Comments on: Patent Trolls: A Conspiratorial Story of Symbiosis

By: Nick White

Nick White — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:58:29 +0000

What about Allied Security Trust and their ilk?

They secure the position for their members on acquired patents (the big players) and then sell the patents to NPEs to sue the rest!

Do I smell a Cartel?

David,

I agree wholeheartedly with your observations. If we don’ get the powers that be to wise up to what the big corporates are doing we are all in trouble.

By: patent litigation

patent litigation — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:05:13 +0000

The mega-corps will likely stop complaining so loudly about NPEs once more of them follow the lead of Micron and other companies that have gotten smart and started figuring out ways that they themselves can profit by jumping on the NPE bandwagon. NPE patent litigation is fast becoming a cottage industry in the U.S. The sooner big businesses realize this, the better for them.
http://www.generalpatent.com/media/videos/general-patent-gets-results-its-clients

By: Blind Dogma

Blind Dogma — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:16:38 +0000

Hey you two – with comments like that how am I going to get any Kool Aid sales off of this thread?

By: David Kline

David Kline — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:20:29 +0000

Patent infringement has become an acceptable business strategy within corporate America.

Looked at it from a dollars-and-cents point of view, infringement is becoming more cost-effective than paying a small business innovator a royalty. After all, with the USPTO backlog preventing an innovator from even getting his patent in time to be useful, the likelihood that a small business innovator could ever successfully sue a large infringer is becoming almost nil.

And don’t think big corporate law departments don’t know that.

They have done an excellent job of using the bogeyman of “patent trolls” for political and judicial effect on Capitol Hill and in the courts. Now it’s our turn to get smart.

In place of the term “patent troll,” we’ve got to rebrand NPEs as “small business innovators” who do not have the resources to commercialize their own inventions. They are as American as apple pie.

By: IANAE

IANAE — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:01:39 +0000

I don’t understand why every single lawsuit has to be pigeonholed into the format of Evil Patent Troll vs. Legitimate Business Innovator. When the patent turns out to be invalid, it shouldn’t matter who the patentee was.

Look at what Garmin’s VP said:

Companies like Garmin, that employ innovators, manufacture products, and sell goods in the market, should not be forced to settle lawsuits that assert patents that never should have issued from the Patent Office.

Why is it only “companies like Garmin” that “should not be forced to settle lawsuits that assert patents that never should have issued”? Why should it matter that the defendant employs innovators? Sure, Garmin manufactures products and sells goods, but what other sort of company ever gets sued for infringement? What classes of companies should be forced to settle infringement suits on invalid patents, and why is Garmin better than those other companies?

Maybe the plaintiff here was a patent troll. Maybe not. Why does that deserve to be mentioned at all? How would this same article have read if Garmin had sued its market competitors on the very same patent? What if that market competitor didn’t employ any innovators? Would we be reading that “Companies like Garmin … should not be forced to have their patents invalidated”?