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It makes literally no difference, as the parent comment already mentioned. You deserve protection for coming up with the technology, not for using it. These pat

It makes literally no difference, as the parent comment already mentioned. You deserve protection for coming up with the technology, not for using it. These patent trolls are one of the methods to support a research program. Universities, for example, aren't set up to sell devices. As long as the patent is for some actual innovation, there is nothing wrong with this market structure, economically or morally.

aaomidi 5y ago
Everyone keeps touting that in the future technology will solve climate change. Will it? Or will we have to wait for the patent period to expire of said technologies.
ip26 5y ago
The whole point of the patent program is to give you a boost in using the technology (to encourage you to come up with it in the first place) A research program that only produces patents for patent trolls seems like a useless research program.
- sharken 5y ago
  Useless to the general public, but a great way to collect fees from those infringing. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that you need to actively use the patent in a product or forfeit all protection.
  - Sanguinaire 5y ago
    I'd say actively use or pro-actively license to someone else. If a company can't show that their patents are generating revenue somehow other than lawsuits, the holder should be forced to give the clarinet to a kid who is gonna use it.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      So there are a lot of problems that arise either way. Fist, the way it works now, you file for a patent and get approved, you own it for the generic term that applies to everyone, special considerations depending on the type of patent not withstanding. This leaves us with patent trolls, yes. The alternative: grant a patent but if it not used within some scope of time in some way it becomes public domain or otherwise no longer considered a person's intellectual property. So you go to some company and say "I've solved your problem and I want to license my solution to you" and they tell you either you're going to sell it to them cheap or they'll just wait you out. You either take it or lose the patent in short order and now they can use it free. Now the only people that even own intellectual property are the big guys, and if you don't sell they let you lay fallow until your ownership becomes forfeit. You either sell to them or lose the patent. I hate patent trolls too, but this alternative is worse. I personally don't like intellectual property in general, I think the best solution is to just not have it. Trade secrets are one thing, making it illegal for someone to reverse engineer something they bought or draw pictures they saw elsewhere in public is a bit absurd.
- simonh 5y ago
  That is no the whole point, and certainly hasn't been going back to the 18th century at least. It is routine for patent holders to license their patents to manufacturers for production. That would not be possible if inventors had to make the product for commercial sale by themselves. It would render novel inventions by independent inventors untenable. Only big corporations with manufacturing resources would ever be able to patent anything. Take James Watt for example, Matthew Boulton could just have told Watt to take a hike and started manufacturing improved steam engines by himself. Watt couldn't have afforded to make steam engines independently, and why would any investor bother supporting him with capital if they could just set up production without him too? The problem is with trivial patents, not patents in general.
  - dantheman 5y ago
    Your facts are completely false, and in fact it's easier to bring things to market than it's ever been. Watts held back progress significantly and steam engine development was hampered by his and others patents until the expired. The steam engine would have been built to pump water out of mines whether patents existed or not.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  Split a company's research from its production and sales departments into two organisations, and one licenses its patents to the other. You have transformed a structure where one entities invents and produces to a market structure with one where those are separate roles. You like the former and abhor the later. But from the outside, this change is absolutely meaningless. It's no different than any other make-or-buy decision. (Note that "sells a license" is exactly the same as "patent trolling".) All these feelings you people have are based on the idea of "superficial" patents that aren't "real innovation". Which is, indeed, a problem. But it has nothing to do with the above. Assume some actually useful patent, and these objections fall apart.
  - joshuaissac 5y ago
    It is not meaningless. The split structure is actually better (if it is genuinely spun off, rather than created as a tax evasion mechanism) because it can licence the technology to multiple entities, which spurs competition among them.
cmorgan31 5y ago
And yet the patents are often not for innovation but are purposefully vague to capture iterative improvements under their umbrella and profit from it. It's nonsense in this actual case but the concept of patent protections would be fine if to your point it was actual innovation. How would you even decide what is or is not innovative though? Any idea not in the patent database already? Patents are going to become trickier as we abstract and build more complexity into the overall ecosystem.
Buttons840 5y ago
I personally consider it morally wrong to deny people from implementing ideas of their own invention.
dkersten 5y ago
> You deserve protection for coming up with the technology, not for using it. Why? Ideas are cheap, execution is everything and all that. You don't have to literally be the person executing on it, but whoever you transfer or sell the patent to should. I'd be ok with licensing or selling patents to others to build the technology, I'm not ok with licensing or selling the patent to others who will only use it to sue people who do try to build something similar. The concept of patents was to encourage innovation, not stifle it. Its also quite common that multiple people invent the same thing at roughly the same time. With these patent trolls, if one of these people gets the invention patented first, but does nothing but rent seeking with it, that will prevent others who came up with the same thing but were too slow to patent it to even try. Couple that with overly broad, vague or downright invalid patents and you end up with a system that discourages, hinders or puts a large cost on actual innovation. Even if a patent is provably invalid, it costs money in legal fees to get it overturned.
- freeone3000 5y ago
  The facts alleged here are that apple is using a patented technology, held by someone else, without licensing it first. And now that this is discovered, the remedy is to have Apple pay the licensing fees for the patent (including retroactively). Without the ability to sue people infringing on your patent, how do you ensure people will pay to license it?
  - dkersten 5y ago
    If whoever is holding the patent is not using it for anything other than sue people, then I really don't care that Apple infringed it without licensing.
    - freeone3000 5y ago
      That sort of goes in the face of your "licensing or selling it to others" above though, right? Let's say you have a patent. You're trying to get someone to license it. They decide, no, we'd rather just use it for free instead. Now you have no buyers, and no licensors -- what is your option but a lawsuit?

aaomidi 5y ago

Everyone keeps touting that in the future technology will solve climate change. Will it? Or will we have to wait for the patent period to expire of said technologies.

ip26 5y ago

The whole point of the patent program is to give you a boost in using the technology (to encourage you to come up with it in the first place) A research program that only produces patents for patent trolls seems like a useless research program.

sharken 5y ago
Useless to the general public, but a great way to collect fees from those infringing. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that you need to actively use the patent in a product or forfeit all protection.
- Sanguinaire 5y ago
  I'd say actively use or pro-actively license to someone else. If a company can't show that their patents are generating revenue somehow other than lawsuits, the holder should be forced to give the clarinet to a kid who is gonna use it.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    So there are a lot of problems that arise either way. Fist, the way it works now, you file for a patent and get approved, you own it for the generic term that applies to everyone, special considerations depending on the type of patent not withstanding. This leaves us with patent trolls, yes. The alternative: grant a patent but if it not used within some scope of time in some way it becomes public domain or otherwise no longer considered a person's intellectual property. So you go to some company and say "I've solved your problem and I want to license my solution to you" and they tell you either you're going to sell it to them cheap or they'll just wait you out. You either take it or lose the patent in short order and now they can use it free. Now the only people that even own intellectual property are the big guys, and if you don't sell they let you lay fallow until your ownership becomes forfeit. You either sell to them or lose the patent. I hate patent trolls too, but this alternative is worse. I personally don't like intellectual property in general, I think the best solution is to just not have it. Trade secrets are one thing, making it illegal for someone to reverse engineer something they bought or draw pictures they saw elsewhere in public is a bit absurd.
simonh 5y ago
That is no the whole point, and certainly hasn't been going back to the 18th century at least. It is routine for patent holders to license their patents to manufacturers for production. That would not be possible if inventors had to make the product for commercial sale by themselves. It would render novel inventions by independent inventors untenable. Only big corporations with manufacturing resources would ever be able to patent anything. Take James Watt for example, Matthew Boulton could just have told Watt to take a hike and started manufacturing improved steam engines by himself. Watt couldn't have afforded to make steam engines independently, and why would any investor bother supporting him with capital if they could just set up production without him too? The problem is with trivial patents, not patents in general.
- dantheman 5y ago
  Your facts are completely false, and in fact it's easier to bring things to market than it's ever been. Watts held back progress significantly and steam engine development was hampered by his and others patents until the expired. The steam engine would have been built to pump water out of mines whether patents existed or not.
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
Split a company's research from its production and sales departments into two organisations, and one licenses its patents to the other. You have transformed a structure where one entities invents and produces to a market structure with one where those are separate roles. You like the former and abhor the later. But from the outside, this change is absolutely meaningless. It's no different than any other make-or-buy decision. (Note that "sells a license" is exactly the same as "patent trolling".) All these feelings you people have are based on the idea of "superficial" patents that aren't "real innovation". Which is, indeed, a problem. But it has nothing to do with the above. Assume some actually useful patent, and these objections fall apart.
- joshuaissac 5y ago
  It is not meaningless. The split structure is actually better (if it is genuinely spun off, rather than created as a tax evasion mechanism) because it can licence the technology to multiple entities, which spurs competition among them.

cmorgan31 5y ago

And yet the patents are often not for innovation but are purposefully vague to capture iterative improvements under their umbrella and profit from it. It's nonsense in this actual case but the concept of patent protections would be fine if to your point it was actual innovation. How would you even decide what is or is not innovative though? Any idea not in the patent database already? Patents are going to become trickier as we abstract and build more complexity into the overall ecosystem.

Buttons840 5y ago

I personally consider it morally wrong to deny people from implementing ideas of their own invention.

dkersten 5y ago

> You deserve protection for coming up with the technology, not for using it. Why? Ideas are cheap, execution is everything and all that. You don't have to literally be the person executing on it, but whoever you transfer or sell the patent to should. I'd be ok with licensing or selling patents to others to build the technology, I'm not ok with licensing or selling the patent to others who will only use it to sue people who do try to build something similar. The concept of patents was to encourage innovation, not stifle it. Its also quite common that multiple people invent the same thing at roughly the same time. With these patent trolls, if one of these people gets the invention patented first, but does nothing but rent seeking with it, that will prevent others who came up with the same thing but were too slow to patent it to even try. Couple that with overly broad, vague or downright invalid patents and you end up with a system that discourages, hinders or puts a large cost on actual innovation. Even if a patent is provably invalid, it costs money in legal fees to get it overturned.

freeone3000 5y ago
The facts alleged here are that apple is using a patented technology, held by someone else, without licensing it first. And now that this is discovered, the remedy is to have Apple pay the licensing fees for the patent (including retroactively). Without the ability to sue people infringing on your patent, how do you ensure people will pay to license it?
- dkersten 5y ago
  If whoever is holding the patent is not using it for anything other than sue people, then I really don't care that Apple infringed it without licensing.
  - freeone3000 5y ago
    That sort of goes in the face of your "licensing or selling it to others" above though, right? Let's say you have a patent. You're trying to get someone to license it. They decide, no, we'd rather just use it for free instead. Now you have no buyers, and no licensors -- what is your option but a lawsuit?