> During all my years at MSFT, employees were always told that patents were necessary for the reasons Paul Vick stated - you had people like Eolas and zillions of other trolls trying to get you and you needed a portfolio to play defence.
No, that can't be right. I hope you're just misremembering that, but the whole problem with patent trolls is that you can't use your own portfolio for defense.
A large patent portfolio is a good weapon against other giants in your industry: IBM, Apple, Oracle, Google, (and once upon a time) Sun. Those people basically can't sue you for violating one of their patents if you have several thousand of your own: they're bound to be in violation of at least one of yours, and it's a mutually-assured-destruction scenario.
A patent troll, on the other hand, doesn't do anything. They can sue you with relative impunity, since there's almost no chance that they're doing anything that you can use against them. The size of your own patent portfolio doesn't even enter the picture.
There is another strategy - just publish your invention for all to see rendering it un-patentable.
IBM of all people used to do this for ideas they did not think were worth patenting. By publishing them they stopped anyone else from getting a patent on those ideas. IBM published a magazine for 40 years that is a treasure trove of prior art:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Technical_Disclosure_Bullet...
Now anyone can do defensive publication on this site
Unfortunately, that (rather noble) act is untenable in a world where everyone's suing everyone in the big boy department. If Apple and Microsoft weren't trying to kill Android with lawsuits, I could see a gentleman's agreement between the lot of them making this a fairly effective strategy. With the current state of affairs, everyone needs all the linked list patents they can get.
I see it less as being noble and more of a practical strategy for a small business. You can't afford to apply for a patent on everything you think up so why not publish it so at least you will not be locked out of using your own idea by someone who comes along later and does apply for a patent.
No, that can't be right. I hope you're just misremembering that, but the whole problem with patent trolls is that you can't use your own portfolio for defense.
A large patent portfolio is a good weapon against other giants in your industry: IBM, Apple, Oracle, Google, (and once upon a time) Sun. Those people basically can't sue you for violating one of their patents if you have several thousand of your own: they're bound to be in violation of at least one of yours, and it's a mutually-assured-destruction scenario.
A patent troll, on the other hand, doesn't do anything. They can sue you with relative impunity, since there's almost no chance that they're doing anything that you can use against them. The size of your own patent portfolio doesn't even enter the picture.