Hold on, so what is the difference between your company and a patent troll?
Not that I'm accusing you guys, I'm just not sure how I can readily draw the line between the two.
Not that I'm accusing you guys, I'm just not sure how I can readily draw the line between the two.
Patent trolls file suits against cool hip trendy geek friendly companies like Apple and Google.
IP companies protect their investment when it's stolen by big evil companies like Microsoft or Sony.
The big problem to me are patents, common in software, that do the following:
1) They target a new problem that didn't exist before.
2) Have a trivial solution to this new problem.
3) Then one can claim that this patent is non-obvious since no one else has done this before.
The interesting thing is not the actual patent, but the problem it is solving. In SW this happens because the industry changes so quickly, but the patented ideas are obvious, its just that the problems are new.
I propose that we add a new test to patentability -- prior art that this problem has been attempted or struggled with. Thus if your solution is the first one to ever been attempted on a given problem its defacto non-patentable.
A quick example is in order: SMS comes out with 148 character limits. Someone then instantly patents URL shorteners to fit in the 148 character limit. Patent denied as there is no prior attempted solutions or struggles fitting URLs in it. (Note, if the patenter can find articles written by practitioners about how SMS is not useful because of link lengths then that would be applicable as prior attempt).
We use our 20years each of studying physics, software we spent a lot of time and money writing, and a lot of expensive test gear - to design a clever pattern of copper.
That's all we sell - the shape of that patch of copper.
ARM sell the shape of some layers of photoresist - same difference.