
Use patents or lose them? - billbarhydt
This week's Economist: "[Andy Grove] insists that firms must use their patents or lose them."<p>I agree 100%.<p>What do you think?
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nailer
There's another part to this: enforce the patent, or lose it (in the same way
that trademark must be enforced or lost).

This stops, say, Fraunhofer Gesselschaft from waiting years as the MP3
community developed using the code it uploaded to ISO with no license
attached, then retrospectively demanding $15,000 for every encoding project.
Or Unisys failng to enforce the LZW patent while GIF became a standard, then
retroactively asking for payment.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
What if the patent holder doesn't know that their patent is being infringed.

Suppose I hold a WO(US+JP+EP) worldwide patent on ball-based vacuum cleaners.
A Japanese factory produces a copy-cat and starts selling in Japan. I spend 2
years talking and negotiating with manufacturers in the US, whilst at the same
time the infringing Japanese production is ramped up.

The US manufacturer spots a Japanese model on sale and tells me they won't
license it as I've not protected my patent and so it's now [under your regime]
invalid ...?

Even if you limit it by jurisdiction and only look at use of the patent in the
specific area, then I'd have to know of the output of all US factories to be
able to cease the production in a timely way. How long after a company starts
use would I have to notice and send my C&D letter.

What if the patent covers a circuit arrangement in a TFT display, do I as
patent holder have to purchase all displays and examine them to determine if
one infringes my patent? What if the thing I have a patent on is being
produced for business purposes, eg in house use (a rocket engine at NASA that
will be used for satellite launches, say), using my patent spec but I can't
examine the thing to check if it's infringing? I can't afford to sue NASA
immediately, so that means now anyone can use my patent??

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sh1mmer
Maybe you could link the Economist so we could read that story and comment on
it, rather than a single line statement (although you have piqued my
interest).

~~~
tsally
Link to the source of the quote:
[http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/PrinterFriendl...](http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=14299624)

Moderators feel free to edit this into the submission. :-)

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billbarhydt
I also think licensing a patent to a company that actually uses it qualifies
the owner not to lose the patent. Bottom line is that if the owner doesn't
actually allow the public to benefit from the IP in some way then it should
fall back into the public domain. I realize this is very much a layman's
perspective but that's what I believe. -Bill

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billbarhydt
More thoughts on patents...

<http://billbar.posterous.com/patents-use-them-or-lose-them>

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billbarhydt
Sorry I had copied the link to the original story and Andy Grove quote and
then forgot to paste in my comment (duh). Thanks tsally for adding for me.

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bdwalter
I agree 110%

Patents should not be a marketing defense strategy.

Patenting things you have no intent of implementing/selling simply to block
competition should be outlawed.

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nnutter
I don't think patents should apply to any product only to methods of creating
products and internal practices.

The original point of patents were to get ideas into public knowledge. If you
are selling a product it is public knowledge and we have no reason to offer a
patent. If the idea isn't very novel it will be easily reverse engineered if
it is novel then it won't be for some time.

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fatdog789
Who gets to define what "use" means, or what acceptable "use" is?

If a company wants to use its patent, but can't arrange financing for
manufacturing goods based on the patent, or can't find anyone to manufacture
the goods for it, does the company lose its patent?

Is licensing a patent using it? Isn't that what patent trolls already do? If
licensing is not considered using a patent, wouldn't that put an incredible
dent in biotech research, where most companies license out their discoveries
to other companies who actually manufacture the medicines?

Is the loss of patent automatic, or must it be litigated first? If automatic,
how does that comport with due process (in the US, in regards to the taking of
property rights)? If litigation is required, wouldn't that simply encourage
the patentholder's primary competitors to do everything possible to prevent
use of the patent? Will notice be required? Will the company be able "redeem"
its patent by "using" it within a set grace period after it receives notice
that its patent will expire for non-use?

~~~
fr33bird
"use" means you bring SOME manifestation of the patentable innovation to bear.
you have to be able to point at an implementation. that means 99% of the
patent trolls will bugger off because none of them wants to do any real work
anyway, and more to the point, they would have no idea how.

there's nothing saying you even have to have intentions of using, marketing or
giving away the implementation...but you have to demonstrate that you are
actually have the capacity to create an innovation, not just churn out
whitepapers to tax others who actually will implement.

~~~
enjo
If your not actually using it in practice, how is that different from today?
Do you really think making these trolls spend a bit of money to build a
prototype fixes it?

If this is going to work, you HAVE to come up with a system that forces the
patent to be reduced to practice within some context.

Maybe you create classifications of patents:

\- protective: Anyone can use it, you just can't sue me for using it. \-
commercial protection: I am the only one allowed to use it, and I will be
using it for some commercial purpose \- licensing protection: Anyone can use
it if they license it from me, with the caveat that the term of protection is
greatly reduced.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
We're not talking a little _"bit of money to build a prototype"_ in all cases
though. Often a prototype would be impossible to build in a short time -
suppose my invention is a new more efficient engine, it requires a few million
in funding which I don't have; I've spent 15years developing the idea ...
shouldn't I be allowed to sell my idea for even a little bit of money? If I
present the idea to the companies who can make it - won't they just say,
"you're not making it now, we'll wait a year" (or however long you're
enshrining in your law) and then make it free from my license.

If instead I'd spent that time coming up with a new cheaper way to make
icecream, the machine takes me a couple of months and a few thousand $USD to
make, then I sell my idea worldwide and become a billionaire; isn't that a bit
of an unfortunate disparity?

As an artisan inventor I'd only ever be able to successfully patent things I
can make at home without outside funding.

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fr33bird
absolutely agree 100%.

as would anyone who has spent any nontrivial amount of time dealing with the
absurdities of our IP system...these people would understand, for example,
there are entire "think tanks" that sit around doing nothing all day but
cranking out white papers wherein some open standard is extended by a trivial
1%. then they wait for anyone using that open standard, and they pounce based
on the extra 1% of trivial and NEVER IMPLEMENTED "innovation".

the people suing here aren't garage innovators. they are law firms that buy IP
from bankrupt companies. they are whitepaper mills whose only purpose is to
publish a proposal for every conceivable use of technology. thats it. then
they wait and watch for victims to appear. THEY DON'T BUILD ANYTHING.

i don't think the casual HN reader understands how bad it is. if you ever hit
5 million/year in revenues, you likely will. an envelope will show up at your
office detailing the infingement for something trivial, so trivial you will
think its april fool's day. what won't be trivial is the amount the law firm
wants to charge you to "license" the patented "innovation". and to be sure,
the law firm is not representing another innovator...oh no, the law firm owns
the patent themselves. its a huge cash cow now for law firms. they buy patents
or arrange to have patents issued from patent-mills. then they just shake down
anyone they can. frankly most people who have dealt with this stuff just see
it as a shake-down, and they either pay it just to move on, or they move their
business to a country that is not so hostile to innovators. if you think US
law favors small innovators, WAKE UP

