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Comment by Kliment | Hacker News Reader

When a patent application is in its larval stage, 6 months after initial publication, at least in the US it can be murdered by prior art submitted by anyone, online, for free. A number of open source hardware and software communities I try to keep up with are now under direct threat of patents, and a centralized place where we could get a simple listing of patent app link, time until vulnerability period is over, and possibly a forum to discuss possible directions of prior art and coordinate submission would be extremely helpful. That way, it's possible to eradicate the assheaded attempts to restrict ideas before they become enforceable by law.

For an already issued patent, I understand it's worth trying to put the trial on hold while it gets re-examined. A reexamination is generally much cheaper than a patent trial.

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In the AIA 2011, there are some new post-grant opposition procedure that speeds up and reduce the legal cost such as PGR, IPR, CBM. Although opposition application is about $30k USD plus some paper work. This is not super cheap, but it is still a lot cheaper than going through discovery and superstar trial lawyers by litigating, which would be in the millions $$.

The problem here is that the parties that are going to get hit with those patents probably don't even exist yet. Your typical patent troll buys patents that have value, the filing was done in bulk in the past, then by the time the state of the art has progressed for a bit (much more than half a year) they look over their portfolio and decide which patents can be harvested.

Some patents trolls will buy up selected patents that have been filed by others.

So the opposition applications will likely not be done because you'd have to oppose a whole ton of patents more or less on principle without knowing whether or not those patents would ever be used to litigate.

The patent office should get better at doing its job and should not simply approve the vast majority of what goes past their desks without doing actual work, and should make the filer pay a stiff fine if they miss disclosing prior art should the patent be refused or overturned.

Not that that is ever going to happen, but the current system favours the applicant way too much.

Although courts/ITC might not grant a stay depending on IPR, CBM etc., there have been some cases if the litigation hasnt gone too far, a stay could/have been granted in some of cases. Would this tip the scales towards the defendant slightly, given that the specific patents would be known?

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