

When Patents Attack - riordan
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

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rjett
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, so this is just a naive suggestion but I'd like
to hear some informed discussion on the issue:

Couldn't a company like Intellectual Ventures be prosecuted under some form of
antitrust law? There seems to be evidence of predatory behavior and the nature
of how they do business seems to violate a few main goals of antitrust law,
namely to prohibit agreements or practices that restrict free trading and
competition between business and to ban abusive behavior by a firm dominating
a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant
position.

~~~
te_platt
A patent is an explicit grant of a right to monopolize a market. The whole
point is to restrict free trading and competition.

~~~
rjett
I'm not talking patent theory 101; I'm talking about the business of what
amounts to the securitization of patents for the purpose of extorting money
(either from businesses who pay IV as an insurance policy so they won't get
sued or from businesses who have to pay settlements for violating a patent).

~~~
kenjackson
Unfortunately, that's almost the purpose of patents in general. In many
industries patents aren't usually licensed so its even worse. In those you
don't extort for money, you have an X year monopoly on a whole technology.

IV is probably the best example of don't hate the player, hate the game.
They've looked at the game and figured out how to play it. It's like the
expert Scrabble players who know all the Scrabble words, but none of the
actual definitions. It's completely legal, but probably not in the original
spirit of the game.

~~~
aaam
Maybe the easiest way to kill of patent trolls would be to regulate patent
licensing?

Maybe even forbid licensing all together, at least for some kinds of patents?

Or, some mandatory licensing scheme dependent on the kind of patent with a low
enough fixed percentage of the price?

------
riordan
You can listen to the whole show here:
<http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/441.mp3>

~~~
chopsueyar
Wow. Good link, but I thought this wasn't supposed to be available until
tomorrow?

~~~
naner
The link isn't published yet, but they use a predictable URL for the mp3 file
so it is not difficult to find. This sort of early reveal is probably frowned
upon by the organization that produces the radio show, though.

I'll admit that I let my curiosity overtake my sense of ethics in this case.
:/

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melling
This is a duplicate of a popular story that is still on the front page of HN.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2795743>

Lots of duplication lately. Is this a way to game karma? Simply repost a
popular story.

~~~
palebluedot
This this particular duplication is (in my opinion) likely because of the
title - the one you linked primarily mentions Intellectual Ventures.
Personally, I like it best when people use the original title of the page /
piece; in this case, "When Patents Attack!".

~~~
mquander
Wow, I couldn't disagree more. "Intellectual Ventures on TAL" (the other
submission) describes exactly what the link is. "When Patents Attack"
communicates only that this is a link about patents.

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rdp
I listened to this show during an out-of-town drive this morning. It is an
excellent piece of journalism that digs into the business of patent trolling.
The section about how the shell companies with empty offices in Marshall,
Texas was particularly insightful.

One interesting thing that the show up brings up is this. Intellectual
Ventures (IV) sold Lodsys the patents that they are currently using against
indie mobile developers. At some point, the chief counsel for IV mentions that
their usual practice is to sell the patents AND get a percentage of the
royalty streams from licensees. The link between the Lodsys sales and
downstream revenue for IV wasn't explicitly made, but I would bet that is the
case.

