

How To Kill Patent Trolls - dean
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/02/article_one_partners_how_a_bunch_of_amateur_sleuths_are_stamping_out_patent_trolls_.html

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seanc
If only defending a patent suit was as simple as finding the prior art. Most
patent trolls will happily invite you to take your prior art claim to court,
knowing full well you can't afford to do it.

~~~
pwg
> Most patent trolls will happily invite you to take your prior art claim to
> court

If you (the defendant) has found good prior art (either by this method or some
other method), you can also file for a re-examination with the USPTO using
that new prior art. Still somewhat expensive, but significantly less expensive
than going to court, and if the patent is found invalid it is just as dead.

~~~
vibrunazo
But does invalidating a patent usually work well a intended? We see so many
obviously ridiculous patents, that one might think that if they are so sloppy
to approve patents on the first place, that they'll be just as sloppy in a re
examination.

Or is the re examination all that much rigorous and accurate?

~~~
roc
> _"We see so many obviously ridiculous patents"_

Many -- if not most -- of the patents that the community is quick to decry as
"obviously ridiculous" only appear so if you misunderstand how patents work.
[1]

The US Patent Office has granted _millions_ of patents and reviewed millions
more applications in the fairly brief life of computer/systems/process
patents. The few dozen legitimately bad patents hardly justify an accusation
of _sloppiness_.

We would all be positively blessed if every bureaucratic system had such a low
failure rate.

That all said: Yes, the system obviously needs work. But the performance of
patent examiners isn't that primary a concern to anyone who's taken a good
look at the system and it's problems.

[1] All that matters are the claims. The descriptions are irrelevant to the
meat of what, _specifically_ was being patented. The community has a long
history of loudly complaining about descriptions that define an absurdly
general invention, when the claims, in fact, indicate a narrowly defined
patent of at least arguable value.

~~~
gbhn
My impression is the opposite. Patent cases one hears about seem to start with
137 patents, and the judge throws out all but a few claims of 2. Perhaps this
is self-selecting, but the impression is that most of the patents granted are,
in fact, bogus.

~~~
roc
What you seem to be talking about are infringement suits where the judge
throws out _consideration_ of large numbers of patents and claims. That's
about whittling down a problem of mind-boggling complexity to a group of
questions that can be understood and answered in a reasonable amount of time.
Those patents and claims aren't being struck down or ruled 'bogus'. They're
just being ruled irrelevant to the meat of the case, to simplify the
proceedings.

And most claims are thrown out of consideration simply because most patents
only include a few independent claims. And as a practical matter if you can
rule out infringement of an independent claim you've ruled out any possibility
of infringement of its dependent claims.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I find the Google-Oracle case to be a great example of the bogusness of most
patents. They started with hundreds of patents. Then the judge told Oracle to
pick their "best five". You would think that if told to pick the best 5 out of
hundreds that those at least would be solid. Yet Google has managed to get
several of the 5 invalidated...

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arikrak
I think the solution needs to be more ambitious. What if the "invention" is
not prior art, but other people can come up with the same idea on their own?
Does that deserve to be patented so that the company that was one week late
will need to pay patent fees? Maybe the whole patent process should be crowd-
sourced and patents should only be granted if no one can think of the same
idea.

(I discuss this more here: <http://zappable.com/2011/08/how-to-fix-the-patent-
system/>)

~~~
alttag

      > What if the "invention" is not prior art, but other 
      > people can come up with the same idea on their own? 
    

Then at the very least, it's evidence for obviousness, which (although a
tougher sell) can also invalidate a patent.

EDIT: IANAL

~~~
prodigal_erik
Unfortunately "obvious" in patent law tends to mean there is published work
suggesting putting stuff together in that way. If nobody has discussed the
problem (e.g., you were the first to work on it), it somehow doesn't matter
that anyone competent would have promptly settled on the same solution you
did, and we aren't getting anything of value in return for your generation-
long monopoly on it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-
obviousn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-
obviousness#Teaching-suggestion-motivation_.28TSM.29_test)

------
jinhwang
Does anyone have any past experience with this? How much did it cost you?

I'm creating an app that deals with real-time information and geo-location...
It seems that patent trolls will be lurking everywhere.

As a young startup, we don't have the money to go out there and make an
attempt at protecting ourselves.

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ohashi
I appreciate the idea and love the crowdsourcing model. However, if I need to
invalidate a patent, there might often be more urgency than hoping for the
crowd sourced solution. Not to say it isn't viable, but maybe it's something
best used in conjunction with a team of experts?

~~~
peterb
If this were to gain momentum, then I think the exact opposite would happen.
Crowd sourcing is like a human map-reduce. The bad patent is "mapped" to
people who know something about the subject and each searches independently
sometimes sharing results. Analysis is done to "reduce" the result to provable
prior art. Further, I think they should remove the award. I would do this for
free. Sites that pay people to contribute almost always fail (think Mahalo vs.
Wikipedia).

Patent trolls affect all of us. This is something everyone could get behind.

Edit: by "exact opposite" I mean crowd-sourcing could produce good results
faster, with greater urgency, than any expert.

~~~
dvdkhlng
About doing this for free: thought the same. Receiving money might even
complicate things wrt tax or other employment contracts.

I wonder if they'd allow one to surrender any payments, instead having them
directly donated to EFF, FSF or other non-profit organizations that are
fighting with or are endangered by (software) patents.

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maqr
I've always wondered why there isn't a crowdsourcing entity that pays out
rewards for finding infringement (patent, copyright, whatever).

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ktizo
Well, priorart.org is available for purchase. All it really needs is a wiki
and a bug tracker on there...

[edit]...oops, available by broker. :(

~~~
vibrunazo
Ilike that idea. While offering money for the crowd is a nice idea. The
confidentiality agreement may have been startling their progress. Maybe they
would find more prior art if users were expected to contribute out of live for
a bogus patent free world.

~~~
ktizo
Was thinking that you treat a patent as a bug, then submit it through the bug
tracker and the result ends up on the wiki.

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moldbug
Is there something I'm missing here?

Granted, there are more and more trolls these days. RSI is a real concern.
You'll want a light weapon without a lot of recoil. And it should probably
take an extended clip, to minimize reloading. Not to sound like a fanboy, but
the Glock 17 seems perfect to me. All firearms can jam, so do bring a spare...

Seriously: why would anyone think seriously about how to _fix_ this system?
Why would anyone imagine it can be fixed? The only relevant question is how to
kill it. Glock or no Glock, everything on God's green earth can be killed.

~~~
monochromatic
... what?

Also, it's a magazine, not a clip.

