The president has some opinions on the subject [TechDirt]:
Obama: A couple years ago we began a process of patent reform. We actually passed some legislation that made progress on some of these issues. But it hasn’t captured all the problems.
The folks that you’re talking about are a classic example. They don’t actually produce anything themselves. They’re just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else’s idea and see if they can extort some money out of them. Sometimes these things are challenging. Because we also want to make sure that patents are long enough, and that people’s intellectual property is protected. We’ve got to balance that with making sure that they’re not so long that innovation is reduced.
But I do think that our efforts at patent reform only went about halfway to where we need to go. What we need to do is pull together additional stakeholders and see if we can build some additional consensus on smarter patent laws.
Also: RICO claim can’t shoot down Wi-Fi patent troll [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica]
3 Comments
“The folks that you’re talking about are a classic example. They don’t actually produce anything themselves.”
Obama is severely duped or severely bought. Impeach him.
“Patent troll”
infringers and their paid puppets’ definition of ‘patent troll’:
anyone who has the nerve to sue us for stealing their invention
Call it what you will…patent hoarder, patent troll, non-practicing entity, shell company, etc. It all means one thing: “we’re using your invention and we’re not going to stop or pay”. This is just dissembling by large invention thieves and their paid puppets to kill any inventor support system. It is purely about legalizing theft. The fact is, many of the large multinationals and their puppets who defame inventors in this way themselves make no products in the US or create any American jobs and it is their continued blatant theft which makes it impossible for the true creators to do so. To them the only patents that are legitimate are their own -if they have any.
It’s about property rights. They should not only be for the rich and powerful. Show me a country with weak or ineffective property rights and I’ll show you a weak economy with high unemployment. Does that remind you of any present day country?
Prior to eBay v Mercexchange, small entities had a viable chance at commercializing their inventions. If the defendant was found guilty, an injunction was most always issued. Then the inventor small entity could enjoy the exclusive use of his invention in commercializing it. Unfortunately, injunctions are often no longer available to small entity inventors because of the Supreme Court decision so we have no fair chance to compete with much larger entities who are now free to use our inventions. Essentially, large infringers now have your gun and all the bullets. Worse yet, inability to commercialize means those same small entities will not be hiring new employees to roll out their products and services. And now those same parties who killed injunctions for small entities and thus blocked their chance at commercializing now complain that small entity inventors are not commercializing. They created the problem and now they want to blame small entities for it. What dissembling! If you don’t like this state of affairs (your unemployment is running out), tell your Congress member. Then maybe we can get some sense back into the patent system with injunctions fully enforceable on all infringers by all patentees, large and small.
Those wishing to help fight big business giveaways should contact us as below and join the fight as we are building a network of inventors and other stakeholders to lobby Congress to restore property rights for all patent owners -large and small.
For the truth about trolls, please see http://truereform.piausa.org/default.html#pt.
Like al-Qa’ida in the Maghrib (AQIM)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/how-european-ransoms-bankroll-islamist-terrorists.html?ref=todayspaper
patent trolls use ransom money to finance ever wider forays. But I suspect regulars in this blog are familiar with arguments that the current patent model, defensible in some industries (notably pharmaceuticals), is dysfunctional for computer software.
The US Patent and Trademark Office has been criticized for rubber-stamping patents on vague, obvious, or previously-invented software claims. When the patents were issued, there seemed to be no harm: software firms accumulated them merely for defensive purposes, to deter patent lawsuits by competitors. That benign “mutual assured destruction” model broke down, however, when some software firms fell into financial difficulties. Their patent portfolios were snapped up by trolls with no hostages of their own (ongoing product development) against abusive lawsuits.
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