1) There are very few patent attorneys who litigate on a contingency basis. Change the rules.

2) The patent trolls should be bound by contract law perhaps licensed as attorneys. They often screw the inventor by corrupting his/her patent attorney with promises of riches. Make some rules.

Don’t feel sorry for the Fortune 500. Their business practices too often resemble a mugging.

That would be the start of a very important return to normalcy: intellectual property is different, and we really need to shift to a treatment that makes sense of that.

This would be the same Congress that is pushing the Schumer bill on request of the NY banks, right? The bill that seeks not to redefine the playing field, but to put a hex on anybody who comes up with an otherwise-legitimate patent that happens to be in the way of powerful interests with friends in Congress?

There’s a long and VERY ugly history of the powerful being in favor of patents when it suits their interests but running roughshod over individuals who patents were meant to protect. Please make sure that when you propose “reforms,” that they minimize the very real risk to innovators and innovations from the very changes you might call for.

Yes, how long must we suffer under the stifling impact of patents which have kept us from making any meaningful advances in IP since the 1700s? Damn those stifling patents.

Any system will eventually be co-opted by rent-seekers. The US patent system does need to be torn down and remade, simply to set the rent-seekers back a few steps. And then we need to plan to do it again in two decades when the rent seekers catch up again.

The new proliferation of patent trolling companies who have no intention of actually building and selling something gives the patent trolls extreme leverage. They don’t have to protect a product of their own so they can start litigation on everyone who may have infringed on their claim without worrying that they will be counter-sued for infringement. Just spray out patent suits and see what sticks.

I see that as a very powerful position to be in, it definitely increases the value of the patent derivatives.

Fast forward a few years. We were acquired by a large software company, and discovered another company selling a product with substantially the same concept. In subsequent research, I discovered that 42 (yes, 42) patents existed for this concept. It wasn’t at all clear if we were the first to invent. We didn’t sue.

These are the sort of things that make patent lawsuits the nuclear option. You can blow up a lot, with not predictability as to whether you’re damaging yourself or your competition. Litagation happens much less frequently than you might imagine.

Timothy Lee over at his Forbes blog (http://goo.gl/ZG2Jy) points out that the 700 patents awarded to Google in their 13 years of existence, was equal to the number of patents Microsoft received in just the last four months.

Microsoft is no longer in the business of innovation for the sake of competition, but in the business of documentation of processes in vague language, in order to profit from. (http://goo.gl/1CQE8)

And the Nortel IP would mark the SECOND time in less than a year, that Microsoft tried to buy up IP assets. This is not about defense: considering Microsoft joined RIM and Apple to buy up Nortel’s IP after Google made a stalking horse bid, it’s clear that these firms colluded to exclude Google from winning.

I like it! Let’s have more good patents, and less bad patents!

All we need are some common sense reforms! I bet if the president sat down with his neighborhood engineer and a couple of bratwursts, he could fix this over dinner.

Oh wait. :)

And the fact that these solutions take work to develop means they are not obvious. Yet, ‘novel’ and ‘non-obvious’ do not mean ‘unique’.

Innovation is routine. It does not seem to have any meaningful distinction from ‘invention’. This explains why most patents I deal with look like day-to-day engineering, the kinds of solutions any competent engineer might arrive at. And many probably do. So it’s hard not to conclude that if every patent owner could wave a wand and magically shut down all infringement, technology industries would simply screech to a halt.

It raises fundamental questions. Does innovation truly need the encouragement of monopoly anymore? Are courts and government agencies competent to draw a line between innovation and invention? Does such a line actually exist?

But don’t expect these questions to be asked within the halls of power.

For example, lawyers fee for patent suits could be limited to 5% of the award.

For example, in a class action, lawyer fees can be limited to 1000x the payment to a single member of the class. There are just too many BS class action suits.

Regards