> If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the neighbourhood then some blame lies with you. I'm not required, thankfully, when selling something

> If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the neighbourhood then some blame lies with you. I'm not required, thankfully, when selling something to do deep background on the person purchasing it. Further, you'd have to prove that my knowledge of this person included the fact that they intended to do something bad with the gun I sold them before I sold it to them. Finally.. I may have just sold them the gun. Perhaps it's more important to ask this question of the person who sold him the bullets. In this analogy, I suppose that would be the patent law firm. > Ultimately its probably better if we move to a world where a lot of "intellectual property" expires with it's holder and passes into the public domain. You move from a high premium on participating in a market, which by some arguments, is my right to participate in to having no participation in it at all. I think more harm than good comes from this. > To apply a leverage point analysis, it's probably time to reexamine and change the rules about the transferability of patents. Does the purchaser have a legitimate justification to hold the patent? If no, it forfeits. You'll trade outright patent transfers for shell company transfers, and the small inventor takes a back seat in all of this. This situation is unfortunate, but I don't think improvements come from hamstringing everyone.