4 ms·
Couple of years back I'd proposed a cure for patent trolls: Large tech companies form a non-profit group and preemptively attack patent portfolio of companies t
by sytelus 13y ago
Couple of years back I'd proposed a cure for patent trolls: Large tech companies form a non-profit group and preemptively attack patent portfolio of companies that they mutually agree to be trolls. The entire business model of trolls hang on a fact that they will be the first attacker so their litigation expenses are small. If a patent troll gets spammed with 100s of lawsuits for bad patent grants at the same time, they will go out of business just from the expense of litigation or at least trolling would not be as much lucrative. Obviously this plan has its own risk: this non-profit group can start attacking legitimate patent holders to keep them out of the game. But even bigger issue is that lot of large companies are already in bed with largest trolls themselves such as IV. I don't see other great ways to curb trolling. The effort like Ask Patent can prevent some bad future patents but it would be very hard to get law in place that cancels bad patents that have already been granted.
- smartician 13y agoPart of the definition of "patent troll" is that the troll undertakes no economic activity other than launching lawsuits. Therefore, a troll cannot be sued preemptively.
- sytelus 13y agoOne can certainly file preemptive law suits to seek declaratory judgement that any granted patents are invalid and/or unenforceable. This had been done by some companies who felt there was risk to their business from certain patent owners. A troll typically holds 100s of patents and always on look out for opportunity to cash them out. If they are preemtively slammed with 100s of lawsuits for each patent they hold, their legal resources would be overwhelmed without possibility of huge rewards. It would be hard to imagine that they would be able to keep shop open for long time when everybody is attacking them for no apparent reason.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]