3 ms·

No one yet has had the incentive to make a real push (like lobbying) for real patent reform. There's a catch-22 in this situation. Only large companies have t

No one yet has had the incentive to make a real push (like lobbying) for real patent reform. There's a catch-22 in this situation. Only large companies have the lobbying muscle to effect change. Apple, Microsoft, Google, and other players clearly risk more than they gain from the current patent system, but if they speak out against it, the trolls will organize a PR campaign smearing "huge, faceless corporations" for "picking on the little guy that drives American innovation." Meanwhile, the little guys have essentially no voice at all in government, so their actual opinion doesn't matter. Worse, the entire US government is basically composed of lawyers, members of a tribe that benefits from the status quo.

cookiecaper 15y ago
While this is true, I think it's more about the money they all are able to derive from each other wielding their respective patent portfolios than about the potential bad press from trolls. Really in this scenario the trolls are almost the good guys, as long as they are attacking the big players like Microsoft. If we get enough cases like i4i v. MS, the big companies will decide that the current patent system is too dangerous even considering their large patent portfolios that they use to reciprocally gouge their contemporaries and competitors out of money. Right now MS et al are not too worried about patents because any competitor who brings a suit on a patent claim can be counter-sued by one of MS's patents; if someone comes demanding that MS buy a license, MS can reciprocate and demand that that party license a patent it holds. These kinds of cross-licensing agreements and reciprocal lawsuits go on behind the scenes all the day long at the big tech players. If we get more patent trolls who only hold patents and don't put out a real product for the big guys to counter-target with their own portfolio of tech patents, then we'll be in a situation where even an extensive portfolio can't protect the big players any more and they'll have to advocate for reform. We just have to make it cost more than their profit from cross-licensing, etc. Just another handful of injunctions similar to the one from i4i case, which ordered MS to stop selling Office, and we'll be looking good.
- ontoillogical 15y ago
  When Intellectual Ventures first started they claimed to be trying to fix the broken system by buying up tech patents in the interest of all the players that invested in it. This is how they initially got big investments from the major tech companies. Now that they are clearly a patent troll, and a scary one at that, it looks like the conditions you set out for reform are that much closer to coming to being. I wonder if Myhrvold will end up acting in the interest of the tech industry after all...

cookiecaper 15y ago

While this is true, I think it's more about the money they all are able to derive from each other wielding their respective patent portfolios than about the potential bad press from trolls. Really in this scenario the trolls are almost the good guys, as long as they are attacking the big players like Microsoft. If we get enough cases like i4i v. MS, the big companies will decide that the current patent system is too dangerous even considering their large patent portfolios that they use to reciprocally gouge their contemporaries and competitors out of money. Right now MS et al are not too worried about patents because any competitor who brings a suit on a patent claim can be counter-sued by one of MS's patents; if someone comes demanding that MS buy a license, MS can reciprocate and demand that that party license a patent it holds. These kinds of cross-licensing agreements and reciprocal lawsuits go on behind the scenes all the day long at the big tech players. If we get more patent trolls who only hold patents and don't put out a real product for the big guys to counter-target with their own portfolio of tech patents, then we'll be in a situation where even an extensive portfolio can't protect the big players any more and they'll have to advocate for reform. We just have to make it cost more than their profit from cross-licensing, etc. Just another handful of injunctions similar to the one from i4i case, which ordered MS to stop selling Office, and we'll be looking good.

ontoillogical 15y ago
When Intellectual Ventures first started they claimed to be trying to fix the broken system by buying up tech patents in the interest of all the players that invested in it. This is how they initially got big investments from the major tech companies. Now that they are clearly a patent troll, and a scary one at that, it looks like the conditions you set out for reform are that much closer to coming to being. I wonder if Myhrvold will end up acting in the interest of the tech industry after all...