Ask HN: Will we ever do something about patent trolls?
8 comments
It's complicated -- I used to feel like you did but then I worked on a patent search engine and learned a lot about it.
Many patent trolls are really trolls. But being a "non-practicing entity" doesn't make you bad. For instance an academic research group might invent a technology that is useful in making microchips but only a few companies are capable of benefiting from that so that research group/Uni is a "non-practicing entity" that can license the tech fairly to one of those companies.
You often see things like this garden hose
https://pockethose.com/pages/copper-head?variant=44089443483...
that are marketed under the "as seen on TV" brand. The company behind that licenses patents from inventors and they feel like they can invest in marketing and development because the patent holds back cheap competition.
In the case of that hose, competitors figured out other ways to make a hose that does something similar and you see a common scenario -- that page boasts about all the improvements they've made in the product, starting out with one patent helps them lead in a competitive market in which they've gotten many more patents to improve their product.
Many patent trolls are really trolls. But being a "non-practicing entity" doesn't make you bad. For instance an academic research group might invent a technology that is useful in making microchips but only a few companies are capable of benefiting from that so that research group/Uni is a "non-practicing entity" that can license the tech fairly to one of those companies.
You often see things like this garden hose
https://pockethose.com/pages/copper-head?variant=44089443483...
that are marketed under the "as seen on TV" brand. The company behind that licenses patents from inventors and they feel like they can invest in marketing and development because the patent holds back cheap competition.
In the case of that hose, competitors figured out other ways to make a hose that does something similar and you see a common scenario -- that page boasts about all the improvements they've made in the product, starting out with one patent helps them lead in a competitive market in which they've gotten many more patents to improve their product.
That's a fair point, and part of why I'm asking here, I'm not sure what the perfect answer is, but it should definitely not harm genuine inventors. Maybe some level of scrutiny such as, if you bought a patent from another entity who never built it, and there's no evidence you're building it? I don't know why anyone who would buy a patent and then only sue for violations would be a good faith patent owner in any way.
It's an old concept that "the system [of property]" has a hard time fighting:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/absentee-owner.asp
Think about what allows the toxic management company to thrive, eg, by becoming the principal (part of it is an identity problem I pointed to in sibling comment)
The garden hose example is a good faith scenario but maybe it still feels icky to you because they arent the "genuine inventors" :)
How are they going to prove that? Put up a diff tree of their improvements?
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/absentee-owner.asp
Think about what allows the toxic management company to thrive, eg, by becoming the principal (part of it is an identity problem I pointed to in sibling comment)
The garden hose example is a good faith scenario but maybe it still feels icky to you because they arent the "genuine inventors" :)
How are they going to prove that? Put up a diff tree of their improvements?
>"NPE"
That's an example of tripartite problem (innovators/IP-arbitrageurs/commercializers) that's easy to oversimplify to a bipartite one (NPE vs "practicians") by inadequate notation
That's an example of tripartite problem (innovators/IP-arbitrageurs/commercializers) that's easy to oversimplify to a bipartite one (NPE vs "practicians") by inadequate notation
Just saw this one. Chinese researchers based in US took out a patent in Japan
https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2013504542A5/ja
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/biomedical-researchers-l...
https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2013504542A5/ja
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/biomedical-researchers-l...
Patent trolls are unfortunately a systemic issue that requires legislative reform, but in the meantime, companies can reduce exposure by documenting prior art, implementing defensive patent strategies, and joining patent pools. Many teams are also shifting focus to trade secrets and rapid iteration rather than heavy patenting. The real solution likely needs to come from policy changes that increase litigation costs for frivolous claims or require trolls to demonstrate actual product development.
I would think there are many changes that will be coming to the entire patent process. In particular, AI discovery of new inventions will throw a wrench into the system at it's core. What happens when 6 months from now, 90% of new inventions were originated by AI.
I dunno.
My take is a lot of patents are really poor quality. (Worked on a patent search engine so I have looked at a lot of them)
This year I took an interest in Heart Rate Variability biofeedback and developed my own system which I haven't found in the literature (patent or otherwise) [1]
I have looked at a lot of patents on the subject and to me they are trash. They blather on with literature reviews, describe complex systems which violate all the principles of biofeedback (e.g. like they have you do "resonant breathing" at a fixed frequency or compute scores over a 2 min interval rather than look at the biosignal in real time which is the basic principle of biofeedback -- if I just want some metric to measure my health I will take my blood pressure the way my doc wants me to!)
It's shocking because I can't believe any of these people ever seriously tried it!
Maybe a percent or so of patents are well-written, clear, beautifully illustrated and describe genius inventions. My favorite is this one
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3733309A/en
which is for the plastic PET bottle of which half a trillion or so are made a year -- something brilliant and demonic (in terms of waste) at the same time!
---
[1] to document as prior art: a healthy heart has variations of HR over a time scale of 10s or so called the Mayer Oscillation. The amplitude of this oscillation can be estimated by averaging the metric known as SD1 over a 20s interval:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28073153/
You can increase the amplitude of you Mayer oscillation by: plot instantaneous heart rate (1/R-R interval) as a function of time; watch the slope beat by beat, if your heart rate falls breathe out, if it rises, breathe in. if your Mayer oscillation is weak you might have a hard time doing it and feel short of breath for a moment but usually your Mayer oscillation quickly strengthens (less than 1 min) and once it is strong it is very easy to keep pacing.
My take is a lot of patents are really poor quality. (Worked on a patent search engine so I have looked at a lot of them)
This year I took an interest in Heart Rate Variability biofeedback and developed my own system which I haven't found in the literature (patent or otherwise) [1]
I have looked at a lot of patents on the subject and to me they are trash. They blather on with literature reviews, describe complex systems which violate all the principles of biofeedback (e.g. like they have you do "resonant breathing" at a fixed frequency or compute scores over a 2 min interval rather than look at the biosignal in real time which is the basic principle of biofeedback -- if I just want some metric to measure my health I will take my blood pressure the way my doc wants me to!)
It's shocking because I can't believe any of these people ever seriously tried it!
Maybe a percent or so of patents are well-written, clear, beautifully illustrated and describe genius inventions. My favorite is this one
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3733309A/en
which is for the plastic PET bottle of which half a trillion or so are made a year -- something brilliant and demonic (in terms of waste) at the same time!
---
[1] to document as prior art: a healthy heart has variations of HR over a time scale of 10s or so called the Mayer Oscillation. The amplitude of this oscillation can be estimated by averaging the metric known as SD1 over a 20s interval:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28073153/
You can increase the amplitude of you Mayer oscillation by: plot instantaneous heart rate (1/R-R interval) as a function of time; watch the slope beat by beat, if your heart rate falls breathe out, if it rises, breathe in. if your Mayer oscillation is weak you might have a hard time doing it and feel short of breath for a moment but usually your Mayer oscillation quickly strengthens (less than 1 min) and once it is strong it is very easy to keep pacing.
https://patentprogress.org/2024/05/another-startup-bites-the-dust-courtesy-of-patent-trolls/
https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/13/linux_ai_assistant_killed_off/
Then there's many others, and I'm sure I'm missing some, but here's a list of companies / projects hit by patent trolls with various outcomes:
That time some company shut down a free / open source site with a patent that came 10 years after the technology already existed.
https://www.techdirt.com/2014/11/19/patent-troll-kills-open-source-project-speeding-up-computation-erasure-codes/
https://x.com/JamesBessen/status/532906754364149760
Here's one where the courts did the right thing for once, against the Gnome project (note Gnome probably has better funding than most of these other smaller projects).
https://opensource.org/blog/gnome-patent-troll-stripped-of-patent-rights
Here's one I didn't even know about, if you ever posted a job ad on LinkedIn a company might have contacted you threatening to sue you for violating their patent (Whiskey Tango F....):
https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-source-fights-back-we-wont-get-patent-trolled-again/
A few years ago, CloudFlare did have their own brawl with some as well, and it looks like thankfully they did not backdown:
https://blog.cloudflare.com/three-new-winners-of-project-jengo-and-more-defeats-for-the-patent-troll/
Small mobile app developers were hit for having links to payment providers:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-14682700
Apple was sued over Facetime, of all things, and lost:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20236114
I ask here, because this is one of the most pro-startup pro-hacker anti-patent troll communities on the web, does anyone know if there's any org doing something about patent trolling? It's ridiculous that people who provide no value to society can just waste court time and siphon funds from hard working people just because they bought a patent. The patent framework needs to be reworked to force a patent holder to prove they are actually using their patent to build something, or show they have built something that is on the market, and that the violations endanger their efforts, if they cannot produce this, they should be made to pay all court and lawyer fees.
Just my thoughts, I'm sure there's better ways to handle it, but if the rules are changed to stop patent trolls from basically extorting hard working people who actually invent and produce things, I think we could see a lot more. In the giant shift of AI since Mycroft was birthed, I can't imagine how much more advanced Mycroft would have been by now.
I hate when simple things stifle innovation. I'm an innovation junkie, I want to see the future we all saw as kids in cartoons and scifi that fascinated us, but we're often held back by bad actors.
Are there orgs or initiatives? Is anyone ... and I hate the word, but it really should be done, is anyone lobbying to protect inventors from patent trolls? Because they do more harm than good, and they benefit no one but themselves, while again, stifling innovation.