Posts Tagged: "patent license"

Escaping the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Toward a New Transparency in Patent Licensing

“The key ingredient needed for the prisoner’s dilemma to work its destructive magic is a lack of transparency between the parties involved,” Siino writes. The article goes on to discuss how the lack of transparency in patent licensing transactions is disrupting the the patent marketplace, and threatens “to break licensing’s virtuous circle of innovation leading to commercialisation, which in turn funds more innovation.”

Bernie Sanders’ Really Bad Idea

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced legislation requiring every agency and non-profit entity to include a “reasonable pricing” provision based on King’s formula for any life science invention made with government support. Apparently the colossal failure of a similar requirement forced on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the 1990’s which led to the collapse of industry partnerships without any reduction in drug prices is either unknown, or made no impression on Sen. Sanders. Or perhaps like his trust in socialism, he thinks that what failed in the past will somehow work by some weird magic if trotted out again.

Why is the government suspicious of patent owners who don’t want to vertically integrate?

Why does U.S. policy with respect to patent owners and patent licensing seem to be in direct opposition to U.S. antitrust policy relating to vertical mergers? If vertical mergers are anticompetitive and particularly bad when dealing with a monopolist then why are patent owners, who we are told over and over again are in possession of a limited monopoly, encouraged (if not demanded) to vertically integrate in order to escape characterization as a patent troll?

Myths about patent trolls prevent honest discussion about U.S. patent system

A $1 trillion a year industry not wanting to pay innovators less than a 1% royalty on the innovations they appropriate (i.e., steal) for their own profits seems like a terrible price to pay given the national security and economic consequences of forfeiting our world leadership to the Europeans and Chinese… Google and Uber are locked in a patent battle over self-driving automobiles, so does that make Google or Uber a patent troll? What about General Electric, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Whirlpool, Kraft Foods, Caterpillar, Seiko Epson, Amgen, Bayer, Genzyme, Sanofi-Aventis, and Honeywell, to name just a few?

Former Cisco Executive Giancarlo peels back ‘false narrative’ on patent trolls, patent reform

The true agenda of those who support further reform of the U.S. patent system is as follows: to discriminate against entities which license technologies instead of manufacture; to increase the costs of asserting patent rights to the detriment of individuals and startups; and to stilt the conversations surrounding tech licensing in favor of the infringer bringing a product to market. “If you trip over our patent, you’re a thief. If we trip over your patent, you’re a troll,” Giancarlo said… “Let’s call patent reform for what it is: a blatant economic and power grab by tech firms to infringe on technology created by others,” Giancarlo said. In his opinion, the true trolls are the entities trolling Congress to get a competitive advantage over smaller entities.