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Why I was wrong about Microsoft (by Glyn Moody)
tomos:
I really look forward to the day Microsoft ends up in court trying to enforce such patents. Because that is the day they'll see those blatantly BS patents ruled invalid.
-40hz (April 04, 2011, 08:54 AM)
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...but if they're so BS why do they even get given a patent in the first place :tellme:
f0dder:
I really look forward to the day Microsoft ends up in court trying to enforce such patents. Because that is the day they'll see those blatantly BS patents ruled invalid.
-40hz (April 04, 2011, 08:54 AM)
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...but if they're so BS why do they even get given a patent in the first place :tellme:
-tomos (April 04, 2011, 02:35 PM)
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Because the patent system is utterly broken. FUBAR, mate.
mouser:
I really look forward to the day Microsoft ends up in court trying to enforce such patents. Because that is the day they'll see those blatantly BS patents ruled invalid.
-40hz (April 04, 2011, 08:54 AM)
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...but if they're so BS why do they even get given a patent in the first place :tellme:
-tomos (April 04, 2011, 02:35 PM)
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Because in the modern age we live in, patents are never meant to be used by having a court rule that a competitor can't produce a product. They are used as devices for extorting money and threatening financial ruination from legal fees.
Whether a patent will hold up in court is almost irrelevant -- they are vehicles for revenue generation -- just get yourself a patent and then go hunting for someone you have the pretext to sue and demand some money from them to leave them alone. They will inevitably reply that your patent is silly or doesn't apply to them, at which point you simply ask "would you rather spend 5 years and a fortune in legal fees to roll the dice and try to prove that in court, or would you rather just give me a bucket load of money right now and i'll go away." Of course you don't say it like that, you have your lawyer write up some nice fancy language that everyone knows means the same thing.
zridling:
Witness the recent "patent" by Google of their logo doodles. How is that even patentable? (is that a word?) But they did it only because Apple was threatening to patent the "idea" of doodles. Double facepalm time. As mouser says, it's whoever has the most lawyers wins, not the best ideas.
PS: Every single big tech company in the world is guilty, but they're all standing in a circle pointing fingers at each other.
app103:
Keep in mind that there is another practice used by tech companies that involves a completely different kind of patent trolling than you are used to hearing about. Or maybe you are hearing about it but don't really know what is going on behind the scenes.
Usually it is done by the big guys but more and more the little guys are starting to do it too, especially if they have a great marketing department that can generate a lot of interest in their products.
It goes like this:
People at the company that are employed to check for patents on the technology they are about to develop come across a number of existing patents. Instead of informing their developers of the technology that a prior patent exists and they have to do it a different way than originally described, they are given a copy of the patent and they comb the description looking for ways to improve their product, by copying any useful feature mentioned in the patent.
Sometimes the process involves their idea people combing through patents looking for things they could use, to snap together, to create a killer product. They start with a blank slate and let the patents do half the thinking for them.
Normally they would need to contact the patent owners and work out a licensing agreement, which would involve paying the patent owner money.
But instead, the company fails to contact the patent owner, fails to pay any licensing fees, and lets the patent owner come after them. They figure they will have a good 2 years before that happens and they are forced to start paying.
Before it ever gets to court, they settle out of court and enter a license agreement with the patent owner and it never goes to trial.
Final cost for the company is actually less than 2 years of licensing fees they would normally have had to pay if they did things the right way.
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