being descriptive, not prescriptive. I think you’d have to go pretty far afield from even the most persistent critics of our IP laws to find someone who thinks that patent monopolies are bad in every instance. I don’t know anybody who believes that. There really isn’t a “copyleft” for patents. Criticisms of patents are normally much more limited.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]We might think that the law should be a bit more clear about restricting what is patentable subject matter.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]We might think that it should be easier to determine that an invention is obvious under the law. These scan to email inventions are a good example. I have no idea whether each element of these claims are disclosed in prior art and whether there was a clear motivation to combine the prior art. I just know that as a gestalt matter, the idea of being able to scan to email over a computer network just seems obvious to me. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]We might think that it’s kind of silly that every type of invention gets a 20 year patent term. 20 years is a much longer time in the computer software industry than in the manufacturing industry. We might not care if there’s a 20 year bottleneck in making widget more efficiently (or at least we might think that there would be a longer bottleneck in the absence of a strong monopoly incentive to improve the process), but the math could be completely different in industries where change happens faster (in IT this is generally solved by cross licensing, but that’s not necessarily an efficient solution).[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]We might think that the law should be a bit more clear about restricting what is patentable subject matter.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]We might think that it should be easier to determine that an invention is obvious under the law. These scan to email inventions are a good example. I have no idea whether each element of these claims are disclosed in prior art and whether there was a clear motivation to combine the prior art. I just know that as a gestalt matter, the idea of being able to scan to email over a computer network just seems obvious to me. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]We might think that it’s kind of silly that every type of invention gets a 20 year patent term. 20 years is a much longer time in the computer software industry than in the manufacturing industry. We might not care if there’s a 20 year bottleneck in making widget more efficiently (or at least we might think that there would be a longer bottleneck in the absence of a strong monopoly incentive to improve the process), but the math could be completely different in industries where change happens faster (in IT this is generally solved by cross licensing, but that’s not necessarily an efficient solution).[/SIZE]
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
[SIZE=medium]I’m not sure I understand the relevance of these comments. Patents are granted by the government. There’s no position in the debate that is anti-regulatory, as any position alters the private property rights of patent holders against others. [/SIZE]
NCCommish
Footballguy
That's what I was responding to. It seems people are confusing the market with regulation of the market.
GroveDiesel
Footballguy
Yeah, you are the one confusing them. When the government takes something free and then creates a property right out of thin air and assigns it to somebody we're no longer talking about a free market or regulation. We're talking about the government creating a new monopoly where one didn't previously exist.
![[icon]](/data/avatars/m/5/5167.jpg?1660313464){kind=avatar}
[icon]
Insoxicated
This is sorta a silly statement. Of course Republicans are against regulation except for when they're for it. Do you truly expect any party to take a blanket statement against any and all regulation? Of course not.
Certain areas require regulation. Others are subjective. Others, the regulation simply adds noise to an otherwise functioning free market.
I don't identify myself with any particular party, but in the realm of federal interference in free markets I'm decidedly more republican than democrat with a less is more approach.
Idiot Boxer
Footballguy
You're strictly considering this on the micro level. It is granting a limited monopoly on the ability to produce or license the use of a specific idea or technology invented by the patent holder. As to that idea, it may have created a monopoly. As to the marketplace of ideas - it is merely a regulated marketplace.
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
[SIZE=medium]A monopoly isn’t a regulated market place. It’s a space that has been removed from the competitive marketplace. I realize that we are arguing about semantics, but the semantics have meaning.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]The reason why the comment is kind of meaningless is that if we take the “macro view” it’s not at all apparent what position is “regulatory” or “anti-regulatory”. Without getting into specifics, let’s say that Goodlatte wants to make it harder to assert some patent rights. Ok, that’s “regulatory” with respect to patent holders, but it’s anti-regulatory with respect to people who use purportedly patented inventions. If a patent holder can invoke the power of the State by suing people scanning to email over their HP OfficeJets, then those users are facing greater regulation. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]In fact, I’m not sure Goodlatte’s bill is really about the patent right at all. It’s about companies' obligations before they are able to make use of the courts (or more broadly to threaten to make use of the courts). So I don’t see how the “free market” or “regulated” markets have anything to do with this. This isn’t regulating commerce. It’s regulating speech and access to the court system. [/SIZE]
Otis
Footballguy
Otis
Footballguy
Correct. Goodlatte's bill and the other pending legislation don't directly impact patent rights. They're directed at patent litigation and enforcement. They impact the way that patent holders go about litigating, and dramatically increases their risks in doing so in some respects, and in other respects level the playing field in litigation (in ways that are primarily intended to curtail the patent troll problem).
It's not all that relevant to the discussion of whether patents are good or bad.
SacramentoBob
Footballguy
Clifton's notes of what this bill is proposing?
Otis
Footballguy
SacramentoBob
Footballguy
Otis
Footballguy
John Bender
Footballguy
For those interest in a more layman breakdown of this whole thing, Adam Carolla covered it pretty well on his podcast today.
He is being sued by a patent troll and paying legal bills of +20k a month but refuses to stop fighting them. He is being sued over the way his podcast is distributed. Ostensibly other podcasters are being sued as well.
Worth a listen if you're interested.
He is being sued by a patent troll and paying legal bills of +20k a month but refuses to stop fighting them. He is being sued over the way his podcast is distributed. Ostensibly other podcasters are being sued as well.
Worth a listen if you're interested.
Josie Maran
Footballguy
Patent trolls get a setback from the Supreme Court.
http://www.dailydot.com/news/elliptical-machine-supreme-court-patent-troll/
http://www.dailydot.com/news/elliptical-machine-supreme-court-patent-troll/
SacramentoBob
Footballguy
Ramsay Hunt Experience
Footballguy
I think FindTheBest likely had a very good exceptional case argument even before the Octane Fitness decision based on those facts.
Johnny Rock
Footballguy
Totally awesome.
Homer J Simpson
I don't push
johnnyrock62000 said:
Otis
Footballguy
These fee awards are going to be largely dependent on the particular district court and judge. Much less widely reported are a couple or other district court decisions since Octane which did NOT award fees (one of which I believe was dead wrong).
Hopefully we do see more decisions like this, but if this case had been before a different judge, I bet FTB would not have won the fee award.
Hopefully we do see more decisions like this, but if this case had been before a different judge, I bet FTB would not have won the fee award.
GroveDiesel
Footballguy
Yeah, from what I read, Harry Reid killed this thing. Very unfortunate.
And yup, the Supremes are smacking down the Appeals Court left and right and making changes in their own.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/supreme-court-raises-bar-on-vague-patents-in-rulings/
Software patents are crumbling, thanks to the Supreme Court
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/12/6138483/software-patents-are-crumbling-thanks-to-the-supreme-court
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/12/6138483/software-patents-are-crumbling-thanks-to-the-supreme-court
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