
Tech majors to join hands against patent suits - paulsb
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINBNG11177720080630
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DenisM
There ought to be a little-guy version. Like this:

Anyone can signup for nominal fee ($100), every member donates all their
patents to the pool and gets rights to the pool. Once you have rights to the
pool you can force a cross-licensing agreement with any other real company
(won't work with patent trolls though). Those who don't want to donate their
stuff can pay really big money to get stuff from it, which will go towards
maintaining the organization.

This may not work well on small scale, but if it were to reach large scale it
will become very attractive to join and will put an end to the patent system,
for good.

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hugh
Patents vary hugely in value. The vast majority turn out to be worth almost
nothing, while a few are worth billions. I'm pretty sure if you had this it
would just accumulate all the worthless patents, while people and companies
who owned the valuable ones would have no interest in joining.

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cwp
Actually, that doesn't matter very much. The point of the pool is not to get
access to patented technology that you wouldn't otherwise be able to use. It's
to be able to defend yourself against patent lawsuits. If you're sued, you can
counter sue for infringing some stupid worthless patent in the pool, because
any real implementation of anything infringes on _some_ patent. With enough
patents in the pool, counter-suit becomes a viable defense. Not also that this
is why it won't work against patent trolls - they don't actually do anything
of substance, and therefore aren't vulnerable to counter-suit.

~~~
DenisM
Right, and as big dogs lose profit in patent system, they will lobby to can
the whole thing completely. Thus patent trolls will also lose in the end.

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noonespecial
Wow. I smell opportunity here! The patent system is broken enough now that you
can basically patent the same vague "method" over and over again.

Now you can sell each one too Google. Profit!

Yes. The above was sarcasm. I'm a little disappointed by this. This would seem
to just encourage the production of more bogus patents. If they were really
serious, they'd put all of those millions into patent reforms. If you look at
the list of participants, many have not been model citizens when it comes to
patents. This smells more like another power-play than any attempt at reform,
or even "defense" as they claim.

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anamax
Suppose that someone invents a better way to rank search results.

What are the acceptable ways for such a person to make money from that
invention? (Most of the respondents to this message seem to believe that
patenting such a method or licensing such a patent is unacceptable. If you
think that licensing is acceptable but lawsuits aren't, please explain why
anyone would license if patent holders couldn't sue.)

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LogicHoleFlaw
Disgusting. Imagine how much better off we'd be if there wasn't a need to
spend that kind of money to preemptively ward off lawsuits from patent
leeches. If the big boys are this worried about the current patent situation,
how many smaller companies never even get off the ground due to it?

Is the possibility of a patent lawsuit a factor in the decision of which
startups to extend YC offers to?

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cwp
What we need is a Godel patent: a patent on the business method of patent-
trolling. That would help in two ways. First you could go after all the trolls
with patent-infringement lawsuits. Second, it would serve as an easy-to-
understand example of how screwed-up the system is in the first place, and
stimulate the discussion needed to introduce real reform.

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prakash
Sounds like a cartel doesn't it? And, what's to stop this alliance from using
patents to stifle innovation?

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gaius
"are believed to have a joined a group calling itself the Allied Security
Trust"

Awesome! This sounds like it would make a great FPS :-)

