Steve Wozniak Calls Paul Allen A Patent Troll
itproportal.com
itproportal.com
I would disagree that non-practicing entities are fundamentally evil. If I have a legitimate patent on a useful and non-obvious invention that is unlikely to be independently created, I should be able to take my "reward" in a lump sum by selling the rights to it. Paul Allen isn't a patent troll because he owns an IP company; he's a troll because he's trying to enforce ridiculous patents that never should have been granted in the first place.
Of course, if the USPTO were actually competent the "buy patents and sue" business model would be much less viable.
Huh? Buy "buying them in bulk", the patent trolls are paying money to the original innovators. They are being rewarded. Why do you oppose innovators' right to sell their IP to other parties? It's hardly property if you can't transfer ownership.
What other uses do you think that patents have?
The only thing that a patent gives you is the ability to sue someone. A patent doesn't let you practice anything.
They prevent others from suing you, at least over that one patent.
That said, I wonder how much it might fix if people were only permitted to license or cross-license your patents and forbidden from reassigning the patent or the right to sue over the patent.
This is not valuable. Placing ideas in the public domain also prevents people from suing you and anybody else for those ideas, and it's much less expensive. The only reason to pay for a patent is to acquire the right to sue for compensation.
That's like saying that someone can't charge you rent for property that you own.
However, unlike with property that you own, you can get sued wrt an overlapping patent owned by someone else regardless of what patents you own.
> That said, I wonder how much it might fix if people were only permitted to license or cross-license your patents and forbidden from reassigning the patent or the right to sue over the patent.
In other words, you think that patents shouldn't be sellable.
2) Selling IP rights lets you get immediate payment. Instead of a continuous royalty stream over decades, a lump-sum upfront with the same present-value. This could be more convenient.
3) IP rights let (I believe) an inventor defend their patent after their death. Without transferrable IP, if someone's life expectancy is shorter than their patent's term, they could not fully benefit from it. This would be unfair to them. It would also be inconsistent that they could not transfer IP to descendants like other assets.
4) (Argument I've read on YC) Selling patents lets them be better-defended (by specialist patent "trolls"). It removes the burden of litigation from the inventor: "go to court or lose your royalties to infringers".
5) The concept of "same owner" looks silly when IP is owned by businesses, rather than individuals.
Of course the current patent system is a total joke with companies patenting blatantly obvious ideas left and right and playing the game of "who filed the obvious idea first and/or who has the most lawyers".
If there were a patent on the idea of harnessing power from Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave, that'd be a real valuable one... because he must be spinning REALLY, REALLY fast by now.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/03/woz_talks_patents_an...
I submitted the Register article the other day and it only got 1 upvote:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2512559
I can't remember what time I submitted it though.
"Woz snubs Paul Allen, praises pea soup"
Although this is the original title of the article, this kind of title doesn't attract lots of HN readers. It suggests that this article is solely about personal issues between two people.