5 ms·

There are research companies who only do research and get money by licencing their patents. I mean, I really would like to live in a world without patents, but

by lukan 3y ago

There are research companies who only do research and get money by licencing their patents. I mean, I really would like to live in a world without patents, but currently those companies do provide value, but cannot exist, without guarding their IP. Yet they would cease to exist, with your proposal.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Great point. And then if one of those companies sold a patent that wasn't immediately licensable to an IP firm for an immediate infusion of funds should the IP firm be considered a patent troll?
- lukan 3y ago
  Maybe the patent system could work, without the possibility of selling patents at all? Have not thought it out, but I know musicians also seldom profit of selling their IP to the major labels. But they are pushed into it.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    Based on the text of the IP clause of the US Constitution I have wondered whether selling or licensing of IP (or even assigning it to a corporation) is technically allowable. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8/clause-8/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8... : To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "Exclusive Right" means exclusive right. And I don't think the definition has changed much since the US Constitution was written. https://www.etymonline.com/word/exclusive https://www.etymonline.com/word/exclusive I think it must at least be licensable, or authors couldn't sell copies of their works. But whether the IP rights can be sold is another question.
    - freejazz 3y ago
      It means the right is exclusively granted with them. I.e. no one besides the author gets to control the exclusive rights of a patent. By your logic, they can't even license it because "it's an exclusive right".
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        They control the license according to the terms of a license. But once a patent is sold the author of it no longer has any right to it. Authors and inventors are mentioned with the same language in the clause. Since it has always been true that authors can basically only profit from their writings by selling copies or originals of their works (without selling the right to the copyrighted material itself) then some form of licensing is necessarily included in the clause for both copyright and patents. There may have been journalists at the time who wrote works for newspapers owned by others. If so, this would be a reason to include the right of selling all of the rights to one's writings or inventions in the clause. I genuinely don't know if this was the case though.
        freejazz 3y ago
        Authors can license all of their rights away. They can sell their copyrights - I don't see your point...
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        I'm asking whether the laws which allow this are within scope of the US Constitution's clause on intellectual property rights. There are plenty of laws which have been ruled unconstitutional. But it takes someone making the complaint to a court for this to happen. Otherwise the legislature does whatever it wants. Currently a majority of the US Supreme court thinks that the status quo at the time of the writing of the US Constitution or its amendments has bearing as to the meaning of those texts. Thus I mentioned back then authors sold copies of their works while retaining all other rights as indicating that "licensing" is within this clause. Whether or not total sales of the rights to the work is within the purview of the clause is another question that I'm curious about.
jonwachob91 3y ago
Issuing a license is a form of "using it" in a use it or lose it scenario. Those are not patent troll companies. Patent troll companies file patents and then sit on the patent until they can sue another party for infringement, and never make an attempt to commercialize their patent. Another example of not using it in the use it or lose it scenario is Pfizer's acquisition of Esperion Therapeutics in 2004. Esperion was developing a competitor to Lipitor, so Pfizer purchased Esperion for $1.3BB and shelved the technology to prevent competition with their best selling drug. Had Pfizer "lost" their patent for failing to commercial Esperion's drug, that drug could have entered the market as a generic to compete with Lipitor and severely reduced the cost of statin drugs for consumers.
- lukan 3y ago
  That is hard I think, as there are patents that are not licenced because no one wants to - but I think every holder of a patent must licence it to any party interested. So just "sitting on patents" is not really possible to my knowledge. (but I am really not an expert here)
  - floating-io 3y ago
    If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, then I'm not sure where you got that idea. Patent holders are not required to license their patents last time I checked. You are simply required to acquire a license prior to using patented technology. If they don't want to license it, you're SOL. (edit: if you were speculating on what should be, and not what is, then my bad... :)
    - lukan 3y ago
      "Patent holders are not required to license their patents last time I checked." That is apparently right and I learned it wrong (but it does seems wrong to me). edit: after reading the siblings answer, I apparently wrongly overgeneralized the way it works with patents in standards
      - deleted 3y ago
duped 3y ago
Why wouldn't they be able to exist? If you invent something, there's a work product. There is documentation, notes, blueprints, CAD files, software, etc. You can sell this and license it however you want. You can sue people that use it without a license. More importantly, you as the original author can use the IP as you see fit. All of that is what I would put under the category of "use it." If you stop licensing it, then you "lose it." Personally I don't think you should be able to sell the invention as an idea to another company that only relicenses it, but I get that there needs to be a market for IP itself.
- joshuaissac 3y ago
  > If you invent something, there's a work product. There is documentation, notes, blueprints, CAD files, software, etc. You can sell this and license it however you want. These would only be protected by copyright. So if you invent something but do not have the resources to create the implementation yourself (and therefore cannot patent the invention under the scheme proposed by GGP), but you licence the work products (documentation, software) to one or more companies who can then implement it, a larger, well-resourced competitor can just reimplement it without paying you as long as they did not need to use any of your documentation or software. So that reduces the value of your work products. But if the converse happened, e.g., your customer reimplements something invented by the large competitor, they can get sued, because the large company, being able to implement their invention, can therefore file a patent. So it amplifies the effect of having more resources. It would be fairer to treat the large company the same way, and only let them copyright the work products rather than patent the invention, putting them on the same level as a smaller inventor.
solomatov 3y ago
Could you give examples of such companies (I am really curious)?
- jandrewrogers 3y ago
  I am aware of a few orgs that license interesting software R&D often with engineering support, sometimes with an equity component. Another variant is the R&D holding company that creates separate companies to commercially exploit the R&D in different parts of the public or private sector. Most such R&D orgs are very low-profile, they usually don't have an internet presence. Many use few or no patents these days, those economics don't make sense unless the business is largely owned by lawyers, which creates a different kind of company (much closer to patent trolls). It is a bespoke kind of business, tailored to the specific technology and investment network of the people involved.
- joshuaissac 3y ago
  > Could you give examples of such companies One example is ARM, which licenses the processor designs they create, and do not build or sell the chips themselves.
maxloh 3y ago
ARM for example.

by lukan 3y ago

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

Great point. And then if one of those companies sold a patent that wasn't immediately licensable to an IP firm for an immediate infusion of funds should the IP firm be considered a patent troll?

lukan 3y ago
Maybe the patent system could work, without the possibility of selling patents at all? Have not thought it out, but I know musicians also seldom profit of selling their IP to the major labels. But they are pushed into it.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Based on the text of the IP clause of the US Constitution I have wondered whether selling or licensing of IP (or even assigning it to a corporation) is technically allowable. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8/clause-8/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8... : To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "Exclusive Right" means exclusive right. And I don't think the definition has changed much since the US Constitution was written. https://www.etymonline.com/word/exclusive https://www.etymonline.com/word/exclusive I think it must at least be licensable, or authors couldn't sell copies of their works. But whether the IP rights can be sold is another question.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    It means the right is exclusively granted with them. I.e. no one besides the author gets to control the exclusive rights of a patent. By your logic, they can't even license it because "it's an exclusive right".
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      They control the license according to the terms of a license. But once a patent is sold the author of it no longer has any right to it. Authors and inventors are mentioned with the same language in the clause. Since it has always been true that authors can basically only profit from their writings by selling copies or originals of their works (without selling the right to the copyrighted material itself) then some form of licensing is necessarily included in the clause for both copyright and patents. There may have been journalists at the time who wrote works for newspapers owned by others. If so, this would be a reason to include the right of selling all of the rights to one's writings or inventions in the clause. I genuinely don't know if this was the case though.
      - freejazz 3y ago
        Authors can license all of their rights away. They can sell their copyrights - I don't see your point...
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        I'm asking whether the laws which allow this are within scope of the US Constitution's clause on intellectual property rights. There are plenty of laws which have been ruled unconstitutional. But it takes someone making the complaint to a court for this to happen. Otherwise the legislature does whatever it wants. Currently a majority of the US Supreme court thinks that the status quo at the time of the writing of the US Constitution or its amendments has bearing as to the meaning of those texts. Thus I mentioned back then authors sold copies of their works while retaining all other rights as indicating that "licensing" is within this clause. Whether or not total sales of the rights to the work is within the purview of the clause is another question that I'm curious about.

jonwachob91 3y ago

Issuing a license is a form of "using it" in a use it or lose it scenario. Those are not patent troll companies. Patent troll companies file patents and then sit on the patent until they can sue another party for infringement, and never make an attempt to commercialize their patent. Another example of not using it in the use it or lose it scenario is Pfizer's acquisition of Esperion Therapeutics in 2004. Esperion was developing a competitor to Lipitor, so Pfizer purchased Esperion for $1.3BB and shelved the technology to prevent competition with their best selling drug. Had Pfizer "lost" their patent for failing to commercial Esperion's drug, that drug could have entered the market as a generic to compete with Lipitor and severely reduced the cost of statin drugs for consumers.

lukan 3y ago
That is hard I think, as there are patents that are not licenced because no one wants to - but I think every holder of a patent must licence it to any party interested. So just "sitting on patents" is not really possible to my knowledge. (but I am really not an expert here)
- floating-io 3y ago
  If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, then I'm not sure where you got that idea. Patent holders are not required to license their patents last time I checked. You are simply required to acquire a license prior to using patented technology. If they don't want to license it, you're SOL. (edit: if you were speculating on what should be, and not what is, then my bad... :)
  - lukan 3y ago
    "Patent holders are not required to license their patents last time I checked." That is apparently right and I learned it wrong (but it does seems wrong to me). edit: after reading the siblings answer, I apparently wrongly overgeneralized the way it works with patents in standards
    - deleted 3y ago

duped 3y ago

Why wouldn't they be able to exist? If you invent something, there's a work product. There is documentation, notes, blueprints, CAD files, software, etc. You can sell this and license it however you want. You can sue people that use it without a license. More importantly, you as the original author can use the IP as you see fit. All of that is what I would put under the category of "use it." If you stop licensing it, then you "lose it." Personally I don't think you should be able to sell the invention as an idea to another company that only relicenses it, but I get that there needs to be a market for IP itself.

joshuaissac 3y ago
> If you invent something, there's a work product. There is documentation, notes, blueprints, CAD files, software, etc. You can sell this and license it however you want. These would only be protected by copyright. So if you invent something but do not have the resources to create the implementation yourself (and therefore cannot patent the invention under the scheme proposed by GGP), but you licence the work products (documentation, software) to one or more companies who can then implement it, a larger, well-resourced competitor can just reimplement it without paying you as long as they did not need to use any of your documentation or software. So that reduces the value of your work products. But if the converse happened, e.g., your customer reimplements something invented by the large competitor, they can get sued, because the large company, being able to implement their invention, can therefore file a patent. So it amplifies the effect of having more resources. It would be fairer to treat the large company the same way, and only let them copyright the work products rather than patent the invention, putting them on the same level as a smaller inventor.

solomatov 3y ago

Could you give examples of such companies (I am really curious)?

jandrewrogers 3y ago
I am aware of a few orgs that license interesting software R&D often with engineering support, sometimes with an equity component. Another variant is the R&D holding company that creates separate companies to commercially exploit the R&D in different parts of the public or private sector. Most such R&D orgs are very low-profile, they usually don't have an internet presence. Many use few or no patents these days, those economics don't make sense unless the business is largely owned by lawyers, which creates a different kind of company (much closer to patent trolls). It is a bespoke kind of business, tailored to the specific technology and investment network of the people involved.
joshuaissac 3y ago
> Could you give examples of such companies One example is ARM, which licenses the processor designs they create, and do not build or sell the chips themselves.

maxloh 3y ago

ARM for example.