Fight the Patent Foundation

[FightThePatent]

I found this quote in a patent email-list that i subscribe to:

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If society allows patents in areas where cumulative innovation is the dominant mode of innovation, then new innovators end up carying the weight of the giants instead. This is because they need to license prior innovations before marketing their own innovation, and that expense grows exponentially with innovation generation for complex products.

(this is so simple you could put it on a T-shirt ;*)

See "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Cumulative Research and the
Patent Law", J. Economic Perspectives, Vol 5, winter 1991, p. 27-41
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~scotch/giants.pdf


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This is my reply, reposted here for your reading:




This is so true of Acacia Research's 2nd round of wielding a patent claim... first round with V-Chip, they got knocked down, but that was before they got companies to spend MILLIONS of dollars on "licensing their patent".

Round 2 is where they are making the broad claim to owning the process to downloading of audio or video from a website.

Acacia's attorneys cite that 150+ other patents reference their patent, as if that was some form of validation for the patent... more like the other patent holders citing all possible prior art as required by USPTO.

But Acacia's patent claims are like claiming to have a patent on a ball. Others may have a patent on a red ball. In this example, Acacia won't sue the patent of a red ball, but will sue not only the manufacturer of the red ball for patent infringement, but also the toy store that carries the red ball, for contributory infringement.

Patent Law allows them to do this... this is clearly patent abuse.

In real terms, Acacia is suing websites that have audio or video on their website.. they have yet to target companies like Microsoft, Real, or Apple for infringement.. these targets would fight back and tie them up on court. Based upon their failed V-chip patent, but successful licensing campaign, it seems to be the business model to throw a patent and some infringement letters at comanies who use the "alleged infringed patent" to "convince" them to license their patents.. using things like an "amnesty" cut-off date, where retroactive infringement fees could be accessed.

Most websites don't have the money to pay $10k-$35k to do the initial legal dance, so they have no choice but to license the patent. The kicker here, is that in the event the patent is invalidated by companies who do challenge the patent, they DON"T GET THEIR MONEY back from the license.

This kind of stuff really gets to me, that's why I started FightThePatent.com and my hopes to extend that work to Fight the Patent Foundation.

This is the new, new,new, new economy with the new kind of business plan. Get patents, get people to license the patents and bet that most won't be able to fight it, and will just settle. For those that do fight it, it gets stuck in court for years, but in the mean time, they collect licensing fees and continue to "convince" companies to license the patent.

This is wrong!