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VirnetX Wins Another $502.6 Million Award From Apple in Patent Trial
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You are using a concrete example to make an analogy to an abstract idea. No, a vacant lot and an idea are not the same.
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Why?
VirnetX is in litigation with every company Apple, Google, Microsoft for Skype and Cisco. The company has 80 DNS and Networking patents, and not even a single implementation of those, and their royalty rates are quite high http://www.virnetx.com/licensing/royalty-rates-and-guidelines/
So the thing is its not cool if you have a hand-drawing of a car and other people have actually made a car but you dont want them to drive their car because you think you drew it , somehow you have the right to stop others from making a car unless they award a door from every car they ever make to you. Until then everyone is infringing on your drawing of the car.
That is just crazy!! And VirnetX is using this crazy broken Patent system. They will go ahead and take this money from every company involved in video conferencing type applications.
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There are energy brokers that buy oil and gas from one group and sell it to another group. They don't make oil or gar, nor refine it, themselves. Nothing they have created, just bought up.
There are bankers that take our money, invest it and live off the profits. They don't make money, they just use it. Nothing they created, just borrowed.
Sound familiar?
They need to start inventing their own technology instead of stealing others.
Nope. Small businesses are often more at risk than large companies because it becomes too expensive to defend the patient in court. Small business invents something, creates a product around it, another pop-up business copies it, the first business sues, the second business folds (the first business getting next to nothing in the case), then the first business has to do it again with another group of people who decide to copy.
A small business just does not have the resources to protect their patients, especially against other pop-up, fly-by-night, small businesses (not even saying anything about trying to do business outside the country...).
Really? So why don't you grab a couple of Apples unused patents & let's put your comment to the test.
You mean to say that the 1000's patents that Apple has, that aren't related to a watch, phone or computer, should be free game
So you work at Apple and are aware of every project going on right? This company literally makes NOTHING, there are no products. They will never produce anything. I know some people like to complain about Apple and it's ambiguous patents, but at least there is a real chance they will use them at some point.
It's not entirely clear from the several articles I have read, but near as I can tell Apple has never given them a penny yet. Does anybody know differently with a fact based source?
Both sides have spent a fortune on lawyers.
Both sides have spent a fortune on lawyers.
Oh please,..go and do a patent search on Apple & take a look yourself! Do you honestly believe that Apple has a product they are making for every one of THEIR patents?? An Apple employee scratches their nose & it becomes a patent, Lol It doesn't mean I can just come along and take one to manufacture a product based on it, because Apple.hasent!
If you own a patent, you own the patent. Thats called the law.
easy solution to most of this crap. Patents are provisional unless the company that owns it either makes their own product that uses the provisional patent or they license it to another company. At that point the real patent kicks in the provisional patent should only be valid for a very limited time (6 months-1 year) and allow for re-application for the patent .
But if the legal definition of your vacant lot is worded in such a way as to most to mean one lot, but to some others (mostly get rich lawyers) to mean most of the town, but you only paid the vacant lot price, and you attempt to take control of most of the town using a corrupt legal process (say your bothers out of town court), then you would be a property troll, and rightly be seen as the scum of the earth.
Now of course property descriptions are not usually subject to this ambiguity, but thanks to inept lawyers in the patent office not having any idea about technology, we don't have this clarity with patents. Hence the ability to patent a "Buy Now" button and win. As long as we allow patents of the obvious and patents of stuff that has been in common use for years, there is nothing different than lawyers trying to sue for patents on bridges, for example. Its completely out of control. Most of these patents should never have been issued in the first place.
So universities and independent inventors aren’t entitled to patents? That will decimate graduate engineering schools, Which pay the bills for undergraduate engineering departments, which means far fewer engineering students.
Smart.
And this is why I don’t have a problem with companies buying patents to monetize. It’s just another form of speculating (buying an asset you think has future value on the hope that it will earn you more than you paid).
What I DO have a problem with are companies using sleazy tactics to extort money via patents. Suing companies who can’t afford litigation, suing end users of products instead of manufacturers, filing vague lawsuits on the hopes of extracting a settlement and so on.
Patent examiners are not lawyers. By law they have to be engineers or scientists.
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There are already provisional patents. They are not what you are proposing.
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Most of the time it doesn’t cost the small business anything to enforce its patents because the patent attorneys take the cases on contingency if the cases have any merit.
I think the answer is easy - be very strict about which patents are approved and do not allow the sale of patents.
If society breaks down because we tried to get rid of a little greed then so be it.
Another good idea (imo) would be for the state to own all patents, then lease them to companies that wish to use them. That way these companies pay something into the system. The state could also compensate the creator accordingly. Could work pretty well as long as corruption did not set in. At least we wouldn't be giving all this money to scumbag lawyers for doing literally nothing.
If society breaks down because we tried to get rid of a little greed then so be it.
Another good idea (imo) would be for the state to own all patents, then lease them to companies that wish to use them. That way these companies pay something into the system. The state could also compensate the creator accordingly. Could work pretty well as long as corruption did not set in. At least we wouldn't be giving all this money to scumbag lawyers for doing literally nothing.
People seem very confused about how the patent system works. This is how:
1) you submit a patent application to the PTO. You are supposed to specifically claim what you believe the invention to be. If you know of any prior art that may be relevant, you have to submit that as well.
2) The patent examiners at the USPTO examine your application and decide whether you have complied with the technical requirements, whether your claims are specific enough (in accordance with the statutes and the case law), and whether there is prior art that anticipates your claims or renders them obvious. The patent examiners search existing patents and certain other databases for this prior art, and look at the prior art you have submitted.
If you know of prior art and fail to submit it, your patent can be held to be unenforceable by a court in the future.
3) You respond to the examiner, explaining why he or she is wrong, or modifying your claims to be more narrow in light of prior art provided by the examiner.
This cycle repeats for awhile, until the examiner agrees that you deserve a patent.
Note that the patent examiner applies the laws as they exist at the time. If the Supreme Court comes out with a new opinion about patent law in the future, your patent may end up being invalidated in the future. But once you have receive the patent, it is presumed to be valid, and the burden is on others to prove otherwise.
4) You sue someone on your patent.
5) The accused infringer may believe your patent is invalid, because it is not a new invention (prior art), it covers subject matter that is no longer patentable (e.g. abstract algorithms), or has some other defect. They can go the USPTO and ask to have the patent invalidated based on prior art. This usually takes about a year, and involves a mini-trial in front of a board of three administrative law judges at the USPTO. Or they can seek to have the patent invalidated by the district court where they were sued. Or they can argue that the patent is unenforceable because the inventors knew of prior art and failed to disclose it to the USPTO.
Apple tends to use such patents defensively, not offensively. They have a portfolio of patents that they can cross license when other companies require some licensing. Pretty sure Apple doesn't pursue every Tom, Dick and Harry about patents that it isn't actively using in one of its products. Apple have also OpenSourced quite a lot of things.
Not currently using a specific patent vs not using ANY patent. Two totally different things. Sometimes you patent things for future products. But to patent something ONLY to sue someone else for using it? That's a joke.
I wish China, India, and the rest of Asia got together and declared that they do not recognize Patents and Copyrights as these are Western created artificial concepts.
[doublepost=1523456187][/doublepost]US Supreme Court needs to step in an invalidate the whole patent troll business model. Does nothing but drive up the costs of goods to consumers.
[doublepost=1523456187][/doublepost]US Supreme Court needs to step in an invalidate the whole patent troll business model. Does nothing but drive up the costs of goods to consumers.