6 ms·

I don't think you understand the difference between a patent troll and an IP company. The company I work for designs antennae for cell phones, wifi, GPS receiv

I don't think you understand the difference between a patent troll and an IP company. The company I work for designs antennae for cell phones, wifi, GPS receivers etc. We barely have a website, just a couple of PhDs and a lawyer. We rely on licencing our designs and file a lot of patents. It's judgements like this that stop cell phone makers deciding that it's cheaper to just copy our inventions than pay us a licence fee. The fine is supposed to be a dtterent - to say that it should be limited to what the company was bought for is like saying the fine for murdering a child should be limited to the hospital maternity bill.

hugh3 16y ago
Hold on, so what is the difference between your company and a patent troll? Not that I'm accusing you guys, I'm just not sure how I can readily draw the line between the two.
- lkjuhygthyujk 16y ago
  Simple - Patent trolls file suits against cool hip trendy geek friendly companies like Apple and Google. IP companies protect their investment when it's stolen by big evil companies like Microsoft or Sony.
  - nopassrecover 16y ago
    It's only an investment if you plan to use it later for some other purpose than suing people that turn an idea into reality and actually contribute realisation of that idea to society. As it stands society will never benefit from most inventions unless a "big evil company" "steals" the idea (through their own research presumably) and turns it into reality.
    - lkjuhygthyujk 16y ago
      If I only I could get a patent on irony - unfortunately it would mean getting Americans to understand it.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  Perhaps they actually invent and design useful things and then license them.
  - natch 16y ago
    Good answer and I agree with it, but most of the time these ideas are invented and reinvented many times, easily, and they should not be protected by the government. You can describe a problem to a six year old and they can come up with patentable inventions that solve the problem. This says more about our patent system than it does about six year olds.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      If an idea is obvious then it is not patentable (in theory). Additionally, if there is prior art that captures the claims then it should also not be patentable. I feel like patent law covers this pretty well. The big problem to me are patents, common in software, that do the following: 1) They target a new problem that didn't exist before. 2) Have a trivial solution to this new problem. 3) Then one can claim that this patent is non-obvious since no one else has done this before. The interesting thing is not the actual patent, but the problem it is solving. In SW this happens because the industry changes so quickly, but the patented ideas are obvious, its just that the problems are new. I propose that we add a new test to patentability -- prior art that this problem has been attempted or struggled with. Thus if your solution is the first one to ever been attempted on a given problem its defacto non-patentable. A quick example is in order: SMS comes out with 148 character limits. Someone then instantly patents URL shorteners to fit in the 148 character limit. Patent denied as there is no prior attempted solutions or struggles fitting URLs in it. (Note, if the patenter can find articles written by practitioners about how SMS is not useful because of link lengths then that would be applicable as prior attempt).
  - lkjuhygthyujk 16y ago
    Thats what we do - your problem is to get a certain signal level in as small as space on the PCB as possible. We use our 20years each of studying physics, software we spent a lot of time and money writing, and a lot of expensive test gear - to design a clever pattern of copper. That's all we sell - the shape of that patch of copper. ARM sell the shape of some layers of photoresist - same difference.
jcromartie 16y ago
Do you guys really produce designs that are used by companies, or do you just hope to be ahead of their designs so that you can force them into licensing the designs they would have come up with otherwise by threat of lawsuits?
unexpected 16y ago
I don't even think you should receive a patent unless you intend to commercialize it. In this system, you have incentives to make your patent as broad as possible, as well as look for "me-too" patents that you can get by studying existing ones. If your sole source of revenue is licensing the patents that you've created, you're a patent troll. The initial patent wasn't intended for this. The patent wasn't originally intended for this. It was there to protect small inventors as they brought their ideas commercial. When Edison brought is light bulb to the market, only he could create light bulbs. This helped protect him from larger, more established firms, from copying his design so he could get his business bearings. What you are doing is not that. You research some idea, patent it, then pocket it away until it's handy for you. If you make no attempt to show your patents, seek funding, or otherwise try to commercialize the idea, then you're a patent troll.
- commandar 16y ago
  >If your sole source of revenue is licensing the patents that you've created, you're a patent troll. Isn't that essentially ARM's business model?
  - jcromartie 16y ago
    ARM actually designs and licenses whole chip architectures. You can license a design from ARM and have it built it without much additional engineering.
  - unexpected 16y ago
    I don't include ARM in this list b/c they actually market their products and their whole business model revolves around taking the "headache" out of the R&D of chip design. ARM aggressively markets their products and chip designs, showing benchmarks of their technologies. Most patent trolls fly under the radar, trying not to get noticed, so a major corporation can violate the patent in a huge, best-selling product. Then, they can claim "well, you should have checked all available technologies" - which is a huge waste of effort. There's no incentive for patent trolls to aggressively market their products, b/c that doesn't bring the biggest returns. Look at this suit that just went against Apple - if Apple had negotiated a long-term license with them back in 2004, it would have been on really bad terms - no one knew that the iPhone would be this successful (except for maybe Apple). There are perverse incentives in place to try and "hide" the patent as much as possible, and then wait for the biggest fish to show up. One really big fish is worth a thousand smaller fish, and when a really big fish falls, it discourages all the small fish from entering the marketplace all together - to the detriment of everyone.
orangecat 16y ago
It's judgements like this that stop cell phone makers deciding that it's cheaper to just copy our inventions than pay us a licence fee. When they "copy" your "inventions", are they actually reading your patents and building exactly the same thing? Or are they solving the problem in a way that is straightforward for skilled engineers, thereby producing a design that resembles yours even though they've never seen it? If it's the latter, and you're suing them for it, then yes, you're working for a patent troll.

hugh3 16y ago

Hold on, so what is the difference between your company and a patent troll? Not that I'm accusing you guys, I'm just not sure how I can readily draw the line between the two.

lkjuhygthyujk 16y ago
Simple - Patent trolls file suits against cool hip trendy geek friendly companies like Apple and Google. IP companies protect their investment when it's stolen by big evil companies like Microsoft or Sony.
- nopassrecover 16y ago
  It's only an investment if you plan to use it later for some other purpose than suing people that turn an idea into reality and actually contribute realisation of that idea to society. As it stands society will never benefit from most inventions unless a "big evil company" "steals" the idea (through their own research presumably) and turns it into reality.
  - lkjuhygthyujk 16y ago
    If I only I could get a patent on irony - unfortunately it would mean getting Americans to understand it.
glhaynes 16y ago
Perhaps they actually invent and design useful things and then license them.
- natch 16y ago
  Good answer and I agree with it, but most of the time these ideas are invented and reinvented many times, easily, and they should not be protected by the government. You can describe a problem to a six year old and they can come up with patentable inventions that solve the problem. This says more about our patent system than it does about six year olds.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    If an idea is obvious then it is not patentable (in theory). Additionally, if there is prior art that captures the claims then it should also not be patentable. I feel like patent law covers this pretty well. The big problem to me are patents, common in software, that do the following: 1) They target a new problem that didn't exist before. 2) Have a trivial solution to this new problem. 3) Then one can claim that this patent is non-obvious since no one else has done this before. The interesting thing is not the actual patent, but the problem it is solving. In SW this happens because the industry changes so quickly, but the patented ideas are obvious, its just that the problems are new. I propose that we add a new test to patentability -- prior art that this problem has been attempted or struggled with. Thus if your solution is the first one to ever been attempted on a given problem its defacto non-patentable. A quick example is in order: SMS comes out with 148 character limits. Someone then instantly patents URL shorteners to fit in the 148 character limit. Patent denied as there is no prior attempted solutions or struggles fitting URLs in it. (Note, if the patenter can find articles written by practitioners about how SMS is not useful because of link lengths then that would be applicable as prior attempt).
- lkjuhygthyujk 16y ago
  Thats what we do - your problem is to get a certain signal level in as small as space on the PCB as possible. We use our 20years each of studying physics, software we spent a lot of time and money writing, and a lot of expensive test gear - to design a clever pattern of copper. That's all we sell - the shape of that patch of copper. ARM sell the shape of some layers of photoresist - same difference.

jcromartie 16y ago

Do you guys really produce designs that are used by companies, or do you just hope to be ahead of their designs so that you can force them into licensing the designs they would have come up with otherwise by threat of lawsuits?

unexpected 16y ago

I don't even think you should receive a patent unless you intend to commercialize it. In this system, you have incentives to make your patent as broad as possible, as well as look for "me-too" patents that you can get by studying existing ones. If your sole source of revenue is licensing the patents that you've created, you're a patent troll. The initial patent wasn't intended for this. The patent wasn't originally intended for this. It was there to protect small inventors as they brought their ideas commercial. When Edison brought is light bulb to the market, only he could create light bulbs. This helped protect him from larger, more established firms, from copying his design so he could get his business bearings. What you are doing is not that. You research some idea, patent it, then pocket it away until it's handy for you. If you make no attempt to show your patents, seek funding, or otherwise try to commercialize the idea, then you're a patent troll.

commandar 16y ago
>If your sole source of revenue is licensing the patents that you've created, you're a patent troll. Isn't that essentially ARM's business model?
- jcromartie 16y ago
  ARM actually designs and licenses whole chip architectures. You can license a design from ARM and have it built it without much additional engineering.
- unexpected 16y ago
  I don't include ARM in this list b/c they actually market their products and their whole business model revolves around taking the "headache" out of the R&D of chip design. ARM aggressively markets their products and chip designs, showing benchmarks of their technologies. Most patent trolls fly under the radar, trying not to get noticed, so a major corporation can violate the patent in a huge, best-selling product. Then, they can claim "well, you should have checked all available technologies" - which is a huge waste of effort. There's no incentive for patent trolls to aggressively market their products, b/c that doesn't bring the biggest returns. Look at this suit that just went against Apple - if Apple had negotiated a long-term license with them back in 2004, it would have been on really bad terms - no one knew that the iPhone would be this successful (except for maybe Apple). There are perverse incentives in place to try and "hide" the patent as much as possible, and then wait for the biggest fish to show up. One really big fish is worth a thousand smaller fish, and when a really big fish falls, it discourages all the small fish from entering the marketplace all together - to the detriment of everyone.

orangecat 16y ago

It's judgements like this that stop cell phone makers deciding that it's cheaper to just copy our inventions than pay us a licence fee. When they "copy" your "inventions", are they actually reading your patents and building exactly the same thing? Or are they solving the problem in a way that is straightforward for skilled engineers, thereby producing a design that resembles yours even though they've never seen it? If it's the latter, and you're suing them for it, then yes, you're working for a patent troll.