Obama Plans to Take Action Against Patent-Holding Firms
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
In addition, the president plans to ask Congress to pass legislation that would allow sanctions on litigants who file lawsuits deemed abusive by courts, officials said.
I wonder if "litigants" actually points to "people" rather than entities.
The president has taken a dim view of certain patent-holding firms. In February, he said some firms "don't actually produce anything themselves. They're just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea to see if they can extort some money out of them."
As we all know, companies like ARM don't "make" anything. But they are a legitimate operation by all means. But on the surface, IV might look like a legitimate operation too, with their research staff and everything. And once legislation passes, the now simple shell companies will surely take on a new form that will be more difficult to discern from their legitimate counterparts.
The fact that the administration wants to make this change is amazing. I love it. Yet I have to be skeptical, not only for the aforementioned reasons but also due to our political gridlock. I'm afraid that any legislation that does pass will be laden with intentional loopholes for the trolls to exploit.
I am hopeful yet fearful.
In the interim, get your company to adopt the Innovators Patent Agreement: https://github.com/twitter/innovators-patent-agreement
And what about companies that sell IP's?
As far as I'm concerned, patent trolls are such a cost to society that if ARM was collateral damage, I'd be willing to sacrifice them.
If ARM lost their patent protections, it would neither destroy ARM as a company, nor would it destroy ARM as an architecture. In fact, ARM as an architecture would become strengthened. ARM as a company would still survive, although a huge hole would be blown in their earnings. You would still need a copyright license from ARM to produce chips containing A15 or any of the other cores designed by ARM; it's only cores that weren't designed by ARM (Krait for example), that would no longer have to pay ARM.
Since this issue seems to have some bipartisan support behind it, perhaps something will actually get done.
The real problem is that currently it's profitable to have an idea, patent it, and then sit on it until someone accidentally re-invents your idea. If an idea is sufficiently obvious that there's a reasonably high likelihood of reinvention (as opposed to copying), it should never have been patentable in the first place.
If it makes sense for companies to tell employees not to look at the knowledge distributed by patents, you have too many obvious patents. Looking at the information disseminated by patents should be a universal good: you should be seeing ideas that you'd be unlikely to come up with yourself - that will mostly only add to your options for creating your product, not subtract.
You don't need complicated, nuanced legislation to make this happen - you need instead to do a hell of a lot of patent reevaluation.
With regard to companies like ARM, who's patents are of a very high quality and technically innovative and detailed, it would be hard for people to argue that they don't deserve the patent. But people who have essentially patented the internet without providing any worthwhile details would find it a lot more difficult to retain their patent once other interested parties are given the opportunity to call it out as bullshit.
I do think it is a little unfair to ask the patent offices to make the right call every time with regard to patent filings, simply because of the sheer volume they have to process. Giving them a second chance to evaluate a patent with the input of experts in the field that a particular patent relates to would be beneficial to everyone.
Going to an extreme: Maybe you could grant any and all patent filings automatically, and only the patents used in patent suits are evaluated. So all patents are worthless until tested. Or that might be a bad idea, I've not given it much thought beyond this.
Some of the great ideas will become obvious later. That doesn't mean they're not valid & creative ideas.
Generally describing patents as creative works is problematic. In some cases they are like literature or music. In lots of other cases they are more like scientific discoveries. Out there waiting to be uncovered.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+Plans+to+Take+Action+A...
Just click on the top link to read it.
http://gigaom.com/2013/02/16/obama-says-patent-trolls-hijack...
http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-patent-comments-at-goo...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/obama-calls-patent-ref...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415469,00.asp
And for folks who are getting upset at the those who don't like paywalls, I'm quite happy to enable ads if your site has quality content.
If a paywall is how you get money, then keep your stories off Google. You can't be Quora and The Well at the same time.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+Plans+to+Take+Action+A...
Imagine if a bank teller had a 88% error rate when giving out loans, thus handing out large sums of money to people who can't repay it. No bank in history would allow such personal to still be employed, or they would go out of businesses thanks to competition in the market. The PTO do not have any competition, so instead we are left dealing with the after effect with 9/10 patents being incorrectly issued for fully 20 years periods. Patent trolls and patent-holding firms would likely not exist, or would at least have extremely smaller effect on the market if PTO actually did their job correctly.
[1]In an effort to assert the quality of patent, one can look at the result from reexaminations. Like with code, if it is not tested, its quality is indeterminable. The PTO publish yearly a report for ex parte reexaminations, and during the latest period of 2011/09/30 -> 2012/09/30, the reexamination certificates only gave 12% of all examined patents a pass with all claims intact. This is averaged across all technical fields, as PTO do not have numbers for specific markets. I would guess that software patents will have slightly higher number of faulty patents (~95% of incorrect patents?), but statistics over the IT industry patents doesn't seem to exist.
Both sides do this a lot. Look at the whole focus of health care costs. No debate on why they are high and how to fix the inputs.
The patent troll debate is further hampered by reporters using the term willy-nilly instead of focusing on companies that actually have that business model.
An ex parte reexamination requires a fee. People don't randomly choose patents for reexamination, they only challenge the weakest ones.
Untested patents is of undetermined quality similar to untested code. How do we know that untested code has bugs if most people don't write tests randomly? Well, because developer experience would argue that untested code is not a haven of bugfree or high quality software. Rather, code is seen as non-working until testing has proven otherwise. Why should we treat untested patents differently?
> People don't randomly choose patents for reexamination, they only challenge the weakest ones.
Got a source for that? Normally, people spend money on reexamination when other people try to extract money from licensing agreements. When companies tries to extract money from licensing agreements, don't they tend to use their strongest patents as the stick? In that sense, people don't randomly choose patents for reexamination, they only challenge the strongest ones which is the ones used in patent litigation and patent licensing agreements. But I don't have a source for that, so I guess the argument goes to the person with a source.
Sure the basement tinkerer could license the patent to Samsung, even an exclusive perpetual license, which is almost as good as owning it, and might be the preferred path forward (though there can be some problems with that too as companies start to defensively buy exclusive perpetual licenses with no intention of making those widgets just to keep others out of that market).
But at this point, any law requiring such licenses would have to be for those going forward. Any retroactive law would require either handing back legally purchased patents (which destroys wealth) or require the originator to buy them back (which may be impossible in many cases if they've already spent the money on retirement homes).
The core reason patents become so valuable is because they last so damn long. If they didn't last until the next ice age it would take much of the value out of ownership and make licensing naturally make more sense anyway. The way to attack this is at the root and revert back the patent expiration to something far more reasonable.
Silly patent trolls, don't they know that is the job of the politician?
(I happen to disagree)
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason that pharmaceuticals really need patent protection is that the huge regulatory costs are borne by the patent holder; generics can free-ride. Fix this problem and a viable funding model for pharmaceuticals can emerge, even without patent protection.
If a pharmaceutical guy cannot figure out how to make a profitable business without violent protection, it's not mine or your problem. If we cannot figure out how to make efficient drugs peacefully without inventing "patents" and "licenses" (that basically allow bullying others), then it's our personal problem.
I put "simple" in quotes, because I've left the political factor out.
If we can't do the above, I have to wonder what any process involving "political compromise" can or will achieve. My hopes are not too high.
Until these actions and changes are stated, it is really tough to have a good debate about the topic. The article is pretty general and can really be condensed into a tweet, maybe even less. There has to be more substance behind how they plan to determine the so-called trolls versus companies such as Arm.
Call me when WSJ decides to adopt a new business model.
Subscriptions on the internet is not a new business model.
Their "new business model" is quite successful and the envy of the industry.
However, it seems like the paywall only works because it's so leaky in the first place.
I'd imagine before the internet, you may have sneaked a peak at a friend's issue of the WSJ or read one at a coffee shop. I suppose the leaky paywall is the modern equivalent.
Almost none of the money that online distributors pull in (music, video, content vendors) makes it back to the actual content producers. So I can't say I'm sad to see this particular iteration of the industry crashing and burning.
You're awfully presumptuous for someone who can't spell "college" correctly.
The problem is there is still a giant gap between what makers and sellers earn. It is no longer the case that distribution costs are prohibitive, makers no longer need massive upfront investment to sell things. So why is it acceptable to you for such exploitation to continue?
Your argument that "Almost none of the money that online distributors pull in (music, video, content vendors) makes it back to the actual content producers." is complete nonsense. It's no excuse to want everything for free or hate paid content. You really are a young entitled college student that wants everything for free. We all were. I was. Money was tight and went towards noodles and living expenses and we pirated everything because we couldn't afford it. Life changed, we grew up, graduated, got jobs, appreciate an income and now pay for things. One day when you bust your ass making something you'll appreciate someone paying you for it.
And further, even if I were a broke college kid that wouldn't itself invalidate my actual argument. It's a fallacy to discredit a point because of the social status of the point-maker.
Reading through your blog, I understand why you're so invested in the irrational position you hold.
Good luck with turning things around.