How To Kill Patent Trolls

If only defending a patent suit was as simple as finding the prior art. Most patent trolls will happily invite you to take your prior art claim to court, knowing full well you can't afford to do it.

I think the solution needs to be more ambitious. What if the "invention" is not prior art, but other people can come up with the same idea on their own? Does that deserve to be patented so that the company that was one week late will need to pay patent fees? Maybe the whole patent process should be crowd-sourced and patents should only be granted if no one can think of the same idea.<p>(I discuss this more here: <a href="http://zappable.com/2011/08/how-to-fix-the-patent-system/" rel="nofollow">http://zappable.com/2011/08/how-to-fix-the-patent-system/</a>)

Does anyone have any past experience with this? How much did it cost you?<p>I'm creating an app that deals with real-time information and geo-location... It seems that patent trolls will be lurking everywhere.<p>As a young startup, we don't have the money to go out there and make an attempt at protecting ourselves.

I appreciate the idea and love the crowdsourcing model. However, if I need to invalidate a patent, there might often be more urgency than hoping for the crowd sourced solution. Not to say it isn't viable, but maybe it's something best used in conjunction with a team of experts?

I've always wondered why there isn't a crowdsourcing entity that pays out rewards for finding infringement (patent, copyright, whatever).

Well, priorart.org is available for purchase. All it really needs is a wiki and a bug tracker on there...<p>[edit]...oops, available by broker. :(

Is there something I'm missing here?<p>Granted, there are more and more trolls these days. RSI is a real concern. You'll want a light weapon without a lot of recoil. And it should probably take an extended clip, to minimize reloading. Not to sound like a fanboy, but the Glock 17 seems perfect to me. All firearms can jam, so do bring a spare...<p>Seriously: why would anyone think seriously about how to <i>fix</i> this system? Why would anyone imagine it can be fixed? The only relevant question is how to kill it. Glock or no Glock, everything on God's green earth can be killed.