White House Announces Reforms Targeting Patent Trolls

andy1307 writes "According to Politico (and, paywalled, at The Wall Street Journal), the White House on Tuesday [released] plans to announce a set of executive actions President Barack Obama will take that are aimed at reining in certain patent-holding firms, known as 'patent trolls' to their detractors, amid concerns that the firms are abusing the patent system and disrupting competition. The plan includes five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations. They include requiring patent holders and applicants to disclose who really owns and controls the patent, changing how fees are awarded to the prevailing parties in patent litigation, and protecting consumers with better protections against being sued for patent infringement."

I'm not sure their the problem

[gr8_phk]

I've been thinking patent trolls are more a symptom of the problems. I see as reasonable:
1) You don't need to produce a product to have a patent (think small inventors looking for partners).
2) Patents should be transferable (can sell them)
3) You can sue for infringement

Simple as that you can now have companies that buy patents and sue for infringement. I suspect the real issue is #2 - if they are non-transferable then the inventor will have to license them. I think there would still be some troll law firms that represent a pool of inventors, but they'd have to share the "profits" and I suspect it would be less of a problem.
Another issue is probably the duration - 20 years is a long time for a patent, but primarily they should not be transferable.

I would argue that they should not be transferable from inventor to employer either, but that's a bit off topic - short version: your employment papers might include automatic licensing of inventions to the company under some terms. The US does not recognize companies as inventors - and rightly so IMHO.

Seems hollow.

[GWRedDragon]

From the same administration that rammed through first to file, now we're supposed to believe they're out to help innocent patent victims? Seems more likely that someone decided that patent trolls were getting dangerous to the big boys. Expect to see no steps to prevent monopolists from using obvious patents to destroy potential competition.

Re:What is patentable?

[DickBreath]

There are multiple ways to improve the USPTO without spending taxpayer money.

For example, the USPTO could charge large patent application fees for patent applications that are rejected; but charge low fees for patents that are granted. That would change the incentives for both the examiners and the filers of patent applications. If a patent is later re-examined and is found that it should not have been granted, then there should be an even larger penalty, and additional penalties for litigating based on an invalid patent.

Another approach would be to simply scale up what the patent office is currently doing, but not use so much human labor to do it. Simply throw all patent applications into a large room full of cats with PATENT GRANTED stamps attached to their feet.

Coporate Policy Stifling Innovation Also

[caffeinejolt]

This is indeed one aspect of the many problems with our patent system,. Another is the corporate strategy, initiated over a decade ago, which has virtually eliminated the interaction between innovative small firms and larger firms with the need for innovation and the deep pockets required to drive innovative products to market. After my small firm was purchased in 2000, I was ordered to inform all engineers that it would be a major (i.e. firing) violation of corporate policy if they let themselves become aware of the intellectual property of any other firm. I was told that this had recently been adopted as corporate policy by most major firms as a brilliant defense against the feared "triple damages" awards for patent infringement. Corporate policy explicitly banning any effort to learn about other firms' patents currently eliminates any possibility of a court awarding triple damages - even if patent infringement were proven. Since most innovative small firms lack the financial resources needed to take on a multi-year legal battle, even if they were able to show infringement on their patent, this new corporate policy amounted to a free pass for large wealthy firms to simply steal innovations from innovative small firms. The worst thing that could happen would be that the small firm won in court, at which point the worst-case punishment would be to pay 'damages' - which are defined as simply the amount that the stealing firm would have had to pay had they properly licensed the patents from the small firm in the first place. While this is considered a brilliant legal strategy, it is a disastrous national policy for technological innovation. It virtually eliminates the financial incentive for small firms to invest in innovation, by providing carte blanche for larger firms to simply steal that innovation; the logical large firm strategy in this case is to never discuss intellectual property with any small firm - simply steal it and defy them to take you to court. We do indeed need to make war on patent trolls, but even more importantly, we need to make war on patent thieves - by punishing deliberate ignorance of patent theft with large penalties. If it is proven that infringement occurred, and that the infringing firm had a policy of deliberate ignorance, the damage award should be at least tripled. Or - we should start letting speeders go free if they claim ignorance of the speed limit because they chose to deliberately avert their eyes every time a speed limit sign came near.

Re:What is patentable?

[KingMotley]

Sure it makes sense, you are sweating the implementation. You could for example charge a large up front Application Fee, that the bulk of it gets refunded if the patent is accepted, or not if it's rejected. Pretty simple.

You make the Rejected Fee large enough and sure as shit you'll see some commercial entities pop up that will pre-scan your patent for less than the reject fee, and make sure all the i's are dotted and t's crossed before they submit it to the USPTO (for a fee of course). This shifts the burden of dealing with junk patents to the free market, and increases the quality of patents the USPTO sees, and with the higher fees, they can even staff better, and now they have an incentive to make sure bad patents get rejected, and like all things, money is a great motivator.

Re:What is patentable?

[jedidiah]

It's property is it not? Then start treating it like property.

TAX IT.

That's not socialist. Property taxes predate socialism but at least 1000 years. So if these people want virtual property created out of thin air then let them pay taxes on it like I do on my house.

Tax it. Assign it a known value. Make it easy to assess tort claims like patent violations and software piracy.

Give some incentive to put things in the public domain after they are no longer worth the tax bill.

Re:What is patentable?

[jedidiah]

> Having one person dictate what is and isn't patentable opens a huge can of worms that can hinder innovation

That is MORONIC.

The lack of a patent does not "hinder innovation". People can still choose to bring new products to market even if they don't get to benefit from a virtual land grab.

You're just repeating the same old tired megacorp propaganda.

Avarice is not the mother of invention.

neither makes sense

[Chirs]

If two people independently invent something, then I think it should be non-patentable by definition.

The whole point of patents is to make public information on how to do something *that would otherwise be lost*. If multiple people independently invent something, then it seems to me that it is not in danger of being lost.

If the only reason something is patentable is because nobody ever had that specific problem before, but the solution is obvious to an expert, then it shouldn't be patentable.

Re:What is patentable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it makes sense, you are sweating the implementation. You could for example charge a large up front Application Fee, that the bulk of it gets refunded if the patent is accepted, or not if it's rejected. Pretty simple.

Actually, that's pretty stupid. Even if you make the cost of filing patents 10 times more expensive, this still won't be prohibitive to trolls who earn millions from abusing patents. For them it's just a little extra cost of doing business.

The small time inventor on the other hand is screwed. Even if they have zero doubt about legitimacy of their filing (which is in most cases impossible) they still won't be able to afford the collateral.

You just made everything worse for the good guys and the bad guys for the most part didn't feel the pinch. In fact the trolls can now approach inventors and buy them out much easier as the average inventor is now stuck behind a paywall.