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Apple Closer to Escaping $533 Million Verdict Won by Smartflash LLC
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One pretty obvious and simple way out of this mess (a mess created by the PTO's history of rubber-stamping all computer-related patents) would be to have any litigation based on a patent automatically trigger a review by the PTO of the patents in question, with an automatic stay of the litigation until the review is complete. Only if the patents survive the review does the litigation move forward.
If you want to sue a company over a patent you hold, you'd better have full faith that it will withstand said review, or you'll lose it. That would stop most of the worst trolls in their tracks.
This would be the Gov't essentially admitting that they screwed up with software patents over the last 20 years and amount to them calling a mulligan.
If you want to sue a company over a patent you hold, you'd better have full faith that it will withstand said review, or you'll lose it. That would stop most of the worst trolls in their tracks.
This would be the Gov't essentially admitting that they screwed up with software patents over the last 20 years and amount to them calling a mulligan.
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It really shouldn't come to the patents winning a court case before they are looked at and invalidated. That's the wrong way round?
I know tech is complicated but it should only be possible to patent specific code or unique hardware not just ideas. There should have been R&D carried out to make the breakthrough needed for a patent for a specific product or use. I know they have like mobile device as a category but it should be very specific and locked down to discourage blanket claims that are repurposed to fit other products. Also dual innovation should be considered as there are millions of patents now, you should have to prove copying specifically, I'm sure most inventions are created independently.
I know tech is complicated but it should only be possible to patent specific code or unique hardware not just ideas. There should have been R&D carried out to make the breakthrough needed for a patent for a specific product or use. I know they have like mobile device as a category but it should be very specific and locked down to discourage blanket claims that are repurposed to fit other products. Also dual innovation should be considered as there are millions of patents now, you should have to prove copying specifically, I'm sure most inventions are created independently.
The companies I named fit that definition exactly. They 1. Purchased a patent portfolio. 2. Formed a holding company together and called it Rockstar Consortium. 3. Immediately started doing what patent trolls do - started suing other companies. So yeah, patent trolls.
Not only were they patent trolls, they turned the dial to 11 as vindictive patent trolls. They went out as sued Asustek, Google, HTC, Huawei, LG, Pantech, Samsung, and ZTE. They figuratively sued everyone from A-Z that had anything to do with Android.
Fortunately for everyone, calmer heads prevailed and those companies dissolved Rockstar and sold the assets to RPX.
I didn't call them patently trolls in jest or as a slight against any of them. That's what the were.
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So don't expect any new drugs on the market then, epscially those for specific illness'. No Patent system is brilliant, but it does have it's benefits in some areas.
Rockstar was the patent troll. Apple and the others dissolved the company because they knew what they were doing was fundamentally wrong.
If you're trying to imply that those companies weren't patent trolls because they formed a separate company together just to troll patents... that's just a distinction without a difference. If you do think that, what's the difference? Not being argumentative, just can't quite see the separation that you seem to see. Interested to hear your thoughts.
The problem with that argument is it can be one day between you selling your product and the copy being produced. You need to seen in order to make back the money you had to spend to make the idea work. The copycat only has to do that for the little amount they needed to spend to copy your idea. Final outcome of your idea, the original inventor makes no money and goes out of business, the copycat makes a shed load of money for very little effort. Massive failure.
Theres a reason the world doesn't work like this. Why on earth would a company spend years, sometimes decades researching a drug or cutting edge product, pumping billions into it, to get a few months sales before everyone else just copies it. It simply wouldn't work and no one would innovate, they would just sit back and wait for someone else to do the hard work and nothing would move forward.
Eh, I remember this from a while ago, and I remember Smartflash's patents all being total BS. Hope Apple wins.
That doesn't actually make sense though. Nobody would bother with reverse engineering in your hypothetical scenario because nobody would invent - there'd be nothing to reverse engineer. So people would invent, because there's no reason not to. Reverse engineering would occur, and the invention would be spread regardless of whether you had the means to distribute it themselves or not.