Startup Seeks To Preempt Patent Trolls

anaesthetica writes "The WSJ reports that a San Francisco startup is buying up patents with the promise never to assert them in order to help large corporations hedge against patent trolling firms. The company, RPX Corp, receives an annual fee in exchange for licensing the patents it has purchased. Cisco and IBM have already signed up for this service of 'defense patent aggregation.'"

Preempt them

By being one..

Could we call it the General Patent License?

As I see it, patent pools like this turn patent law against the patent trolls in much the same way that the GNU General Public License and other copyleft licenses turn copyright law against some publishers of proprietary software.

Re:Could we call it the General Patent License?

As I see it, patent pools like this turn patent law against the patent trolls in much the same way that the GNU General Public License and other copyleft licenses turn copyright law against some publishers of proprietary software.

A patent cartel ("defensive pooling" my ass) only protects members of the cartel.
It doesn't 'free' patents like the GPL 'frees' software.

Re:

Lets try a situation:
So I own a real, useful, solid, patent on something novel. A posterboy patent of when it's a useful system.

They do the "we will not attack anyone unless you attack a subscriber" stunt.
The next day one of their subscribers blatantly steals my work, starts producing my product in their fabs and bankrupting me.
I try to apply my patent and get raped by their pool of patent troll patents when they use them to fight back.

It's still patent trolling.

Re:Preempt them

I see where this is going...
  Company buys up billions of dollars worth of IP (cheaply, due to the business concept), promising never to use it.
  Company gets bought out, at a reasonable price considering all they own, since they're "not really the IP owners".
  New company decides it's not bound by previous company's ethics, decides to call in the lawyers for the billions of dollars worth of IP.
  New company litigates the living shit out of everyone.
  New company buys out other companies using the money won from being sued for using their own IP.
  New company now owns 50.1% of the world.

Can someone verify the whereabouts of Pinky and The Brain please? I'm getting a little nervous.

I'd imagine IBM is smarter than that

What you do is you have them sign a contract. The contract says thing like "You can never sue us." When you buy a company, you buy their obligations too. You don't get to say "Oh look, we are a new company so we can just ignore the contracts." Nope, you bought all that as well.

Remember: If you could get out of a contract with a sale, people could do this with houses. For example I buy a house, I sell it to you for a dollar. I then don't pay the mortgage. The bank comes to repossess the house and you say "It

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You don't get to say "Oh look, we are a new company so we can just ignore the contracts." Nope, you bought all that as well.

Nope, you liquidate the first company, sell its assets (the patents) to a third party, and then let the company fold complete with all of its contracts. Someone else buys it for a dollar and gets all of the remaining assets.

Re:Preempt them

Can someone verify the whereabouts of Pinky and The Brain please? I'm getting a little nervous.

"What are we going to do today, Brin?"

"Same thing we do every day, Sergey ... try and take over the world!"

Re:

True, and then there's also the Nazgul. No patent troll in his right mind would take them on. Not if he knows what's good for him.

This just in

Company buys up all other patent trolls, seeks funds from major companies while saying "we don't use them against you (if you pay us), honest!"

News at 11.

Re:This just in

That's what I didn't get.
If they "won't assert their claims" then why do you need to buy a license from them?
If you do need to buy a license from them, how are they not trolls?

Consideration

If they "won't assert their claims" then why do you need to buy a license from them?

A contract, such as the purchase of a patent, requires some sort of consideration [wikipedia.org] in order to be binding. This consideration could be a token amount such as one dollar, or (more likely in this case) it could be only as much money as is needed to maintain the patent pool.

Re:This just in

I believe their claim is that they won't assert these patents against anyone. IBM isn't willing to buy out these patents to prevent their exploitation, but IBM is willing to donate a smaller amount of money to achieve the same thing. Cisco believes the same thing.

I see this as companies doing something that is beyond themselves. It's in their own interest, yes - the have neutralized a series a patents at less than it would cost to buy them or fight off a lawsuit - but in the process they have protected other companies that didn't help fund the operation.

Re:This just in

I can see it from both sides and I'm not entirely sure where I stand.

Take these into consideration however:
1) They need money in order to buy patents out. This isn't an ad driven service...
2) They do have to buy out a LOT of patents (only if the squatter is in fact willing to give it up) to make this worthwhile.
3) The patents were already held in hand, so it could have ended up in a multimillion dollar lawsuit OR the companies wanting to use them would not have been able to make a product with that particular patent, resulting in unattainable revenue.
4) If the price is reasonable, it's basically a (cheap?) insurance policy. It's practically a guaranteed way to use any patent this company has.
5) Companies don't need to request, or pay large amounts per patent, but rather pay into the pool and can use them ALL.

These are just some of the facts that came to my head. What I want to know is what happens if a company decides not to buy in, or doesn't realize they are violating a patent, if they'll get slammed hard.

Also, if these guys are just squatting on these patents and not producing ANYTHING with them, how will they hold up in court? IANAL, but I thought a company needs to show some effort in actually USING the technology for it to be considered VALID.

Re:This just in

maybe because the license fee is not extortionistic, but rather only covers the cost of staff?

Patents patents patents

Interesting business plan, I wonder if they patented it.

Re:

SourceForge has the advantage of not only enforcing patents, but they can Slashdot effect companies as well...

Days of Our Patents

Plot^H^H^H^H History:

1. Government develops the concept of patents to protect the little, lone creator from amoral, robber industries - because even in groups, the creators have no defense against amoral industries. Government protection against business.

2. Developments soar - we're beyond the end-of-day-almost-off-air programming of the 60s that warned one day technology would double every year - technology doubles faster than we can measure.

3. Characters arise to be lionized and demonized in the tech age. They are given primary credit - in the mass mind (including on /.) - for their companies' successes and failures. Creation still in the hands of individuals, despite mass mindset.

4. Charlatans seize upon the opportunity, start trolling patents like crazy. It gets out of hand.

5. A business develops the patent-license-protection-clearinghouse to protect the large, rich businesses from the amoral, robber trolls' abuse of the law - because even in groups, corporations have no protection against the amoral trolls. Business protection against government.

If I invoke the name of Calculon does it help illustrate the point? It's a multi-year-long plot, very boring, very circular, and I'm calling it: Days of Our Patents.

I don't know about you guys, but I signed up decades ago to be a part of this thing called tech - not to become a forced extra in some asinine soap opera - which I fear we are all going to become part of, like it or not, know it or not.

Wait a minute...

Isn't this, like, the same thing... only cheaper?

Amazing

If this isn't a wakeup call to Congress that our patent system is entirely and completely broken, I don't know what is.

Any doubt left that patents are bust ?

Probably the only voices left saying that patents are OK belong to certain ''well funded'' politicians.

Re:

There's a whole other world outside of Slashdot, by the way.

Really? Your kidding me!

I see what you did there.

From TFA:

The company, called RPX Corp., buys up patents to keep them from firms that might use them as the basis of lawsuits or to press for licensing payments. Companies that pay a fixed annual fee receive licenses to the patents purchased by RPX...
(emphasis mine)

So they'll buy patents and try to sell you licenses to them, in order to prevent other firms from buying patents to try to sell you licenses to them?

Sounds to me like the only difference between this company and the nasty patent trolls is that they've embraced the One-Bill business model, a la Verizon. I wonder if that's patented...

Re:

that's a nice military base you've got here...

Re:

OK, I wasn't convinced at first, but you won me over with your well-reasoned arguments.