If the administration is able to concoct and pass a set of laws that can actually systematically identify and lock down patent trolls but not companies like ARM, it would be an amazing development. Yet this litigation dance is clearly the trolls' domain of expertise. I'm afraid that any rules passed would be adroitly evaded by the trolls and "evolved" shell companies that say, take to putting on a camoflage guise like that of Intellectual Ventures (IV).<p><i>In addition, the president plans to ask Congress to pass legislation that would allow sanctions on litigants who file lawsuits deemed abusive by courts, officials said.</i><p>I wonder if "litigants" actually points to "people" rather than entities.<p><i>The president has taken a dim view of certain patent-holding firms. In February, he said some firms "don't actually produce anything themselves. They're just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea to see if they can extort some money out of them."</i><p>As we all know, companies like ARM don't "make" anything. But they are a legitimate operation by all means. But on the surface, IV might look like a legitimate operation too, with their research staff and everything. And once legislation passes, the now simple shell companies will surely take on a new form that will be more difficult to discern from their legitimate counterparts.<p>The fact that the administration wants to make this change is amazing. I love it. Yet I have to be skeptical, not only for the aforementioned reasons but also due to our political gridlock. I'm afraid that any legislation that <i>does</i> pass will be laden with intentional loopholes for the trolls to exploit.<p>I am hopeful yet fearful.
Patent trolls aren't the problem. We don't need patent-holding firms to be restricted: there's nothing strictly wrong with them, <i>if the patents they're holding are worthwhile</i>. All they do is create a wider market for intellectual property. All restricting them does is stop one angle of oppression - large companies will still be free to bully small ones as they wish.<p>The real problem is that currently it's profitable to have an idea, patent it, and then sit on it until someone accidentally re-invents your idea. If an idea is sufficiently obvious that there's a reasonably high likelihood of reinvention (as opposed to copying), it should never have been patentable in the first place.<p>If it makes sense for companies to tell employees <i>not</i> to look at the knowledge distributed by patents, you have too many obvious patents. Looking at the information disseminated by patents should be a universal good: you should be seeing ideas that you'd be unlikely to come up with yourself - that will mostly only <i>add</i> to your options for creating your product, not subtract.<p>You don't need complicated, nuanced legislation to make this happen - you need instead to do a hell of a lot of patent reevaluation.
Here's a link that will actually get you around the paywall:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+Plans+to+Take+Action+Against+Patent-Holding+Firms&oq=Obama+Plans+to+Take+Action+Against+Patent-Holding+Firms" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+Plans+to+Take+Action+A...</a><p>Just click on the top link to read it.
Previously :<p><a href="http://gigaom.com/2013/02/16/obama-says-patent-trolls-hijack-and-extort-so-do-something-mr-president/" rel="nofollow">http://gigaom.com/2013/02/16/obama-says-patent-trolls-hijack...</a><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-patent-comments-at-google-chat-2013-2" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-patent-comments-at-goo...</a><p><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/obama-calls-patent-reform-topple-trolls" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/obama-calls-patent-ref...</a><p><a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415469,00.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415469,00.asp</a><p>And for folks who are getting upset at the those who don't like paywalls, I'm quite happy to enable ads if your site has quality content.<p>If a paywall is how you get money, then keep your stories off Google. You can't be Quora and The Well at the same time.
To get around the paywall.<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+Plans+to+Take+Action+Against+Patent-Holding+Firms&oq=Obama+Plans+to+Take+Action+Against+Patent-Holding+Firms" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+Plans+to+Take+Action+A...</a>
If the president has taken such a dim view of patent-holding firms, maybe he should focus on the PTO first who is giving out incorrect patents left and right. Only one in ten patents, or 12% to be exact[1], are given out in compliance with patent law.<p>Imagine if a bank teller had a 88% error rate when giving out loans, thus handing out large sums of money to people who can't repay it. No bank in history would allow such personal to still be employed, or they would go out of businesses thanks to competition in the market. The PTO do not have any competition, so instead we are left dealing with the after effect with 9/10 patents being incorrectly issued for fully 20 years periods. Patent trolls and patent-holding firms would likely not exist, or would at least have extremely smaller effect on the market if PTO actually did their job correctly.<p>[1]In an effort to assert the quality of patent, one can look at the result from reexaminations. Like with code, if it is not tested, its quality is indeterminable. The PTO publish yearly a report for ex parte reexaminations, and during the latest period of 2011/09/30 -> 2012/09/30, the reexamination certificates only gave 12% of all examined patents a pass with all claims intact. This is averaged across all technical fields, as PTO do not have numbers for specific markets. I would guess that software patents will have slightly higher number of faulty patents (~95% of incorrect patents?), but statistics over the IT industry patents doesn't seem to exist.
One of the difficulties of fixing the problem is going to be that you can't just pass a law that says <i>poof</i> "you must be the company that makes a thing in order to have a patent on a thing". There are many legitimate reasons for patents to be tradeable assets. Take for example the basement tinkerer who comes up with and patents a completely novel widget. They may not have the resources to build, market and sell that widget. But a Samsung might want to buy that patent for a couple million and make those widgets themselves.<p>Sure the basement tinkerer could license the patent to Samsung, even an <i>exclusive</i> perpetual license, which is almost as good as owning it, and might be the preferred path forward (though there can be some problems with that too as companies start to defensively buy exclusive perpetual licenses with no intention of making those widgets just to keep others out of that market).<p>But at this point, any law requiring such licenses would have to be for those going forward. Any retroactive law would require either handing back legally purchased patents (which destroys wealth) or require the originator to buy them back (which may be impossible in many cases if they've already spent the money on retirement homes).<p>The core reason patents become so valuable is because they last so damn long. If they didn't last until the next ice age it would take much of the value out of ownership and make licensing naturally make more sense anyway. The way to attack this is at the root and revert back the patent expiration to something far more reasonable.
"don't actually produce anything themselves. They're just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea to see if they can extort some money out of them."<p>Silly patent trolls, don't they know that is the job of the politician?
16 minutes into Obama's "Fireside Hangout", the topic of patent reform is introduced. Watch for yourself.<p><a href="http://bit.ly/obama-on-patents" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/obama-on-patents</a>
For a start, there are some fairly "simple" things that can/could happen in IP regulation. A reassessment of effective (versus stifling) term limits in copyright. The elimination of most "evergreening" of patents under the rubrik of "obviousness" (e.g. extended release where the extended release method/mechanism is not truly novel). The investigation and prosecution of business practices that seek to remove legitimate generics from the marketplace -- monopoly regulation might be a ready avenue.<p>I put "simple" in quotes, because I've left the political factor out.<p>If we can't do the above, I have to wonder what any process involving "political compromise" can or will achieve. My hopes are not too high.
<i>"Those are among five executive actions and seven proposed legislative changes that Mr. Obama is expected to recommend"</i><p>Until these actions and changes are stated, it is really tough to have a good debate about the topic. The article is pretty general and can really be condensed into a tweet, maybe even less. There has to be more substance behind how they plan to determine the so-called trolls versus companies such as Arm.
Paywall politics aside however one feels about them, would be great if HN mods would just never put through a link to one... Waste of time for most of us.