Open Source Zone Grinds Away At Patent Trolls (zdnet.com) 30
For the last two years, Unified Patents, an international organization of over 200 businesses, has been winning the battle against patent trolls "to keep them from stealing from the companies and organizations that actually use patents' intellectual property (IP)," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan Nichols. "This is their story to date." From the report: Unified Patents brings the fight to the trolls. It deters patent trolls from attacking its members by making it too expensive for the troll to win. The group does this by examining troll patents and their activities in various technology sectors (Zones). The United Patents Open Source Software Zone (OSS Zone) is the newest of these Zones. [...] Even before OSS Zone was formally launched, Unified Patents along with the Open Invention Network (OIN), the world's largest patent non-aggression group, launched legal cases against poor quality PAE-owned (Patent Assertion Entities) patents. The Linux Foundation and Microsoft have also joined the OSS Zone to battle these bad patents. [...]
Together, United Patents uses open-source software evidence as proof to establish that the trolls often don't have a case. This is done using Inter Partes Review (IPR), a 2012 legal tool for showing that a bad patent never should have been granted in the first place. [Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin] notes, "The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)'s discretionary rulings on IPRs have changed the landscape around NPEs. These cases take a long time to be resolved. Typically, it takes from 12 to 24 months. That also makes them expensive for both the OSS Zone and the trolls. Keith Bergelt, the OIN's CEO, said "In other technology areas when patents go through the IPR process or are reexamined, there is a settlement around 20% of the time. In the OSS Zone, there are few settlements. This makes it more costly and difficult to administer, but also is difficult on the PAEs. When the success rate against their patents is over 95%, certain PAEs that would otherwise hope to settle have essentially given up on defending their patents." Still, with such a high success rate, it's worth the expense.
To date, Unified has overseen and managed 43 challenges. Of these, 12 patents were found invalid, another 23 cases have been instituted, and six are still in process. This has led to multiple settlements for Unified Patents members. These, in turn directly pass through to OIN's 3,600+ community members. For example, an Accelerated Memory Tech patent 6,513,062, was used by the troll IP Investments Group to claim that the open-source Redis, which manages cache resources on the cloud, violated the patent. Redis, not having any money, IP Investments Group instead went after Hulu, Citrix Systems, Barracuda Networks, Kemp Technologies, and F5 Networks for their use of Redis software. IP Investments Group gave up rather than fighting it out. Everyone who uses Redis wins. It's one small victory, but that's how the patent troll wars are won. And, with the United Patents' high-success rate in knocking out bad patents, slowly but surely the patent trolls are being driven back from not only open-source software but all software.
Together, United Patents uses open-source software evidence as proof to establish that the trolls often don't have a case. This is done using Inter Partes Review (IPR), a 2012 legal tool for showing that a bad patent never should have been granted in the first place. [Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin] notes, "The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)'s discretionary rulings on IPRs have changed the landscape around NPEs. These cases take a long time to be resolved. Typically, it takes from 12 to 24 months. That also makes them expensive for both the OSS Zone and the trolls. Keith Bergelt, the OIN's CEO, said "In other technology areas when patents go through the IPR process or are reexamined, there is a settlement around 20% of the time. In the OSS Zone, there are few settlements. This makes it more costly and difficult to administer, but also is difficult on the PAEs. When the success rate against their patents is over 95%, certain PAEs that would otherwise hope to settle have essentially given up on defending their patents." Still, with such a high success rate, it's worth the expense.
To date, Unified has overseen and managed 43 challenges. Of these, 12 patents were found invalid, another 23 cases have been instituted, and six are still in process. This has led to multiple settlements for Unified Patents members. These, in turn directly pass through to OIN's 3,600+ community members. For example, an Accelerated Memory Tech patent 6,513,062, was used by the troll IP Investments Group to claim that the open-source Redis, which manages cache resources on the cloud, violated the patent. Redis, not having any money, IP Investments Group instead went after Hulu, Citrix Systems, Barracuda Networks, Kemp Technologies, and F5 Networks for their use of Redis software. IP Investments Group gave up rather than fighting it out. Everyone who uses Redis wins. It's one small victory, but that's how the patent troll wars are won. And, with the United Patents' high-success rate in knocking out bad patents, slowly but surely the patent trolls are being driven back from not only open-source software but all software.
Patent litigation is like the blockchain (Score:2)
Both spend huge amounts of resources solving arbitrary problems. Problems that should never have been created in the first place. The main difference is resources spent on litigation are mostly human resources, rather than mostly computing resources.
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It would be nice if we could do something to reform/support the patent office [.. .] One possibility is a system of public comment on patent applications that allows the contribution of examples of prior art and of arguments of 'obviousness' to combat troll applications. Another is some pool of expert consultants who could essentially peer review patent applications.
You’ve essentially just described the purpose of the Ask Patents [stackexchange.com] community on Stack Exchange. They regularly locate prior art for patents that are in review, though it looks like they’ve shifted more towards answering questions about the process in general than dealing with specific patents in the years since I last checked in on it.
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Start sueing the patient office for damages against wrongly issued patients.
It would then be in their best interest to set up this sort of thing as an alternative where the patient can be investigated first.
Yes they should DO the investigation first, but they are obviously failing maybe having a better way of challenging the patients would work
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It would be nice if we could do something to reform/support the patent office
We can, by electing politicians that will rewrite the law, and voting them out when they fail. The source of the problem is closer that it appears
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Spot, who doesn't actually know what a blockchain is.
Rover doesn't know what a blockchain is either, but he's great at chasing frisbees. Don't give up on Spot just yet.
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You don't. It's rather obvious.
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Before patent law was enacted, economic development was hampered by inventors keeping secrets, in order to gain the profits from their secret knowledge. With a patent system, useful knowledge is published, while still giving inventors profits from being the first in their field. At least, that is the theory. Unfortunately, when it comes to fighting an actual lawsuit over your commercial rights, money wins over justice.
The patent troll business plan is unfortunately quite viable. You don't invent anything, o
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"Patents themselves are a good idea, because inventive people should be rewarded for their contributions to the economy."
No, they are not a good idea.
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The alternative to patents is trade secrets. You think that would be a good thing?
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Perhaps at the 50,000 foot level, patents are a good thing, but as implemented on the ground they are an unmitigated fail. They last too long, fail to distinguish between non-obvious and not needed until now, they allow minor variations on a theme to evergreen ideas.
A big one too is that they fail to acknowledge parallel innovation. They create a winner take all situation where one inventor profits and others who worked just as hard and were just as clever but through happenstance were slower by 5 minutes g
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This is a case of a good idea badly implemented.
I think, on moral grounds, an inventor should be rewarded for their enterprise, and not have their inventions stolen by pirates with greater financial resources. If we hand ownership of everything to the big money people, we are seriously fucked.
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And there too, patents as implemented fail. Big money guy can litigate the small inventor into poverty then win by default.
Re: Patent litigation is like the blockchain (Score:2)
You're conflating blockchain with proof of work. Your analogy sucks.
Why do people bring up cryptocurrency for no reason? It's like some mental obsession.
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I say do away with software patents. The actual advantages are small compared to the pain. Innovation will speed up if we toss them. However, the Court Industrial Complex lobbies against the idea for job security.
The vast majority of developers do not use the patent portfolio as a catalog of ideas, but rather build software for a particular need and hope they don't get sued. Maybe there are rare gems in the patent office's catalog, but most of it is a swamp of lawyerly tricks.
Can I patent a process for fighting patent trolls? (Score:2)
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Penalties and incentives (Score:2)
This is an endless task, because more bad patents are issued all the time. At present, as I understand it, the funding of the patent offices depends on the volume of patents they issue. This provides a perverse incentive to approve weak patents.
Patent offices should, in fact, have an incentive to ensure that patents are genuinely novel, and that they do not violate guidelines like "no software patents" (at least in Europe, software patents should not exist, even though they sometimes issue). At a minimum,
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This is an endless task, because more bad patents are issued all the time. At present, as I understand it, the funding of the patent offices depends on the volume of patents they issue. This provides a perverse incentive to approve weak patents.
It's worth bearing in mind that it was the US patent office that instigated this system of perverse incentives as a way to boost its funding; it was not imposed on them. Because of various treaties, the problem is then automatically exported to most of the rest of the world.
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Patent offices should, in fact, have an incentive to ensure that patents are genuinely novel...
There is the natural moral interpretation of how you get a patent on your invention. You go to the local patent office, and demonstrate your prototype. I don't think this has ever happened. I have made a number of patent claims, some of which were granted. It is basically down to making some claims of what is novel in your invention, which can be legally challenged. One of my clients, who liked to have patents, basically took the attitude the patents (valid as far as I know) were a deterrent to trivial comp
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If the patent office had to share the costs of overturning a bad patent, it would have some incentive to quit approving bad patents.
WTMA effect makes the article unreadable (Score:3)
(Way Too Many Acronyms)
Why were the patents granted?? (Score:2)
This is done using Inter Partes Review (IPR), a 2012 legal tool for showing that a bad patent never should have been granted in the first place
If there's a need for such a process, then the actual patent process is obviously flawed.
Also, why isn't the PTO and the examiners personally responsible for the costs of "fixing" a bad patent? Seems like they have an incentive not to do their actual job, and shift the risk/cost to others instead (victims of patent trolls).
Playing Games (Score:2)
"IP Investments Group instead went after Hulu, Citrix Systems, Barracuda Networks, Kemp Technologies, and F5 Networks for their use of Redis software. IP Investments Group gave up rather than fighting it out. Everyone who uses Redis wins. It's one small victory, but that's how the patent troll wars are won."
Wrong. You have no won any "war". You've won one small battle.
If you want to win the war, then you make anyone's job that includes "troll" in the title, patently illegal.
And while we're at it, hedge funds too. Betting against success to feed yet another twisted flavor for Greed to enjoy, is asking for obvious manipulation.
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Do you think that patent trolls are legally required to use the word 'troll' in their title? I have some sad news for you.
As for Hedge Funds, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. 1) Hedge funds are not about Greed, they routinely lose money and rarely beat the market. Hedge funds are used by multi-millionaires to ensure that they will remain multi-millionaires even if the stock market crashes.
2) Betting against success is used as a restraint against idiots over-hyping things. It is not
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Do you think that patent trolls are legally required to use the word 'troll' in their title? I have some sad news for you.
Someone who's unjustly killed another human, is often called a murderer. Quite often they never see it that way. Doesn't magically make them right or innocent. Doesn't matter what trolls call themselves.
...Hedge funds are used by multi-millionaires to ensure that they will remain multi-millionaires even if the stock market crashes.
In a world where you can manipulate markets with a bullshit-infused Tweet, try not to sell me your delusions there, day trader. Hedge funds true purpose and value, was flushed out by meme stocks. And we both know damn well that Greed abuses the other side of the coin they invented for their "remain mult