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  1. #1
    Light comes from darkness shise's Avatar
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    "Patent Trolls in USA"

    What do you think about it?

    I find this an issue all over the world, not just in the US. The small businessman is always at the giant's will.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137574n
    Last edited by shise; 2012-12-21 at 10:37 PM.

  2. #2
    Merely a Setback breadisfunny's Avatar
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    i think patent laws are LONG overdue for an overhaul.

    everytime i say the thread title in my head the "cruisin usa" theme song plays in the back of my head for some reason.
    Last edited by breadisfunny; 2012-12-21 at 08:46 PM.

  3. #3
    It's a disgraceful abuse of intellectual property laws.

  4. #4
    Hard to argue. Decent chunk of corporations know how to work around them. It's the smaller industries that are hurt the most since they cannot splash cash as easily as the behemoths.

    I know pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer have gotten around patent issues/trolls by simply merging two weaker drugs into a single better drug. A lot of industries have segmented their products so much that they can nearly fuse some of their products together to dodge or hinder patent trolls. Again, smaller companies do not have that ability and reach to do that.

    Would be interesting how they could make it an "even-playing" field.

  5. #5
    It's a worldwide problem. The entire planet needs patent reform.

  6. #6
    I am Murloc!
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    I'm kind of surprised that it took this long to be a major news story.

    This has really been an issue for quite some time.

  7. #7
    what i think is wrong is that when someone invents something, shouldn't he/she have he patent? i guess if a company invests heavily in the development of said invention they have a part to play, but companies like this dont, what i do not get is how the managed to get a patent for something they did not invent, isn't that practiclly stealing?

  8. #8
    I completely agree that patent laws around the world need to be overhauled, most notably in the US, UK, and Japan. Those are the 3 nations that have the most patent troll cases. (I have no source, just going by the number of news articles I've come across about various lawsuits over the past few years.)

    Something needs to be done to stop these companies that do nothing but buy up patents en mass in hopes they can use them to sue other companies for infringement. Apple has joined this group of companies somewhat recently, buying up patent portfolios everywhere they can.

    Also, I believe that if a lawsuit fails in one jurisdiction, it should be against international law to pursuit that same lawsuit in another jurisdiction. Most notable of this in recent time is the Apple vs. Samsung fiasco. The suit failed in the US, but won in Japan. I may have my countries mixed up, but the basics are true.

  9. #9
    An interesting topic. Here's an article from a month ago covering more. westword.com /2012-11-08/news/patent-wars-in-the-high-tech-world/

    One of the most distressing things to read in there is how a patent filing dispute is actually solved using the 'stack rule': two reams of patents are placed on a table and a ruler is used to determine the winner (tallest stack wins).

    Some more food for thought - In the video it's said "it's legal but is it right?", good question. How about some more good questions. I'll go in order from most uncontroversial to the hardest to answer:

    Is there truely any innovation occuring internal to massive corporations when every massive technological innovation of the past century were possible only with direct subsidy from or flat out creation within the state sector (i.e. computers, whose component parts were impossible to develop in the private sector and were handed over for privatization after the cost was socialized).

    Why should corporations have rights to property? Patent law genesis is pre-corporate, pre-industrial, and pre-capitalist. These legal benefits were drafted before anyone could see what was coming and how it would be used. Ties into another question: Why should corporations have any rights? Again, the rights that are cynically invoked to frame all modern ideas of corporations as persons (Before the Supreme Court session to announce the decision in the case Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, Chief Justice Waite said that the court wouldn't hear arguments on whether the Fourteenth Amendment clause on equal protection applied to corporations. The case was decided on other grounds. But, the principle that corporations have Fourteenth Amendment rights was inserted by the Supreme Court reporter in a header in the published report of the case. Then in a later case Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad v. Beckwith (1889), the Supreme Court cited the Santa Clara case as the precedent for corporations having due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. With that, corporations became legal persons in the United States, and gained the ability to challenge in federal court regulatory actions at the state level) were not intended to be used this way and the rights and benefits won long after were largely legal fictions, won in courts leveraged by corporate largesse. They are legal, but are they right?

    What right does anyone have to intellectual property? Forgetting the patently silly idea of corporate ownership, a harder question is why should anyone have exclusive control of an idea. Does that not stifle innovation, enforce inequality, and limit the free transfer of information for the betterment of mankind. Of course it does, but for a trade off - private profits. To defend intellectual property must we first abandon loftier ideals like egalitarian progress to the callow urge to capitalize and compete. This is probably the most high-minded question and the hardest to work around in the modern age. Those who avail themselves of illegal internet piracy are literally on the bleeding edge of the challenge to intellecutal property and they are bleeding indeed for assailing the profit motive of private power, aren't they? Are intellectual property laws themselves disgusting abuses, neo-interperatations of pre-enlightenment ideas (The grant of exclusive rights "monopolies" by the sovereign evolved in the medieval age as a convenient way in which the sovereign could raise money without the need to resort to taxation.) first devised as nothing more than statist market violations to enforce economic inequality?

  10. #10
    Merely a Setback Sunseeker's Avatar
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    Patent laws need an overhaul something terrible. The fact that people can patent something and never develop it is a disgusting shame alone, allowing them to sue others over it is even worse.
    Human progress isn't measured by industry. It's measured by the value you place on a life.

    Just, be kind.

  11. #11
    I work for a family owned ecommerce company. We have a total of about 25 employees. We were just notified about a company coming after us over a shopping cart patent. We looked into it, its legal, and this company actually sells stuff (not much tho). They supposedly have a patent on the action or method of using a shopping cart for online purchases. Unreal..

    Hope we still get decent raises this year as I will have to move on if thats not the case. Nothing has happened yet, but this could destroy small businesses if its not overhauled.


  12. #12
    Void Lord Elegiac's Avatar
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    Patent Trolls. A lovely term; me gusta.

    Whatever happened to having a patent board that the claimant would have to demonstrate blueprints or a proof-of-concept to?
    Quote Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
    The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk and understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by shise View Post
    What do you think about it?

    I find this an issue all over the world, not just in the US. The small business men is always at the giant's will.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137574n
    this has nothing to do with small business and large businesses.
    lots of patent trolls go after some of the most recognizable and largest companies

  14. #14
    Stood in the Fire Jektar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by shise View Post
    What do you think about it?

    I find this an issue all over the world, not just in the US. The small business men is always at the giant's will.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137574n

    I have to agree it is shameful. I just can't believe they're allowed to patent something they DON'T invent. Of course apple vs. samsung is just another big thing in the news that makes me :/

  15. #15
    Merely a Setback Sunseeker's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bals View Post
    this has nothing to do with small business and large businesses.
    lots of patent trolls go after some of the most recognizable and largest companies
    While that's true, it's much more damaging to small businesses who lack the money to fight such a legal battle. I mean I recall when someone went after Blizzard because supposedly they had a copyright for on kind of vaguely defined "online world" wherein people did stuff and things.
    Human progress isn't measured by industry. It's measured by the value you place on a life.

    Just, be kind.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by smrund View Post
    While that's true, it's much more damaging to small businesses who lack the money to fight such a legal battle. I mean I recall when someone went after Blizzard because supposedly they had a copyright for on kind of vaguely defined "online world" wherein people did stuff and things.
    yup. these companies buy up bunch of crap patents and then try to use vague wording to sue companies

  17. #17
    Merely a Setback Sunseeker's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bals View Post
    yup. these companies buy up bunch of crap patents and then try to use vague wording to sue companies
    Yeah, I mean, if you can copyright the concept of putting things in a cart digitally, why not sue every major store in the world who uses real shopping carts?

    Patents should accompany products, either in-development products or already developed products, SPECIFIC things. If you patent something but do not develop it, or at least show evidence you are trying to develop it, IMO you should lose that patent.
    Human progress isn't measured by industry. It's measured by the value you place on a life.

    Just, be kind.

  18. #18
    Void Lord Elegiac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by smrund View Post
    Yeah, I mean, if you can copyright the concept of putting things in a cart digitally, why not sue every major store in the world who uses real shopping carts?

    Patents should accompany products, either in-development products or already developed products, SPECIFIC things. If you patent something but do not develop it, or at least show evidence you are trying to develop it, IMO you should lose that patent.
    I have a patent for posting opinions electronically. You all are breaching copyright.
    Quote Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
    The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk and understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

  19. #19
    What the world needs is the abolition of useful patents, total and complete.
    We are a society, there should be no such thing as "intellectual patents" on anything that can improve us as a race, society, culture, to do so is to stagnate our own development, its stupid beyond explanation.

    Especially on patents of real importance (screw iphone patents, they can eat them for breakfast) such as medicine... It allows monopolies and exploitation of peoples needs.
    A good example is HIV medication, as we all should know, HIV is a chronic disease nowadays, no longer deadly as it once was, but perfectly manageable.

    A few years back, it would cost around 10.000 dollars a year for that medication, a person.
    India, back then still didnt give a crap about patents and international law wasnt harsh enough nor reaching enough, so India said "screw it" and copied the medicine, guess what?
    The costs was about 50 bucks a year per person, 200x less than what they were being sold in the western world, which forced western to lower prices.
    A lot of things are expensive only because of exclusivity.

    Look at normal medicine in general, generics are made by the same factory, same workers, using the same ingredients, simply dont have a brand name and end up being up to 10x cheaper, this are real lifesaving medicines who keep being super expencive simply due to branding and patent holding, mixed with greed.

    At what point, can we as a society even allow such a thing?
    How can a government, whose mission is to protect and nurture its population can go along with it instead of saying "lol no" to pharmaceuticals?
    That, is the real disgusting thing in modern times, things that are essential for the very survival of people are unreachable to many due to price alone.
    Last edited by Kurioxan; 2012-12-21 at 10:36 PM.

  20. #20
    Void Lord Elegiac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kurioxan View Post
    What the world needs is the abolition of useful patents, total and complete.
    We are a society, there should be no such thing as "intellectual patents" on anything that can improve us as a race, society, culture, to do so is to stagnate our own development, its stupid beyond explanation
    Let me pose the counter argument; if people cannot have any surety of making money from their development, what is the imperative to tinker and research?
    Quote Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
    The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk and understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

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