Hacker News Reader

Full thread

andy_ppp

Simple solution, the law should be:

A) only companies using patents directly can sue

B) the maximum damages that can be awarded are 2x revenue related to the patents

This means that companies actually using patents and making a business out of them can benefit and stops patent trolls.

Am I crazy?

View on HN

What about patents that come out of universities?

How do you determine the "revenue related to the patents"?

Universities have patents for the purpose of selling them, no? If a company is making something and wants to use it, then they buy the patent. No different from today in that case. The only difference is that trolls can't buy the same patents in order to sue others, like IV, Rockstar, and others are doing.

When has a university ever sued someone? Patents generally end up being bought by companies using them... Unless shenanigans are at play.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/10/univers...

(My impression is that UW is fairly extreme in this regard)

Here's the first result from Google: http://www.cmu.edu/patent-lawsuit/ CMU vs Marvell.

Here's an article from Stanford law school: 'Are universities the new patent trolls?' http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=980776

Universities often (and unfairly IMHO) claim rights on graduate research precisely to monetize and act as patent gatekeepers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com