You are overlooking the fact that patent trolls do have real patents.
From the blog post, for example:
"""
Until Congress reforms the patent laws, companies of all sizes and industries could – and likely will – find themselves in the crosshairs of a greedy patent troll looking for a quick cash-grab. No company is immune, and, sadly, small companies can’t afford to fight. If they don’t succumb to the troll’s demands by settling, they face certain ruin.
"""
Patent trolls are on the right side of the law. The law is the problem.
And invalidating a worthless patent doesn't harm the troll at all -- no harm in trying, right? They can always get another patent. As non-practiciing entities, they don't have any business at risk. It's asymmetric.
No, I am not overlooking that fact. A "real" patent is simply a document that says you were granted one. It says nothing about the quality of the patent or the merit of it at all. I have read through hundreds and hundreds of patents over the years. I can say that the vast majority of them have been gut-wrenching bullshit patents. Yes, yes, an attorney will argue that there are subtleties to the claims that make them unique and patentable. I'm sorry, an engineer knows the real meaning of obvious. Lawyers and the patent examination process obviously don't. For example, the infamous patents on using PWM to modulate LED intensity in order to mix RGB LEDs and create various colors. Utter bullshit. None of them should have been granted. Not one of them. Read them all.
So yes, patent trolls have real patents. That does not mean they are real inventions that were deserving of a patent.
My point is that I would hit NPE's with bullshit patents as hard as possible if they stick their heads out of the sand. If they know you are backed by a multi-billion dollar legal fund with a mandate to invalidate bullshit patents they will only stick their heads out when they have real patents for real inventions. And, you know what, at that point I don't mind. Real invention can be laborious and risky at many levels. And, being that technology has advanced so far, real invention is harder and harder every day because engineering and other disciplines continue to advance.
Practicing or not, if you have a real patent covering a real, no-bullshit real, invention, then that's different. Trolls with bullshit inventions that should have never been granted deserve to have the sewers of Los Angeles dumped into their breakfast each and every morning for the rest of their lives. Since we can't do that, attack them with a multi-billion dollar legal organization that mercilessly goes after their IP assets and seeks nothing less than invalidation.
To me "not obvious to those skilled in the art" means something that has been lost from the process for a long, long time. We need to restore that. The problem is, government will likely take decades to do so, if ever. They can't even pass a damn budget or keep us out of bullshit wars. Now you want them to modify the entire patent system? Right.
The only solution I see is some form of massive legal threat that unifies companies against trolls. It can perhaps go beyond that (some kind of reasonable cross-licensing mechanism between members, etc.). I don't know. Regrettably we need lawyers to craft some of the finer points of something like this.
As an engineer this is incredibly frustrating. I see it as a bunch of lawyers and government bureaucrats fucking with our ability to innovate. I want to create and I want to create with absolute freedom. I want to be a fee man. We are not free at all these days.
I went fishing with my kids today. I had to pay a $50 license fee to be able to go fishing. I have to pay the government for permission to fish. If I needed to fish to feed my family the government could arrest me and fine me further for not having paid them a fee. Luckily I don't need to fish to feed my family. But it is almost surreal to think that the most fundamental act of man, to feed yourself in order to remain alive, requires a license fee paid to government or risk being incarcerated.
Yes, yes, I know about conservation and all of that. The point is that no government agency should be able to get in the way of a person feeding themselves and their family. If that is not a fundamental law of the universe I don't know what could be.
Not the same subject, I know, but it is one of those surreal things to help point out that government actions can have really bad unintended consequences. When it comes to the way patents are being grated what this means is that I am not free to use my brain to create and invent.
If I was completely isolated from society after graduating from college and independently "invented" the idea of sliding a graphical button on a screen I could be sued because I did not apply for a patent. The fact that, as a human being, I can put one idea together with another to create a third idea is being grotesquely violated by bullshit government-grated monopolies. That, is wrong.
That is as much wrong as having to pay the government a license to be able to feed myself or my family. Outside of being able to hunt and forage for food --something every species on this planet does without the need for government authorization and fees-- the one fundamental evolutionary trait that has gotten us here is that we can INVENT. And invent we have. Gloriously. For hundreds of thousands of years. Only now this thing we call government has actually come up with a way to take that from us, regulate it and even have others prevent us from using the fruits of our own mental abilities if they use theirs to come up with the same thing before us.
But it is almost surreal to think that the most fundamental act of man, to feed yourself in order to remain alive, requires a license fee paid to government
Slightly OT but in this case, given that unrestricted fishing might well cause the fish to go extinct in short order, so nobody can benefit from them to feed their families (see: tragedy of the commons), some form of government regulation might be a pretty good idea, 'fundamental laws' notwithstanding.
I think this is where we might differ. I believe that people are fundamentally good. Yes, there's an ass in every crowd, but I really believe most people are good and would voluntarily follow reasonable rules.
That said, I don't have a problem with having carefully chosen and crafted laws that punish bad behavior. In other words, I should be able to go fishing without having to pay the government for a permit.
I'll give you a concrete example of the "people are fundamentally good" idea. Yesterday, as I said, I took the kids fishing to a local lake. When we got there we saw a sign that said something like "<name> Cove closed due to spawning. No boat or fishing". We actually motored by the cove en-route to our spot. There were no signs there and only a couple of buoys marking low submerged rocky formations. Not one person was fishing there. Not one boat entered. There must have been dozens of boats on the lake. This area is very isolated. The closest ramp is nearly five miles away. You could go in there and do as you wish, yet people responsibly respected the request to not do so.
I really don't think most sports fishermen would go out and fish at an industrial scale if permits were not required. Today, you'd easily let everyone know of limits, seasons and issues via email/web methods and the vast majority of people would comply. That's what I believe. I could be wrong.
Google "tragedy of the commons". People are not fundamentally good. They lie, cheat and steal, if they can get away with it. Good behavior results from successful socialization. Socialization can also result in some pretty bad behavior. Regulation is necessary because not all people are "good" to some arbitrary standard. Even I'm not good. I just had to fork over $277 for going 35 in a 25 mph zone, but I would rather pay my fine than have no police at all.
Even if people are fundamentally good, someone still has to gather the data necessary to decide what a reasonable limit is, and someone has to advertise that limit. The next step is to turn the limit into a law so that it has an effect even on careless people.
I can only imagine the kind of show it would be if Dennis Ritchie happened to patent the curly brace's use? I wonder if someone could bypass BS patents by simply writing an alias language. That is, instead of using English terms (IF, ELSE) they would use (SI, MAS).
What side of the law you are on is largely influenced by money. Even when you very clearly are on the right side, fighting the patent war is extremely expensive.
From the blog post, for example: """ Until Congress reforms the patent laws, companies of all sizes and industries could – and likely will – find themselves in the crosshairs of a greedy patent troll looking for a quick cash-grab. No company is immune, and, sadly, small companies can’t afford to fight. If they don’t succumb to the troll’s demands by settling, they face certain ruin. """
Patent trolls are on the right side of the law. The law is the problem.
And invalidating a worthless patent doesn't harm the troll at all -- no harm in trying, right? They can always get another patent. As non-practiciing entities, they don't have any business at risk. It's asymmetric.