Patent that cost Microsoft millions gets invalidated

I completely agree. I've always been baffled as to why this was allowed.

If the inventor is a corporation, this would be gamed by simply transferring ownership of the corporation. If the inventor is a human, the person would have to organize as a sole proprietorship and forgo limited liability. Designing rules is hard!

The inventor can benefit from a patent by selling it.

Maybe they don't want to raise millions of dollars and spend years building a business that may or may not eventually generate $20 million in profit over the next couple decades, and would rather just sell it now for $1 million and get back to creating!

Even if they wanted to take the time and risk to use it directly, the skills required to invent something and the skills to profit from it aren't necessarily the same.

> closer to the original intent of the patent system which was to incentivise creators

Speaking about incentives, the USPTO still has an incentive to accept as many patents as possible. This is a bit like paying fishermen for the fish they didn't catch.

Making patent ownership non-transferable would have no significant effect. Patent troll companies would simply contract with the inventor and sue "on behalf of" the inventor. Same dollar amounts would change hands, the contracts would just be written differently.

One practical reality of this rule would be that only wealthy inventors could secure effective IP rights. A patent without the ability to finance a lawsuit (about $2 million, min) is an empty threat, and sophisticated parties know this and will refuse to license your IP. Contingency fee lawyers used to fill this void, but recently patent suits have become so unprofitable that, at least anecdotally, very few firms are taking contingency cases. Private equity will step in occasionally for patents with a pedigree, in a strong portfolio, but it's rare.

Um..since this is the entire point of patents (to reduce an innovation to a bond), you may as well do away with patents (which is fine with me).

I would like to see one transfer. It would have to be worded just right, but just one transfer.

The reason I call for one transfer is patenting someting is a big deal(financially) for a poor person. The fees are too high. (I actually contacted the patent office in the US a few years ago, and questioned their fees. They came back with we give a slight break to micro-businesses, or someting like that? It was not low enough for my budget.)

My point is a rich entity can patent a fart sound, and the cost is a two person corporate lunch. And that's why they patent everything?

I would like to see patents/trademarks costs go up in cost exponentially. Example, first patent $1000 dollar fee. Tenth patent $50,000? I would like to see the cost tied to income level, maybe even gross?

A poor entity, even if they fill out the paperwork themselfs; the cost of a patent is high. Especially when you have file multiple patents in order to protect your idea. That person should be able to profit on his/her idea? That person should be able to afford to protect their idea. So many poor people can't afford those patent fees--

In all reality, I would like to see patent/trademark fees lowered for poor entities. (If the entity sends in sloppy paperwork; you can make that poor person pay what a rich person pays. This would prevent abuse of the system?)

I think patents should be transferable, I just think patents should be a lot harder to acquire to the point where they are rare, which was absolutely the original intent (at least as it pertains to US patents).

See, for example, Jefferon's letter to Isaac McPherson:

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letter...

If Jefferson were reanimated now he would, pretty clearly, be livid about the current state of the patent system and the way patents are essentially rubber-stamp granted as long as you pay the fee and use all the right legalese to make your incredibly obvious "this, but on a computer" invention seem like it is anything new.

There is an analog with art, a /droight de suite/ or a system for resale royalties. The idea is that starving artists have very low bargaining power compared to galleries and art dealers. The theory goes, that if the artists are disallowed from selling all of their ownership rights, that is, they will receive a royalty every time their painting is sold in the future, then the creators of pieces that turn out to be extremely valuable will never be left starving on the street simply because they were bad at negotiating.

However, retrospective analysis of such systems in practice has tended to show that artists' bargaining position has not been as weak as the common narrative, and constraining the upside potential for art dealers has lead to less funding in the market overall, and less risk-taking in the form of purchasing works from undiscovered artists who are most likely to resemble the starving artist archetype.

Absolutely and the same can be said for the original idea behind copyright. Heck that descendants can live off royalties of a passe one's copyright is not why it was invented.

The company you work for on whose time you invent something that is granted a patent should give a revocable license to your employer but the inventor should never have to give up the patent to the employer. Unfortunately that's how it's handled in most places and a reason why many do not submit stuff to patent lawyers in the company. I'm curious how this works in the US with IBM creating at least one patent a day.

My opinion is probably even more unpopular. I don't believe software should be patentable at all.

Algorithm implementation is already covered by copyright and that is enough.

The American patent is working backwards. Instead of fostering innovation, it makes inventive people stop to wonder if what they are doing is or not infringing any of so many bogus patents.

Licencing is OK.

But the patent shouldn't be "exclusively transferable".

The owner should be always able to do it himself or sell another licence.

Also if nobody is doing anythin with the patent - it should be void after a few months.

Dyson vacuum cleaner?

Freeplay wind-up radio

Edison was probably suing more than getting sued (that's the reason film production moved to the West Cost)

Apart from that, I guess it's really rare.

Interesting, now that you mention it, I see how it could mean what you thought. When I first read it, I read the correct meaning.

You can't afford to make your innovation, try and sell it and someone you showed it to just steals it because you don't make it.

You could view patent collector to have roughly the same role as debt collector: it's a specialization of enforcement for certain type of social contracts in our system. In programming term, they would be an abstraction black box the free others (creator) from doing mundane unnecessary jobs.

Now, of course the current implementation of IP is pretty shitty. And there are argument to be made that the assumption of "no patent/ idea protection === no incentive for people to create thing" is flawed to start with.

I actually know Ric and some of the guys who worked at Uniloc. Back in the day, they were doing real development work and R&D on activation and licensing systems. The nature of the business may have changed after the Microsoft thing happened, but there's a lot more to that story than ever makes it into the headlines. All you hear now is the spin. Calling them trolls is sexier than doing any kind of fact checking I guess. Microsoft (and others) helped create the modern Uniloc by ripping off their IP, making it more profitable to enforce their patent than to use it to their advantage or license it. As long as the patent system exists in it's current flawed form, users have two choices... license the patented IP they use or roll the dice. People who own patents HAVE to enforce them or forfeit their rights, that's not really much of a choice.

What about the federal circuit? That court is entirely composed of patent lawyers.

Not if they didn't own the patent at the time they were accused of abusing it. Patent ownership does not work retroactively.

Any competent lawyer authoring the settlement agreement on behalf of the patent owner would provide for a release against future claims should the patent turn out to be invalidated.

Such terms would be accepted by the payer, because at the time of payment, the assumption is that the patent is valid "enough" to settle.