The real travesty is that there is a patent court at all.
I tried to bring a product to market, something that IMO can revolutionize the world. Went to the patent attorney late in the game. He looked at my product and told me to shelve it - take out a bunch of patents, wait till someone else comes out with the idea and then sue them.
He claimed that if I brought it to market, I would be sued by others that have unrelated patents but lots of lawyers. That even if I did everything by the book, I would go bankrupt.
Went to another firm, heard something similar - basically, all patents do is keep products and ideas from market, and you wouldn't believe how many good ideas are kept from market thus.
And patents and give ammunition to trolls - aka mafia corps. And they keep the status quo with out of date ideas - since in a any given field the dominant players will always be able to sue the startup out of existence.
If the government money that goes into the patents were to go instead into grants and funds for good ideas - any thing that would have gotten a patent should get cash, say, now that could be something awesome.
What the alternative to patent courts be in your opinion? Simply nothing or do you have some other idea which would be more fair and hinder development less?
The sensible thing to do would be to abolish patents completely. Patents originated as a way to create incentive to publish inventions. We do not need patents for that purpose anymore. Today patents have the opposite effect: they stifle innovation.
Yes, it would lead to several sectors having to restructure their business models since extortion and monopolism would no longer be viable business models, but then again, they shouldn't be allowed to be viable business models in a properly functioning market anyway.
As for sectors such as pharma: It would be a huge win for humanity. If drug development was mostly funded by public money, there would be far better focus on developing the drugs we actually need rather than reinventing existing drugs just so you can patent them and price gouge. For instance, some classes of drugs, like antibiotics, are almost impossible to develop under the current circumstances because recovering cost is extremely hard.
The only parties benefiting from patents are the biggest incumbents. For anyone who doesn't have extremely deep coffers they are at best vanity items, and at worst, a possible liability.
> the government money that goes into the patents were to go instead into grants and funds for good ideas - any thing that would have gotten a patent should get cash, say
Maybe an "inventor" or "Original" badge, like "BBB Accredited", could be awarded by the Govmnt. Hard for me to guess the longer term trade off of such a thing, but it could be such things won't be litigated as much, but can serve as a way to know who to reward, or who is most likely quality or genuine?
Idea: let patents auto-expire after four years without chance of renewal. In four years, you can use your patent to become a market leader. If your case is so complex that you can't attack the market within that time, let an independent regulatory instance prolong the duration to 5-8 years tops.
This is insanely disturbing if it's true, but on the other hand not entirely surprising that Europe's tech dinosaurs like Nokia turn to patent trolling, as that's the only card they can play at this point, having been out-competed by Apple and Huawei.
Does anyone know, are there any EU legislators we can write to about this issue? I'm (shamefully) not familiar how EU democratic processes work.
I booked NokiaPlanP.com back in the days, P for Patents, I guess I was right.
"how EU democratic processes work"
Well, to make things worse, the EU is not signatory of the Agreement, so you cannot seize the European Court of Justice, nor complain to the European Parliament.
The plan to validate software patents in Europe was to keep the European Court of Justice away from Patent Law.
The elected President Klaus Grabinski of the Unified Patent Court made some public statements where he said the exclusion of computer programs is not a problem to grant software patents, beacuse it can be ignored with the "as such" provision.
Which states: “Article 21
Requests for preliminary rulings
As a court common to the Contracting Member States and as part of their judicial system, the Court shall cooperate with the Court of Justice of the European Union to ensure the correct application and uniform interpretation of Union law, as any national court, in accordance with Article 267 TFEU in particular. Decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union shall be binding on the Court.”
The 'common court' is being disputed by academics, as the jurisprudence of the CJEU on what is a 'common court' does not fly with removing national courts from interpreting EU law (art 4.3TFEU, art19.1TFEU and art267TFEU):
One thing : Nokia looks quite strong in their core business, that is telecommunication equipment (like base stations, not phones), and the phone brand isn't theirs for years. So they are competing with Huawei, but with Apple?
The network equipment business was largely a sideshow back when their phone business was successful. Apple and especially Android outcompeted the phones, so networks is what they have left.
And their networks business is also eaten alive by Samsung, Huawei and ZTE. The only thing saving them and Ericson is EU/Western bans on Chinese tech for security reasons.
> I'm (shamefully) not familiar how EU democratic processes work.
There's no shame in that; only lobbyists have that familiarity (you might think politicians, but I think it's too complicated for them). But at least politicians know who to ask.
So the best thing is probably to write to your MEP. You don't have an MEP? Then you don't get a say in EU judicial procedures.
Nokia is not the phone company but the network service’s provider.
Patent trolls do not produce products, Airbus and Nokia DO -very competitive- products. Airbus in particular is far superior to their competitor Boeing, which seems to be a sore point on many US-based commenters.
Nokia is no longer “the phone company”, Nokia refers to Nokia Networks (Alcatel included). Nokia, Huawei and Ericsson produce most of the wireless telco infrastructure today, which the US infrastructure depends on as no US company does this competetively.
The article itself is a bit on the FUD side of things tbh and the comments here are a bit uninformed.
While not optimal most of the best patent lawyers work for companies that have a lot of patents and often are the best legal experts to ask opinions/judgements from.
Obviously if a case actually touches a company they work for (or worked for recently) they should abstain from the case.
It's corruption, pure and simple. "Not optimal" and then giving an excuse is a pretty sad reaction to (government sanctioned!) private justice by corporations as a weapon against any smaller competitor.
The question of how court officials should be appointed seems to me rather fraught.
Direct appointment by the executive? Um, US Supreme Court.
Popular election? Do you want to be judged by someone running for election?
Judicial Appointments Commission? This is the system used in the UK; the Commission recommends, and then some senior lawyer, often a cabinet minister, decides. That's pretty close to appointment by the executive.
I'm not in favour of putting foxes in charge of chicken-coop security.
[Edit] I didn't really mean it to be sarcastic (i.e. cutting flesh). I was just trying to show where that reasoning leads.
I think of it as a general democratic problem: finding an expert, unbiased, uncorruptible person for below market rate.
If we had an infinite supply of those, democratic staffing would be a solved problem.
But we don't, and every other solution involves trade-offs.
Do you increase the risk of corruption in exchange for increased expertise, by sourcing staff from industry?
Or do you decrease the risk of corruption at the expense of less expertise, by banning pre/current/post industry exposure?
The judiciary option boils down to a punt, by creating an alternative profession vertical (judicial) that someone can live and progress in... to shield them from influence while making decisions in other areas. But then you have the appointment problem, especially vis lifetime appointments.
The "interested parties" Supreme Court model seems the best way to split the difference to me, where technical experts can offer technical arguments, without having any ability to judge. But that presupposes the judge can understand the points being made.
I'd describe it as last desperate grasp for money for a company that screwed up its business hard in the last decade-and-some... the remaining value in Nokia is mostly the patents they got along the way, so obviously they're now trying to extract maximum value out of the patents. There's not much else left!
and here was me impressed the other day that bell labs are owned by nokia now (really). Doesn't matter who or what company, this is an unavoidable conflict of interests.
I tried to bring a product to market, something that IMO can revolutionize the world. Went to the patent attorney late in the game. He looked at my product and told me to shelve it - take out a bunch of patents, wait till someone else comes out with the idea and then sue them.
He claimed that if I brought it to market, I would be sued by others that have unrelated patents but lots of lawyers. That even if I did everything by the book, I would go bankrupt.
Went to another firm, heard something similar - basically, all patents do is keep products and ideas from market, and you wouldn't believe how many good ideas are kept from market thus.
And patents and give ammunition to trolls - aka mafia corps. And they keep the status quo with out of date ideas - since in a any given field the dominant players will always be able to sue the startup out of existence.
If the government money that goes into the patents were to go instead into grants and funds for good ideas - any thing that would have gotten a patent should get cash, say, now that could be something awesome.
But any good from patents, I have yet to see.