Those litigious men in their flying machines
hushkit.net
hushkit.net
1. being sued for patent infringement
2. suing others for patent infringement
3. being hired by companies to find workarounds for other patents
4. being an expert witness in a patent case
The patent system should be abolished.
As for putting patent trolls out of business, I doubt any will shed a tear.
"YYYYY on the internet."
Especially in a "first-to-file" patent world, a well-guarded-but-leaked trade secret could potentially even be turned against the holder of the secret.
With the transition from first-to-invent to first-to-file, hidden prior art has, I believe, substantially less influence.
Patents tend to favor large companies.
A patent is basically an expensive ticket to a lawsuit, and a plausibly useful marketing claim.
Small companies with useful inventions can easily get stomped on by larger companies with large bankrolls. Yet it takes years and tens of $thousands to successfully prosecute a patent. Prosecuting a larger company infringing is often beyond the means of a small company, but if they are plausibly near-"infringing" on a larger company's patent, they can be sued out of existence, or the product killed by the mere threat.
Perhaps a more sane patent system would be better, but it is hard to see how abolishing the current system altogether could tilt things more in favor of large companies.
Upon submitting a patent application, the use-case(s) of the invention should be published.
The submitting party can set an expiration time E. A larger E has drawbacks, as we'll see below.
Directly after the patent has been submitted, anybody can challenge the patent either by showing prior art, or by demonstrating an equivalent invention. This can be done only in the period T directly following the submission.
If T increases with E, choosing a large E is a risk. But it also offers a greater reward.
Patents should not exist. They are entitling a commercial entity to a monopoly. Monopoly — BAADD!
In practice, though, I think the system is less than ideal.
After inventing the airplane, they spent a significant chunk of the rest of their career suing for aircraft related patents.
"Workers must root out the idea [that] by keeping the results of their labours to themselves[,] a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition."
What I want to know is:
"Which country copied/stole/appropriated (use whatever languaging makes you feel comfortable) the wheel from which other country, first?" <g>
"Intellectual Property Theft", you gotta love it...
It's amazing, because all of Silicon Valley stands on the shoulders of pioneers; on the shoulders of giants, but not once in those silly interviews of the latest successful founder, who's only a kid, do they ever, ever thank all of the people that made all of the infrastructure that made their present day business able to function... people including, but not limited to: Boole, Tesla, Turing, Shannon, Von Neumann, Atanasoff, and others too numerous to count.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_s...
Also, most so-called intellectual property "secrets" -- usually appear in some form or other in academic papers way before they are snapped up and patented by some multinational company, some multinational company who is usually not the original researcher or researchers.
Which brings me to another other point... usually the multinational company profits more, way more, orders of magnitude more, than the original inventors/researchers, who might not (in some but not all cases) be compensated at all...
So now the next question is, who stole what from whom, when?
a) Did some other country, i.e., China (or whoever) steal intellectual property from another "Country" (which are actually corporations/corporate interests in that other country)?
or
b) Did the corporation that was "stole from" -- steal that intellectual property from the original inventors/researchers? (You know, via legal means, paying someone a pittance and calling it a "fair deal" is still stealing...)
or
c) Did the original inventors/researchers steal their idea from ideas that were already floating about in the academic community and in previous academic papers, in that field of study?
Who stole what from who, when?
?
That's what I want to know.
And I also want to know which country stole the wheel from which other country, first... <g>
In Silicon Valley, up until about 2000, venture capitalists wanted a strong patent position before funding something. As a group, VCs made money from the 1970s to 2000 or so. In the 2000s, with the push for growth, failures cost more and VCs, as a group, lost money. Not sure about the 2010s.