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Comment by S_A_P | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible that a nonprofit could troll the patent trolls and start proactively suing them to get their patents invalidated? It seems to me that a consortium of above board companies could fund such a thing and come out way ahead of fighting litigation targeted at their business.

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That would be prohibitively expensive. The number of overly broad patents that patent trolls own is way too large to be able to challenge them in a cost effective way.

If you want to play offense rather than defense, your money is better spent lobbying to get the law changed so that overly broad patents are more difficult to acquire in the first place.

In addition to the cost of doing this, you have to have legal standing to pursue the suit. You cannot sue to invalidate arbitrary patents unless you can prove harm to yourself. If you cannot demonstrate legal standing, the courts will not hear your case.

True, and I could see this becoming a tool of oppression by "big evilcorps" if it were possible to do. I guess its a fun thought experiment though. I generally like the patent idea, if someone comes up with something innovative then they should see the upside. I wonder if a time window would improve matters. Get a patent and you have X number of years to produce something sale-able or publicly available for consumption.

Not sure if I misunderstood, but patents do have a time window.

I think the wish there is for a “use it or lose it” window.

correct- Im thinking a time frame of up to 25% of the patent period is fair. In other words you shouldn't patent an idea, but something that is close to being "available"

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