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We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do. If there

We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do. If there is big money to be made, and it's legal, somebody is going to do it - and if it's not you, well, your loss. This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation. It is a structural problem in the system. The human race would save so much time, money, and energy if it tackled problems at their root instead of dossing around in the details, oblivious to the actual issue.

higherpurpose 12y ago
What about when they lobby to keep the current patent system in place. Can we blame them then, or is that the nature of the game, too?
- lorddoig 12y ago
  The very idea that lobbying is a) a thing, and b) a thing that works is a failure of the political system in a massive but completely unsurprising way.
- kryptiskt 12y ago
  Apple has a lot of money they could use to finance lobbying for patent reform. Maybe this will help them see the wisdom in that.
  - Maarten88 12y ago
    A strong signal would be if Apple raised prices for affected products (iPhones and iPods) by exactly 0.98% and send out a press release that this is necessary to offset increased patent-related costs and will only affect US prices. Further increases are not expected, but can't be ruled out. Foreign pricing will not be affected. I'd like to see politicians react to that...
    - meepmorp 12y ago
      I doubt politicians would give a shit, perhaps notwithstanding a few minutes of grandstanding during some floor speech or committee hearing. Certainly, no action would come of it. Lobbying, though, would get their attention. Like it or not, that's how one operates the levers of power in Washington at the moment
yohui 12y ago
If we didn't find patent trolls worthy of blame, where would the motivation to stamp out their behavior come from?
Istof 12y ago
The root cause of lots of bad legislations can be linked to corporate bribes (lobby)... which is legal in the USA.
zmmmmm 12y ago
This line always comes out, for some reason, regarding patents. In other discussions we get completely different logic - eg: people get terribly riled up about whether Google is "evil" or not and it is rarely connected to whether it's legal or not. The ultimate with your logic is that it would call for massive legislation to cover every facet of our lives - everything bad must be made illegal, otherwise nobody can even be criticised for doing it. I don't want to live in a world like that. Laws are far too crude for that, they can only work at extremes where it is clear you can put down a blanket rule. In between, people and companies behaving badly should be held to account through criticism and public pressure. We should expect companies to behave honorably and ethically and criticise them heavily when they don't.
- vanwesson 12y ago
  Google gets grief over being "evil" because they publicly claimed not to be, and got a lot of popularity and goodwill in the marketplace as a result. When people get "riled up" about Google, they are threatening to take away that popularity and goodwill, that's all. It's not the same thing. Also, what makes you think we don't already have "massive legislation to cover every facet of our lives"? Have you ever heard of the book "Three Felonies a Day"?
- jusben1369 12y ago
  "This line always comes out" - as does yours. We can only solve patent trolls by legislating every small piece of our lives is a fallacy of logic. One doesn't inevitably mean the other.
- lorddoig 12y ago
  I take exception to being accused of delivering 'a line'. I commented, as I only ever do, when I see a truth that for whatever reason I decide to broadcast publicly. The veracity of my statement may be the source of its ubiquity you observe. Increased legislation is rarely the answer. I do not have a pre-rolled solution for the 'patent problem', but - contrary to popular opinion - this is not required to point out flaws in the current system. Perhaps the current system is the best we can do, but that does not excuse its flaws. We should always aim for what could be - and what we could, maybe, come up with is a system that encourages innovation (through financial reward) yet disallows this kind of destructive behaviour. How? Who knows. I bet 10 years ago if you applied such thinking to finance you wouldn't have got very far - "central bankers supplying fiat money is good enough"...yet now we have Bitcoin et. al., a whole host of currencies whose aggregate behaviour is mathematically provable. Focus on the could, anything less is not worthy of the tag 'innovation'.
pkill17 12y ago
Begrudgingly, I agree. I don't consider a patent holder to be a troll unless they're clearly not the first party to develop said technology. If there's clear prior art, only then would I consider someone a troll. Unfortunately, patents are becoming more commoditized than healthcare in our country. It seems silly to me that someone is permitted to sue on the basis of patent violation when a) they weren't the original inventor, b) they bought the patent for the entire reason of profiting from litigation, or c) they're suing people who 'violated' their patent prior to the time they purchased it.
nitrogen 12y ago
The human race would save so much time, money, and energy if it tackled problems at their root instead of dossing around in the details, oblivious to the actual issue. Nobody's oblivious to the actual issue; it's just that the root of the problem is inaccessibly mired in a tangled web of lobbying networks, conflicting interests, and impenetrable committees. Opportunists are just as guilty of making the world worse as the laws that enable them.
- lorddoig 12y ago
  Nonsense. Opportunists are faced with the decision "Should I attempt to make a bucketload of cash, and secure my family's - and my stakeholders families' - future, or should I take a moral stance, make no money, and console myself in poverty because I'm a 'good' person?" Contrarily, lawmakers have all of the tools required to make a better system, and yet choose not to, for the same indecipherable reasons so many political decisions are made.
  - yohui 12y ago
    They could have chosen other ways to make a living. Patent trolling is hardly a blue collar enterprise.
crazy1van 12y ago
> This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation. Exactly. The legislation and regulatory apparatus built around it allow people to claim exclusivity on ideas and techniques that are already obvious to most people in the field. This must be fixed with legislation. Calling companies trolls on internet forums unread by the vast majority of citizens really doesn't help the cause. These companies make their living enforcing patents. They aren't going to stop because people say mean things about them. They are going to stop when the law makes their business obsolete.
skoob 12y ago
"Don't hate the player, hate the game" is a false dichotomy. It's perfectly possible to conclude that the system is rotten and still call out those who take advantage of it in ways which hurt others. The fact that there's money to be made and that it's legal doesn't make it any less sleazy and immoral.

higherpurpose 12y ago

What about when they lobby to keep the current patent system in place. Can we blame them then, or is that the nature of the game, too?

lorddoig 12y ago
The very idea that lobbying is a) a thing, and b) a thing that works is a failure of the political system in a massive but completely unsurprising way.
kryptiskt 12y ago
Apple has a lot of money they could use to finance lobbying for patent reform. Maybe this will help them see the wisdom in that.
- Maarten88 12y ago
  A strong signal would be if Apple raised prices for affected products (iPhones and iPods) by exactly 0.98% and send out a press release that this is necessary to offset increased patent-related costs and will only affect US prices. Further increases are not expected, but can't be ruled out. Foreign pricing will not be affected. I'd like to see politicians react to that...
  - meepmorp 12y ago
    I doubt politicians would give a shit, perhaps notwithstanding a few minutes of grandstanding during some floor speech or committee hearing. Certainly, no action would come of it. Lobbying, though, would get their attention. Like it or not, that's how one operates the levers of power in Washington at the moment

yohui 12y ago

If we didn't find patent trolls worthy of blame, where would the motivation to stamp out their behavior come from?

Istof 12y ago

The root cause of lots of bad legislations can be linked to corporate bribes (lobby)... which is legal in the USA.

zmmmmm 12y ago

This line always comes out, for some reason, regarding patents. In other discussions we get completely different logic - eg: people get terribly riled up about whether Google is "evil" or not and it is rarely connected to whether it's legal or not. The ultimate with your logic is that it would call for massive legislation to cover every facet of our lives - everything bad must be made illegal, otherwise nobody can even be criticised for doing it. I don't want to live in a world like that. Laws are far too crude for that, they can only work at extremes where it is clear you can put down a blanket rule. In between, people and companies behaving badly should be held to account through criticism and public pressure. We should expect companies to behave honorably and ethically and criticise them heavily when they don't.

vanwesson 12y ago
Google gets grief over being "evil" because they publicly claimed not to be, and got a lot of popularity and goodwill in the marketplace as a result. When people get "riled up" about Google, they are threatening to take away that popularity and goodwill, that's all. It's not the same thing. Also, what makes you think we don't already have "massive legislation to cover every facet of our lives"? Have you ever heard of the book "Three Felonies a Day"?
jusben1369 12y ago
"This line always comes out" - as does yours. We can only solve patent trolls by legislating every small piece of our lives is a fallacy of logic. One doesn't inevitably mean the other.
lorddoig 12y ago
I take exception to being accused of delivering 'a line'. I commented, as I only ever do, when I see a truth that for whatever reason I decide to broadcast publicly. The veracity of my statement may be the source of its ubiquity you observe. Increased legislation is rarely the answer. I do not have a pre-rolled solution for the 'patent problem', but - contrary to popular opinion - this is not required to point out flaws in the current system. Perhaps the current system is the best we can do, but that does not excuse its flaws. We should always aim for what could be - and what we could, maybe, come up with is a system that encourages innovation (through financial reward) yet disallows this kind of destructive behaviour. How? Who knows. I bet 10 years ago if you applied such thinking to finance you wouldn't have got very far - "central bankers supplying fiat money is good enough"...yet now we have Bitcoin et. al., a whole host of currencies whose aggregate behaviour is mathematically provable. Focus on the could, anything less is not worthy of the tag 'innovation'.

pkill17 12y ago

Begrudgingly, I agree. I don't consider a patent holder to be a troll unless they're clearly not the first party to develop said technology. If there's clear prior art, only then would I consider someone a troll. Unfortunately, patents are becoming more commoditized than healthcare in our country. It seems silly to me that someone is permitted to sue on the basis of patent violation when a) they weren't the original inventor, b) they bought the patent for the entire reason of profiting from litigation, or c) they're suing people who 'violated' their patent prior to the time they purchased it.

nitrogen 12y ago

The human race would save so much time, money, and energy if it tackled problems at their root instead of dossing around in the details, oblivious to the actual issue. Nobody's oblivious to the actual issue; it's just that the root of the problem is inaccessibly mired in a tangled web of lobbying networks, conflicting interests, and impenetrable committees. Opportunists are just as guilty of making the world worse as the laws that enable them.

lorddoig 12y ago
Nonsense. Opportunists are faced with the decision "Should I attempt to make a bucketload of cash, and secure my family's - and my stakeholders families' - future, or should I take a moral stance, make no money, and console myself in poverty because I'm a 'good' person?" Contrarily, lawmakers have all of the tools required to make a better system, and yet choose not to, for the same indecipherable reasons so many political decisions are made.
- yohui 12y ago
  They could have chosen other ways to make a living. Patent trolling is hardly a blue collar enterprise.

crazy1van 12y ago

> This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation. Exactly. The legislation and regulatory apparatus built around it allow people to claim exclusivity on ideas and techniques that are already obvious to most people in the field. This must be fixed with legislation. Calling companies trolls on internet forums unread by the vast majority of citizens really doesn't help the cause. These companies make their living enforcing patents. They aren't going to stop because people say mean things about them. They are going to stop when the law makes their business obsolete.

skoob 12y ago

"Don't hate the player, hate the game" is a false dichotomy. It's perfectly possible to conclude that the system is rotten and still call out those who take advantage of it in ways which hurt others. The fact that there's money to be made and that it's legal doesn't make it any less sleazy and immoral.