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Comment by tyre | Hacker News Reader

Because they don't want patent trolls extorting them.

Let's say I patent one of these myself and BofA develops anything with cryptocurrency. I can go to them and say they are violating my patent and they can either pay me $75,000 or we can go to court. Going to court costs them more than $75k, so they would settle.

It is much cheaper to file the bogus patent yourself upfront then to be extorted later. Challenging a bullshit patent is often far more expensive than settling, but exceedingly more expensive than a patent application.

So no, they likely won't sue anyone else.

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>Because they don't want patent trolls extorting them.

Both they and patent trolls can file bogus patents covering the same ideas. The system is that bad. The patent office just grants and assumes the courts will sort it all out.

Having patents is zero defense against trolls. Trolls make nothing and have nothing to cross license or lose. It is only a defense against another company that is patenting and making things in you industry.

Its almost as if the patent office should be disbanded entirely. The courts will sort it all out.

Some countries have this system, e.g., I think Belgium at least used to grant patents without examination. A patentee would then sue and the validity would be taken up for the first time upon suit.

I am under the impression that it is an easier defense (at least "we patented this because that's what we're doing, so either your patent which postdates ours is the same, so it's invalid, or not, so we're not infringing it"), even if you don't get to countersue a non-troll competitor. That is, while you still have to go to court against a troll, having your own duplicate patent means you're less likely to lose, which is even more onerous than just paying for lawyer time.

(I don't base this on any particular courtroom experience with this, though, so maybe I'm totally wrong.)

>Trolls make nothing and have nothing to cross license or lose.

Rightly said, patent trolls just seeks for the opportunities to exploit a company's portfolio and gain some settlement bucks from them.

However I am a little confused about how patenting bitcoins is going to affect us/industry/other banks? if they are not going to sue anyone.

> It is much cheaper to file the bogus patent yourself upfront then to be extorted later.

No, it's much cheaper to publish your idea in sufficient detail where a) it can be easily found by examiner searches and b) a clear priority date can be established. With the advent of Google, even something as simple as a blog post can count, though establishing the date could be trickier.

See:

http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/83/how-to-make-an...

http://www.defensivepublications.org/defensive-pubs-faqs

These days it seems rare that examiners find anything other than existing patents... Perhaps its because they are overworked, underpaid, and actually incentivised to process as many patents as possible. By most standards, when it comes to legal verisimilitude of anything found on the internet as far I can see... If it didnt come from your own database of stuff... you cant trust it. So why would the patent examiner even bother opening google if he cant legally trust it.

I'd love some proof that examiners actually search outside the USPTO database, not references to their guidelines etc that imply they should, actual proof they do.

Examiners do cite non-patent literature (NPL), and yes they can trust Google. I have seen rejections that literally have a screen-cap of Google search results.

But yes, NPL is rarer than patent prior art citations ("Determinants of Patent Quality" by Bhaven Sampat is one study that has some numbers). This is primarily because patents are already authored, classified and organized in a way that examiners can easily search, so they typically find the necessary "ammo" they need to make a rejection more quickly there.

The most egregious example of trolling I've witnessed involves a case where wifi patent trolls have sued end user businesses (think hotels, coffee shops) which own and use routers. They did so intentionally because small businesses were not likely to go to court and just sent the troll money to "settle".

At least the legal system seems to have moved towards more heavily punishing blatant trolls more recently. I would hate to see what trolls get their claws sunk into if blockchain tech is heavily adopted for financial transactions.

Source for wifi trolling

http://www.essentialpatentblog.com/2013/04/innovative-wirele...

The thing is, big banks are historically no more trustworthy or benevolent than patent trolls. Mentioning a plausibly non-evil motivation for these patents is only reassuring if there's any reason to believe BoA wouldn't also use them for evil if they thought they could make a buck.

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