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My personal, bitter, experience is that patent holders always view their claims as the sole reason for the success of a given product (that they target for lice

by epc 7y ago

My personal, bitter, experience is that patent holders always view their claims as the sole reason for the success of a given product (that they target for licensing or litigation or both). They ignore the years of trials, failures, risks taken, and other intellectual property that go into a product. So you end up with the absurd scenario of a group of patent holders each demanding a 1% royalty on the total revenues (not profits) of a product, well after the product has launched and the market established. The product developer can then either succumb to the litigation or succumb to the market forces, but it's not going to continue as a viable business if you're expected to pay out over 100% of the revenues in licensing schemes. Potential licensees are not taking your calls or messages because by even acknowledging that you have a patent they open themselves up to litigation, regardless of the actual value to their product. As a developer I've been reprimanded both for reviewing existing patents relevant to an area I was working in, and for not reviewing existing patents for how they may impact something I've launched. On balance, the penalty was far worse for reviewing patents that may cover something I was working on (there is no way to compel a patent holder to license a patent, so the company decided to kill the product instead of taking on the potential liability). Everyone wants to skirt around litigation because it's cheaper, that's all.

rolltiide 7y ago
So my only option is to begin the conversation with a Cease and Desist letter from Esq. LLP? Is there a more friendly and collaborative approach I could take that also gets results? Aside from abolishing the whole system people need to realize that patents are quite expensive to file and maintain too, which promotes trying to monetize them
- epc 7y ago
  If the patent has value, develop it. That's the single best way for others to learn it has value. I'm not saying it needs to be a company, with VCs and funding and what not, but develop it into something demonstrating the value. You already have the patent, so if some one “steals” the implementation without licensing you could resort to litigation. Write about it, blog it, etc. Patents are abstract solutions to a problem. The claims are written to be as wide and generically applicable as possible. Which means that the patent library is useless as a repository of solutions to problems. And it's a minefield if you admit in court that you reviewed a patent and determined that it did not address or solve your problem, because every IP attorney in Marshall, TX will say “See, judge? there was malicious intent to steal my client’s intellectual property!” So then no one who's ever experienced the sharp end of the patent litigation system ever looks into the patent library ever again, because treble damages are never fun. The way things used to work was: you invent a thing, you use it to solve your own problem and/or bring it to market in a larger solution or product. In parallel you patent the invention to prevent your competitors from leveraging your invention, and in return get a limited exclusive license to market and sell your solution. Now it seems all one needs to do is to add "by using the Internet" or "via SMS" or "with Bitcoin" to an existing patent and voila you have a new income stream and litigation cudgel.

by epc 7y ago

rolltiide 7y ago

So my only option is to begin the conversation with a Cease and Desist letter from Esq. LLP? Is there a more friendly and collaborative approach I could take that also gets results? Aside from abolishing the whole system people need to realize that patents are quite expensive to file and maintain too, which promotes trying to monetize them

epc 7y ago
If the patent has value, develop it. That's the single best way for others to learn it has value. I'm not saying it needs to be a company, with VCs and funding and what not, but develop it into something demonstrating the value. You already have the patent, so if some one “steals” the implementation without licensing you could resort to litigation. Write about it, blog it, etc. Patents are abstract solutions to a problem. The claims are written to be as wide and generically applicable as possible. Which means that the patent library is useless as a repository of solutions to problems. And it's a minefield if you admit in court that you reviewed a patent and determined that it did not address or solve your problem, because every IP attorney in Marshall, TX will say “See, judge? there was malicious intent to steal my client’s intellectual property!” So then no one who's ever experienced the sharp end of the patent litigation system ever looks into the patent library ever again, because treble damages are never fun. The way things used to work was: you invent a thing, you use it to solve your own problem and/or bring it to market in a larger solution or product. In parallel you patent the invention to prevent your competitors from leveraging your invention, and in return get a limited exclusive license to market and sell your solution. Now it seems all one needs to do is to add "by using the Internet" or "via SMS" or "with Bitcoin" to an existing patent and voila you have a new income stream and litigation cudgel.