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> 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 lit

> 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?
    - dkersten 5y ago
      If you can demonstrate that you were trying to get it into production, then there's nothing wrong with a lawsuit. I mean, maybe there are better solutions (making them more and more expensive to hold the older they get was mentioned by someone). The goal should be to prevent hoarding for the purpose of rent seeking, without intention for ever actually producing anything. That is, that patents are to protect your invention while you implement it, in order to encourage innovation. But honestly, I'd be happier to just abolish patents altogether.

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?
  - dkersten 5y ago
    If you can demonstrate that you were trying to get it into production, then there's nothing wrong with a lawsuit. I mean, maybe there are better solutions (making them more and more expensive to hold the older they get was mentioned by someone). The goal should be to prevent hoarding for the purpose of rent seeking, without intention for ever actually producing anything. That is, that patents are to protect your invention while you implement it, in order to encourage innovation. But honestly, I'd be happier to just abolish patents altogether.