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> I was part of this "acquire patents" effort at Google. I actually interviewed people to be in Legal whose job would be to acquire patents. The theory (since d

by gota 5y ago

> I was part of this "acquire patents" effort at Google. I actually interviewed people to be in Legal whose job would be to acquire patents. The theory (since discarded) was that a heavy patent portfolio would give you a better negotiating position if you were sued. Interesting! Can you expand on this topic? Does/has the strategy work?

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
The theory goes like this. The Patent Office keeps granting overly broad patents to your competitors, who then show up to sue you for unintentionally violating them. So you get your own overly broad patents, counter-sue them when this happens, and then they all cancel out. The main problem with this strategy is patent trolls. Some company that doesn't make anything buys up some broad patents. Then there is nothing you can sue them over because they don't make anything so the strategy doesn't work. It also makes the whole concept of software patents pretty useless, because the "defensive patents" could equally be used to counter anyone who tries to sue you for violating a "legitimate" patent. So the whole system becomes a bludgeon for larger companies to use against smaller companies, because they have more patents, even if most of them are low quality, which means they can tie up anyone who actually makes anything in court indefinitely.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  Some of that is correct, but patent trolls are only after money. They like to settle quickly for a fairly small amount, and move on. An effective counter-strategy is to resist them (with IPRs, especially) because that ties up their resources. As for big companies suing smaller ones: citations (in the mobile space), please?
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    You're asking for citations to things that happen behind closed doors. "Big company pressures little company into a buyout/capitulation" is bad PR for big company, so part of the buyout/capitulation is to sign the NDA.
    - Nasrudith 5y ago
      There are still conspiracy theory leaker mathematics in play here. Facebook can't so much as send an internal email complaining about leaks making somebody's job harder without it being trumpted as yet another great wrong they committed. It is within a space of possibilities but a sustained lack of evidence decreases the probability of it being so as numbers increase. It is possible that a given person drove drunk without being caught. But if they drove drunk everyday throughout many different towns and villages? Less likely.
      - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
        If you disclose your identity then you're violating the NDA and get sued. If you don't, nobody wants to run the story because you have no credibility. Also, how many times does this have to happen before it's a problem? Maybe it's not thousands of times. If it happens each of the small number of times that someone would otherwise have the opportunity to unseat a monopoly, that's still really bad.

by gota 5y ago

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

The theory goes like this. The Patent Office keeps granting overly broad patents to your competitors, who then show up to sue you for unintentionally violating them. So you get your own overly broad patents, counter-sue them when this happens, and then they all cancel out. The main problem with this strategy is patent trolls. Some company that doesn't make anything buys up some broad patents. Then there is nothing you can sue them over because they don't make anything so the strategy doesn't work. It also makes the whole concept of software patents pretty useless, because the "defensive patents" could equally be used to counter anyone who tries to sue you for violating a "legitimate" patent. So the whole system becomes a bludgeon for larger companies to use against smaller companies, because they have more patents, even if most of them are low quality, which means they can tie up anyone who actually makes anything in court indefinitely.

AlbertCory 5y ago
Some of that is correct, but patent trolls are only after money. They like to settle quickly for a fairly small amount, and move on. An effective counter-strategy is to resist them (with IPRs, especially) because that ties up their resources. As for big companies suing smaller ones: citations (in the mobile space), please?
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  You're asking for citations to things that happen behind closed doors. "Big company pressures little company into a buyout/capitulation" is bad PR for big company, so part of the buyout/capitulation is to sign the NDA.
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    There are still conspiracy theory leaker mathematics in play here. Facebook can't so much as send an internal email complaining about leaks making somebody's job harder without it being trumpted as yet another great wrong they committed. It is within a space of possibilities but a sustained lack of evidence decreases the probability of it being so as numbers increase. It is possible that a given person drove drunk without being caught. But if they drove drunk everyday throughout many different towns and villages? Less likely.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      If you disclose your identity then you're violating the NDA and get sued. If you don't, nobody wants to run the story because you have no credibility. Also, how many times does this have to happen before it's a problem? Maybe it's not thousands of times. If it happens each of the small number of times that someone would otherwise have the opportunity to unseat a monopoly, that's still really bad.