Microsoft joins preemptive patent protection program | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft joins preemptive patent protection program

arstechnica.com

47 pointsgrellas7 comments

That is such a cool scheme. I'm glad somebody is actively seeking to invalidate bogus patents. I'm not sure how they're getting money - is they idea that people that join up donate to the cash pool they use to reward people who find prior art on existing patents?

Also it doesn't go quite as far as I'd like - it reduces the incentive to lodge bogus patents (as hopefully they'll stand for less time), but I'd still like their to some level of penalty to the originator when bogus patents are overturned (but that's a law change - somebody pointed out on a previous thread apparently Texas now has a law penalizing people that bring frivolous suits - not quite the same as filing for frivolous patents, but I still like it).

Edit: ah, followed links to http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/11/startup-crow... Apparently they take research requests from clients, presumably for money. Not quite as cool as I hoped - cost might still be out of realm of startup defence. Also - Article One Partners applied for a patent for their system of crowdsourcing patent invalidation :o)

I'm not convinced that a penalty makes sense. It's not really the inventor's fault for filing an obvious patent or one with prior art; it's the patent office's fault for approving it.

So it's OK for them to threaten others, but not OK when others come after them.

The way the game is set up now it encourages people to go after one another, even if they don't want to. Maybe Microsoft has decided that the best courses of action rank as follows:

  Go after no one under a new system.
  Go after everyone under the current system.
  Go after no one under the current system.

Currently only options 2 and 3 are available, but they would like to move to option number one and this is their first step in making that a reality.

I don't know that is what they are doing, just saying...

Considering how they are ripping off Android phone makers, I'd say this is wishful thinking.

   The way the game is set up now it encourages 
   people to go after one another

In what way are companies encouraged to do this? In what way was HTC a threat to their "intellectual property"? Was it a threat in the sense that they can't compete with Android in a free market?

Really, this is outstandingly hypocritical of them.

Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Personally, I'd rather see Microsoft putting energy into endeavors like these than pish-posh the effort and encourage them to launch patent suits against competitors.

Remember BountyQuest?

Everything old is new again. Has it been 10 years already?

http://oreilly.com/news/patent_archive.html

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