The argument is simple, not thin. Instead of spending billions on new R&D, new innovation, these companies have to spend money on the shenanigans of the current software patent system.
The innovation represented by these patents just made $4.5 billion. That's the definition of rewarding innovation.
"Instead of spending billions on new R&D"
If it was legal for every KIRF to come in and use every other companies innovations there would be much less incentive to invest in R&D to begin with.
If the patents ("innovation") were so valuable, Nortel wouldn't have gone out of business.
Successful companies can (and have been) successful without patents (or without enforcing patents). Nortel was unable to be successful despite having lots of patents.
Given those facts, the case for patents as a way to "reward" innovation is thin.
There's only a weak correlation between success and patents in that successful companies are forced to pile up patent portfolios, including paying $125k per patent as in this case, not because they care about any of the technology, but because they are afraid of being sued for even greater amounts of money by some other patently rich company.
Not disputed. Nortel was mismanaged into oblivion. That does not show that the fundamental incentive in the patent system is broken.
"If the patents ("innovation") were so valuable, Nortel wouldn't have gone out of business."
That's a total non sequitur. Any business can be driven off a cliff. The patents are that valuable and that's been clearly shown at auction.
"Given those facts, the case for patents as a way to "reward" innovation is thin."
Your "facts" are better termed anecdotes and only disprove the straw men that "you can't be successful without patents" and "patents guarantee success" neither of which is being claimed by anyone.
I am no supporter of software patents. But I don't think this follows directly. Producing innovations is different from having the business acumen to make money out of it.
So the patents don't represent innovation to the bidders, the patents represent a legal defense fund.
The evidence that things are broken is that a bunch of otherwise productive companies just paid a boatload of money for a grab-bag of IP, primarily to immunize themselves from lawsuits from companies with less productive revenue sources.
Huh? It's clearly a valuable idea, otherwise said other people wouldn't be making money by using it. (We can argue about how much of that money is due to other things how much is due to the idea, but let's assume that the idea is somehow essential to to implementation.)
So, what makes it a bad idea? Surely it can't be the existence of a patent held by someone who isn't practicing.
If you have an idea and do nothing with it, society is not better off.
If you can prevent other people who had the same idea as you from making products based on them just by describing the idea on a piece of paper and getting government's stamp that you were the first one to come to them with it, then the society is worse off.
The scenario you described is an unintended consequence, or a perversion, of how patent system is supposed to work.
> If you have an idea and do nothing with it, society is not better off.
Define nothing. If I write a textbook that other folks use to do something, most people would claim that my textbook made society better off. Do you disagree? Note that patents are disclosure....
> The scenario you described is an unintended consequence, or a perversion, of how patent system is supposed to work.
Oh really? The patent literature says that patents are a trade - a limited term monopoly for disclosure of an idea. You seem to think that patents are protection for folks making stuff.
So? Every law has cases where it comes to the "wrong" result.
More to the point, the overwhelming number of "non-practicing" inventors just want to get paid. You seem to think that they shouldn't get paid.
Note that inventors sell to trolls because trolls are better able to get paid. If you weren't so opposed to inventors getting paid, we could look at ways for inventors to get paid without getting trolls involved.
That's the claim, but there hasn't been much supporting evidence other than "that doesn't deserve a patent". The vast majoritiy of the "that was obvious" claims are pure hindsight. (Yes, some software patents have been overturned because of prior art, just as happens in other fields.)
I particularly like the "that's just math" (which is often claimed wrt RSA). You never hear someone says "that's just chemistry" wrt chemical application patents. (You can't patent chemistry any more than you can patent math.)
This cannot be stressed enough: our patent regime is intended to foster the progress of technology. Where the market for these patents acts efficiently as as intended, the value of a patent is based strictly on its ability to allow a company to generate revenue. This is a specific condition and the threshold of quality tends to be high for patents that can genuinely enable production.
The threshold needed for patents to be merely wielded as weapons is much lower. However, as you can plainly see, this does not diminish their value in the patent marketplace. Thus, the patent system in its current form encourages the misallocation of resources toward patents that do less to promote progress.
Software patents encourage the worse kind of abuse, in part because the patent office is utterly incapable of properly evaluating them; you can patent nearly anything.