3 ms·

The Patents I Never Filed

42 points by isalmon 14y ago

austenallred 14y ago
I think if you're a billionaire already, the better strategy would be to file those patents and never prosecute anyone because of them. Not filing for a patent leaves the option for a patent troll to do so.
- RyanZAG 14y ago
  Seems practical, but patent trolls are just going to patent something else anyway. They're patenting basic ideas at this point, and there is an unlimited supply of patentable ideas. The only solution is to fix the patent system.
- speek 14y ago
  Now that they've been publicly disclosed, don't they become prior art for other people wanting to patent them?
  - amitparikh 14y ago
    > "But in the interest of helping anyone who may ever face a patent troll on these topics..." Precisely the point of his blog post.
xradionut 14y ago
There's a few things that I could have patented in the '80s and 90's, but didn't, becase they were in my engineering supervisors word's: "F______g obvious." Later I went back and found out that someone elsewhere did receive a patent on some of these ideas. Don't know if they received money for any licenses, but somewhere in a corporate vault/storage are my engineering logbooks in case of a legal dispute. Mark Cuban is interesting person. Back in the day (Web 1.0 and Audionet), I had lunch with him and a few others at the Infomart. I questioned his business, since at the time a single radio station had more listeners than what was capable with the bandwidth of the Internet then. He said, "X, we don't sell the steak, we sell the sizzle."
- recuter 14y ago
  None of what he listed in this blog post is original. The sizzle comment is insightful. He doesn't like patent trolls but knew how to hype/sell Broadcast.com. An interesting cognitive dissonance.
themstheones 14y ago
Mark Cuban is the worst.
- banachtarski 14y ago
  What makes you say this?
trout 14y ago
He's at least 10 years late on multicast networks. Here's the 1985 RFC that's considerably more detailed than his from 1996: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc966 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc966

42 points by isalmon 14y ago

I think if you're a billionaire already, the better strategy would be to file those patents and never prosecute anyone because of them. Not filing for a patent leaves the option for a patent troll to do so.

RyanZAG 14y ago
Seems practical, but patent trolls are just going to patent something else anyway. They're patenting basic ideas at this point, and there is an unlimited supply of patentable ideas. The only solution is to fix the patent system.
speek 14y ago
Now that they've been publicly disclosed, don't they become prior art for other people wanting to patent them?
- amitparikh 14y ago
  > "But in the interest of helping anyone who may ever face a patent troll on these topics..." Precisely the point of his blog post.

xradionut 14y ago

There's a few things that I could have patented in the '80s and 90's, but didn't, becase they were in my engineering supervisors word's: "F______g obvious." Later I went back and found out that someone elsewhere did receive a patent on some of these ideas. Don't know if they received money for any licenses, but somewhere in a corporate vault/storage are my engineering logbooks in case of a legal dispute. Mark Cuban is interesting person. Back in the day (Web 1.0 and Audionet), I had lunch with him and a few others at the Infomart. I questioned his business, since at the time a single radio station had more listeners than what was capable with the bandwidth of the Internet then. He said, "X, we don't sell the steak, we sell the sizzle."

recuter 14y ago
None of what he listed in this blog post is original. The sizzle comment is insightful. He doesn't like patent trolls but knew how to hype/sell Broadcast.com. An interesting cognitive dissonance.

themstheones 14y ago

Mark Cuban is the worst.

banachtarski 14y ago
What makes you say this?

trout 14y ago

He's at least 10 years late on multicast networks. Here's the 1985 RFC that's considerably more detailed than his from 1996: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc966 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc966