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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

Someone on reddit had an interesting idea: What if Google invited people to join them in a big pool of patents? Anyone who signed in would gain use of the pool's patents, but would have to sign all of their patents over to the pool as well.

If someone in the pool decided to sue someone outside the pool over a patent, the latter could just join the pool and avoid the lawsuit (since now they own the patent as well). This would probably lead to an equilibrium point where everyone is in the pool, and thus make patents meaningless.

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What if you genuinely innovate, patent your innovation and hope to exploit your IP ? One or more likely, several, pool members will sue you, force you to join the pool and thus destroy your advantage. If they have an established manufacturing division and supply chain, they can churn out your gadget before you even come up with a name. If your innovation is in any way disruptive to their business model, you'll have plenty of legal broadfires thrown your way just to make you go away.

If it was truly innovative how would your technology exist in the patent pool?

Nothing exists in a vacuum. You will presumably infringe on other patents in the pool for dumb stuff everyone needs like search boxes, buttons, and scroll bars. Put one in the wrong place or put the wrong label on it and you're suddenly infringing on a "one click" patent or something equally asinine.

In other words, the current situation.

> One or more likely, several, pool members will sue you, force you to join the pool and thus destroy your advantage.

What are they suing you over, if your work is truly "innovative"?

A trivial/obvious detail, which unfortunately describes the majority of software patents.

The "you" innovates and gets a patent to restrict others from exploiting your innovation.

The "pool members" innovate and get patents to restrict "you" from exploiting their innovation.

Can you oppose one of these actions but not the other?

That's kinda-sorta-almost the Open Innovation Network (OIN: as mentioned in the linked article): http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/

Patent pools aren't new - the MPEG LA patent pool (http://www.mpegla.com/main/default.aspx) is one that has gained a lot of attention over the last few years, and they are actively seeking others. MPEG LA is slightly different to OIN because it seeks to raise money for companies in the pool by licencing the patents.

Unfortunately this does not address the issue of patent trolls that produce no product except lawsuits, therefore cannot be sued for violating patents and forced to join the pool.

Aw.

Could that be the basis for an IP based startup? Seems like a clever hack of the patent & legal system surrounding patents. Of course once there is 1 of these, there will be copycats - which could lead to a race to capture the largest share of patents. Patent wars indeed.

If the organization that asserted management of the pool did it as a non-profit or not-for-profit, then it could work. Fragmentation and wars occur for power and control.

If there are copycats, you can just join them. It's easy to make one big pool in the end.

I think very few companies (probably including Google) would be willing to join any sort of pool that requires them to sign over all of their patents to the pool.

Why? If you're only using it for defense, there's nothing stopping you.

There's a big difference between saying you plan to only use your patents for defensive purposes and forfeiting all rights to otherwise some time in the future.

from my understanding this is precisely how patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures work

With the exception that the pool is essentially made of bogus companies that never produced anything and never will.

Can anyone join them, unconditionally? Obviously not.

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