Felix Salmon omits a point that makes Microsoft's participation in the patent cartel especially absurd: they had already licensed all of the patents from Nortel in perpetuity. Microsoft claimed, without legal basis, that it was concerned about the risk of this license being ignored by the acquirer.
> We need to make it easier and quicker to get good patents, and much harder or impossible to get bad patents.
The question is, what is a good patent? The way I see it (i) there are too few good patents to outweigh the bad ones, and (ii) it is too difficult to distinguish them at application time. In other words, the patent system just doesn't work, and is basically unfixable. Looks like we should do away with it.
I'd say a good patent is one where its very obvious what is covered by that patent, and whether a given thing constitutes prior art. Since chemistry is by its nature very discrete (atoms come integer numbers and set types) most patents in that field tend to be good ones.
Chemistry causes another, specific problem: I was told that in the pharmaceutical industry, one would patent one molecule at a time. If someone else found a slightly different molecule with the same effect, the patent offers no protection. It may sometimes forces laboratories to waste their time searching for similar molecules so they can patent them all (or at least a good deal).
So, while such patents wouldn't be bad, the system is still suboptimal (depending on the time needed to search for the similar molecules).
Plus, even if in this particular domain a patent system is better than nothing, it may be difficult to discriminate the domain. For instance, software patents don't apply in Europe. But if you care enough to specify that the whole shenanigan takes place on some sort of processing device, then you can sometimes pretend it is not a software patent. GPS devices for instance are subject to patents, though it is quite obvious that the core of the idea lies in the program, not in the general purpose ARM chip (I don't know about the GPS receiver). But if you turn the GPS device into a general purpose computer that happen to have a GPS program, you may be safe.
I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like any partial ban of patents is bound to be a headache.
Perhaps we could define a "good" patent as one that isn't likely to be infringed unknowingly. IMO, whenever someone wins a patent suit without being able to demonstrate willful infringement, an injustice has been done.
Yes, we should do away with the whole patent system. That won't happen, though, so the next best thing to do is to point out the economic costs of allowing people (hence corporations) to own ideas.
Software patents should be a good enough reason to think patents in general stifle innovation. Patent trolls have moved beyond mere monopolistic enforcement and into mafia-style shakedown operations.
It would already help a lot if patents would invalidate if the company exploiting them does not market (actively; meaning you have to spend a fixed % of your income on marketing, sales and development of said product) a product / service using the patent. That would hamper the trolls. But of course software patents should die.
This is why I refuse to participate in patenting software.
I've written code for people who wanted to patent it as part of a device, and whilst I can't necessarily stop them, I can definitely refuse to assist in salting the ground for those that come after me.
Obviously, like nuclear weapons, if you don't have patents, then you are vulnerable, and the World is a harsh place. It's difficult to see how the process of patenting, then squatting on code that anyone could write, can be resolved.
I'm no expert in American patents so forgive me if I don't fully understand things, my country doesn't even have software patents :O
But it seems from my readings that applying a reasonable expiry date to them would solve so many issues.
So say an assumption would apply that after say 5-10 years a technology would be common place and hence no longer unique, and that a company that couldn't capitalise after that period shouldn't be able to be in a position to hold up an economy.
Hopefully this question will still find an answer even though this article has fallen off the front page:
Is there a company structure, or is it possible to design one, that would allow a startup to operate free from the threat of patent trolls? What comes to mind is a network of shell holding companies that is used to hide ownership of copyright IP - Charles Stross describes this in the first part of Accelerando. Simply, it may have reached a point where it is safer for startups to operate as a subsidiary of a foreign company not subject to U.S. patent law.
