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> A patent is a government-sponsored monopoly which shouldn't be "pooled" by "patent companies" whose only purpose is to use the state to extract money from com

> A patent is a government-sponsored monopoly which shouldn't be "pooled" by "patent companies" whose only purpose is to use the state to extract money from companies actually producing goods. Devil's advocate: If the original holder of a patent is a small fry, and does not have the resources to go after the big fish if they take advantage of the patent, shouldn't the original inventor have the right to sell the patent to get something, and then the new holder can use their potentially larger resources to get licensing compliance.

mjburgess 5y ago
Sure -- my conditions were on the holder of the patent, not whether it can be sold. In the case the patent owner isn't doing any R&D or engaging in economically productive activity (at all; nor esp. related to the patent). I think we need, even a very minimal, condition here: The government is only going to shake-down your competitor if you're actually in the same market. If you're just a guy hold a slip of paper, sorry, the government isn't your muscle.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  > In the case the patent owner isn't doing any R&D But by licensing the patent to interested parties, they might be supporting R&D of people who might not otherwise be doing R&D in this direction. The ability to license some tech you know is likely to work in the form of a patent has some value.
  - mjburgess 5y ago
    They might be. All of this can be weighed by judges. I'd be inclined to say: sorry, licensing/selling to companies not in the market is now not possible. If you need to mitigate risk, insurance companies (etc.) can offer products against patents -- they still have value, just only now to companies actually operating in the relevant market. And of course, "relevant market" can be read broadly by judges. Either way, patent law is running amok over innovation, and goverment shake downs and money transfers from producers to rentseekers is a net loss for everyone.
Kiro 5y ago
No, because patents shouldn't even exist to begin with.
salawat 5y ago
What you're saying: >If the original holder of a patent is a small fry, and does not have the resources to go after the big fish if they take advantage of the patent, shouldn't the original inventor have the right to sell the patent to get something, and then the new holder can use their potentially larger resources to get licensing compliance. Hits the crux of the issue. A patent is economically/politically/socially worthless to the inventor themselves without the ability to spend inordinate amounts of legal muscle to tell people they can't use it, and the effective exercise by a patent holder of a patent renders the patent valueless to society for the duration, and creates many perverse incentives and business models for non-practicing entities. In fact, at this point I'd argue the corpus of patents out there is nowadays less useful to the inventive than it is to the legal profession to keep themselves in work. The last time I read a patent to truly understand something was to figure out how a fire-alarm use casing went back together, and even then, that was of spotty levels of help.
tomatotomato37 5y ago
If we want that to be the case then we need to start differentiating between patents still owned by the original inventor and those transferred through whatever means. Making it so transferred patents lose their protection unless they are actively being used by their new owner would eliminate patent companies being a law office and nothing else while still allowing for people who want to just run a Bell Labs-esque institute without dealing with manufacturing to still run a decent businesses. You could also extend this to disallowing licensing for non-original owner patents too, though I'm not as sure about the second-order effects on that one.
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  There's probably some complications to that, not that I don't think it's a good idea. I say, if so, address them. For instance heirs. Inventor invents, dies while they would and should still have all rights, say it's the day after being awarded, patent is transferred. Inventor recieves a patent, but later that asset or all their assets are seized by the government as part of a criminal process, or awarded to someone else as part of a legal action. There's probably lots of odd situations I can't even imagine where a patent like any other preoperty or asset (or debt or liability or responsibility) is transferred, without it being a sale and without the recipient deserving to be penalized or put under any extra burden. Even fully business transactions like a company buys an entire other company, rather than specifically a patent. I'm not sure in that case the assets should evaporate or lose their "first sale" extra value. Maybe they should, but also maybe it's just as fair to consider the new owner still the originator, since the originator is a company which still exists. Maybe it should be considered a transfer if the purchasing company closes the original company as a distinct entity and simply ingests the assets. Maybe this is all pretty easily handled and it's no problem by just having some sort of legal metadata where the patent has a property flag that says if it's considered to be in a state of being before or after first sale, and any legal process that performs a transfer records whether this transfer constitutes a sale or not. Another gotcha, it probably also means somehow identifying and disqualifying some "gifts" and allowing others. Anyway I do like the idea.
jbluepolarbear 5y ago
How does that harbor fair trade? Neither the inventor nor the holder have made any attempt to bring a product to market. It should be the burden of the court to prove that the patent was actively being used (by the holder) to produce a product and that the infringement directly hurt the potential target market of the product in question.
- joshuaissac 5y ago
  The patent may be too expensive for a small fry to convert into a product. Requiring them to do that turns the patent system into an instrument for incumbents to absorb inventions from others (who cannot afford to build the full product) while not having to release any of their own rights (because they can afford to build the product, so preserve the patent). A non-practising patent holder is also more likely to licence the patent to lots of other entities compared to one that makes products. This is one of the concerns around NVidia's proposed takeover of ARM, a non-practising entity that creates and licences computer processor designs.
  - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
    Licensing is providing a product through 3rd party. I’m talking about a holder that has just sat on the patent and no product has been developed from its issue.
    - joshuaissac 5y ago
      If no product is ever developed, then there is no licensing or infringement. A troll may still try to use it to suppress some other product but that can be done regardless of whether a product is developed. I looked at one of the patents from the Apple case, US6393286B1. Unlike the "small fry" scenarios described above, this was registered by Ericsson. I cannot tell whether the patent is actually inventive, but it seems likely that Ericsson themselves did create a product, as they were involved in creating the 3G standards in the 1990s and they also produced phones. The accusation here is that Apple also created a product based on the same technology, without paying the licensing fees. The current holder bought the rights to the patent in the secondary market. The effect on Apple is the same whether it is Ericsson or the current owner enforcing it.

mjburgess 5y ago

Sure -- my conditions were on the holder of the patent, not whether it can be sold. In the case the patent owner isn't doing any R&D or engaging in economically productive activity (at all; nor esp. related to the patent). I think we need, even a very minimal, condition here: The government is only going to shake-down your competitor if you're actually in the same market. If you're just a guy hold a slip of paper, sorry, the government isn't your muscle.

londons_explore 5y ago
> In the case the patent owner isn't doing any R&D But by licensing the patent to interested parties, they might be supporting R&D of people who might not otherwise be doing R&D in this direction. The ability to license some tech you know is likely to work in the form of a patent has some value.
- mjburgess 5y ago
  They might be. All of this can be weighed by judges. I'd be inclined to say: sorry, licensing/selling to companies not in the market is now not possible. If you need to mitigate risk, insurance companies (etc.) can offer products against patents -- they still have value, just only now to companies actually operating in the relevant market. And of course, "relevant market" can be read broadly by judges. Either way, patent law is running amok over innovation, and goverment shake downs and money transfers from producers to rentseekers is a net loss for everyone.

Kiro 5y ago

No, because patents shouldn't even exist to begin with.

salawat 5y ago

What you're saying: >If the original holder of a patent is a small fry, and does not have the resources to go after the big fish if they take advantage of the patent, shouldn't the original inventor have the right to sell the patent to get something, and then the new holder can use their potentially larger resources to get licensing compliance. Hits the crux of the issue. A patent is economically/politically/socially worthless to the inventor themselves without the ability to spend inordinate amounts of legal muscle to tell people they can't use it, and the effective exercise by a patent holder of a patent renders the patent valueless to society for the duration, and creates many perverse incentives and business models for non-practicing entities. In fact, at this point I'd argue the corpus of patents out there is nowadays less useful to the inventive than it is to the legal profession to keep themselves in work. The last time I read a patent to truly understand something was to figure out how a fire-alarm use casing went back together, and even then, that was of spotty levels of help.

tomatotomato37 5y ago

If we want that to be the case then we need to start differentiating between patents still owned by the original inventor and those transferred through whatever means. Making it so transferred patents lose their protection unless they are actively being used by their new owner would eliminate patent companies being a law office and nothing else while still allowing for people who want to just run a Bell Labs-esque institute without dealing with manufacturing to still run a decent businesses. You could also extend this to disallowing licensing for non-original owner patents too, though I'm not as sure about the second-order effects on that one.

Brian_K_White 5y ago
There's probably some complications to that, not that I don't think it's a good idea. I say, if so, address them. For instance heirs. Inventor invents, dies while they would and should still have all rights, say it's the day after being awarded, patent is transferred. Inventor recieves a patent, but later that asset or all their assets are seized by the government as part of a criminal process, or awarded to someone else as part of a legal action. There's probably lots of odd situations I can't even imagine where a patent like any other preoperty or asset (or debt or liability or responsibility) is transferred, without it being a sale and without the recipient deserving to be penalized or put under any extra burden. Even fully business transactions like a company buys an entire other company, rather than specifically a patent. I'm not sure in that case the assets should evaporate or lose their "first sale" extra value. Maybe they should, but also maybe it's just as fair to consider the new owner still the originator, since the originator is a company which still exists. Maybe it should be considered a transfer if the purchasing company closes the original company as a distinct entity and simply ingests the assets. Maybe this is all pretty easily handled and it's no problem by just having some sort of legal metadata where the patent has a property flag that says if it's considered to be in a state of being before or after first sale, and any legal process that performs a transfer records whether this transfer constitutes a sale or not. Another gotcha, it probably also means somehow identifying and disqualifying some "gifts" and allowing others. Anyway I do like the idea.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago

How does that harbor fair trade? Neither the inventor nor the holder have made any attempt to bring a product to market. It should be the burden of the court to prove that the patent was actively being used (by the holder) to produce a product and that the infringement directly hurt the potential target market of the product in question.

joshuaissac 5y ago
The patent may be too expensive for a small fry to convert into a product. Requiring them to do that turns the patent system into an instrument for incumbents to absorb inventions from others (who cannot afford to build the full product) while not having to release any of their own rights (because they can afford to build the product, so preserve the patent). A non-practising patent holder is also more likely to licence the patent to lots of other entities compared to one that makes products. This is one of the concerns around NVidia's proposed takeover of ARM, a non-practising entity that creates and licences computer processor designs.
- jbluepolarbear 5y ago
  Licensing is providing a product through 3rd party. I’m talking about a holder that has just sat on the patent and no product has been developed from its issue.
  - joshuaissac 5y ago
    If no product is ever developed, then there is no licensing or infringement. A troll may still try to use it to suppress some other product but that can be done regardless of whether a product is developed. I looked at one of the patents from the Apple case, US6393286B1. Unlike the "small fry" scenarios described above, this was registered by Ericsson. I cannot tell whether the patent is actually inventive, but it seems likely that Ericsson themselves did create a product, as they were involved in creating the 3G standards in the 1990s and they also produced phones. The accusation here is that Apple also created a product based on the same technology, without paying the licensing fees. The current holder bought the rights to the patent in the secondary market. The effect on Apple is the same whether it is Ericsson or the current owner enforcing it.