Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit

> But why do patent plaintiffs, especially trolls, see it as such a favorable forum? Partly, the district's relatively rapid litigation timetable can put pressure on defendants to settle. But other local practices in the Eastern District also favor patentees. And, in our view, they do so in a way that is inconsistent with the governing Federal Rules, and work to mask the consistent refusal by the courts in the Eastern District to end meritless cases before trial.

The idea isn't just that a win there will discourage an appeal, but that the court will hear cases that most other courts would dismiss out of hand based on obvious prior art, vague claims, or USPTO investigation results. So the defendant is tied up in a court case, which includes an expensive jury trial. Worse still, the jury is so biased that they're all but guaranteed to loose the case. Most savvy defendents would choose to settle in that situation - which is all the patent-holder actually wants.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000511195702/http://www.saic.c...

Except you have to do both - if you ignore the racket you are much more exposed to lawsuits. Patents are used defensively between companies like Apple and Samsung, and if you give up that defense while trying to change the laws you are severely exposed. Tough balancing act..

The flip side of it is that I don't think we're likely to see these laws change until the current 2 party corrupt system is torn apart. Congress is completely bought and sold on both sides of the aisle and their owners like the current system (more laws = more lawsuits = more $$ for lawyers).

But that's my entire point. Currently, selling out to a patent troll (ignoring patents obtained from bankruptcies) is honestly the smartest move if you're a small company with a great patent. We should give such a company more socially-beneficial alternatives.

Unless you'd like to offer feasible alternatives?

I think the biggest problem with fighting patent trolls after they've acquired the patents is that they're not really businesses. So you win... who's to say they'll pay? They have a lot of organizational options available to them that actual, functioning businesses likely do not.

Aka don't fight a battle on terrain where your opponent has greater flexibility than you

I'd be more inclined to fight the actual trolls politically. A) They don't create jobs, B) they've got relatively small financial reserves compared to a larger functioning business, and C) they probably fly flag-of-convenience corporate registration with minimal interaction with the state (not that that's probably rare)

Of course, caveat about standards being written and covering parents held by larger players.

Another issue I see is that patent trolls could just represent patent owners in litigation and charge high legal fees (or sign a contract that they receive all revenue for the patent).

It is important to not just consider the position of a pharmaceutical research corporations impact on the economy but the broader picture. Their research is often subsidized by the dying and suffering, or in the era of the PPACA it might be subsidized in part by a corporation that has to spread out that burden broadly to all healthcare subscribers.

The poor are sicker, on average, than the rich. Their reduced access to medicine makes their complications work, and the environments they are forced into often cause their more illness.

The drug R&D system we have now disproportionately extracts its funding from everyone above medicaid (and even on medicaid you can only get partial drug coverage) and anyone below a reasonable standard of living.

There are multiple ways to intervene into this system to produce as much research as we have now with an alternative funding model.

Since the majority of the consumers of these drugs are on national healthcare programs (usually medicare or medicaid - old or poor) we could simply transition to expansive national funding programs for private research, or public drug R&D. The revenue barely shifts hands then, but the problem becomes that the state is an awful judge of value and as demonstrated by NASA or the DoD is a terrible judge of what deserves funding or how much to give.

This system isn't even theoretical, Bernie and Obama have already proposed such laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes_as_an_alternative_to_pa...

The other consequence is that since IP and patents are pure fiction in reality and must be constructed as a state institution to enforce, countries like China and India can just ignore US patents on drugs, instead manufacturing and distributing the fruits of American and European labor (since we end up paying the overpriced patent prices) abroad for no cost.

Is it worth aggressively pursuing research when the least able to afford it often ends up having to pay for it? How do we know that competitive drug research would not be done through institutional and charitable funding, like how a ton of other research works? Even in the absence of patents, there are upstart costs to building and manufacturing drugs. And within the drug industry, people often ignore that the most central reason why pharma R&D needs to spend so much ludicrous money is because of the FDA regulations involving getting their drugs approved. If drugs were more deregulated - less of a problem in the information age, when research can easily be distributed and problems broadcast internationally within minutes of discovery - we could dramatically cut the costs of research such that traditional manufacturing models, that have worked for years, could work the same for making pills.

Personally, I think a combination of substantive deregulation (you could still have FDA approval, and even a law where doctors need to notify consumers when they are prescribing experimental drugs and the risks involved, but they would not be mandatory to start selling and profiting), research prizes, public funding, private charity (a lot of cancer research is charitable, and almost any ailment of great duress also gets incredible amounts of charitable research funding) and the recognition that using a guaranteed monopoly only enforced in the western world disproportionately hurts the sick, and thus hurts the elderly and poor who either have to pay partials under state coverage or have to pay entirely out of pocket.

- company buys patents for the purpose of seeking rents

- company aggressively pursues others who are independently creating potentially valuable products to shake them down for rents

- company produces nothing of value with the patent except for increased wealth transfer by extracting value from others' work

That they [theoretically] put money in someone's pocket to get the patent in the first place does not change any of these facts. And calling attention to the behavior isn't selectively dealing with the facts. They exist purely for rent-seeking.

Patents are a fucking joke in the age of technology. Fucking 20 year monopoly for a button, laughable.