Re: [Patents] Open ingeneering

["Brandon Shalton" <brandon@fightthepatent.com>]

 Carsten  wrote: "
If society allows patents in areas where cumulative innovation is the
dominant mode of innovation, then new innovators end up carying
the weight of the giants instead. This is because they need to license
prior innovations before marketing their own innovation, and that
expense grows exponentially with innovation generation for complex
products."



This is so true of Acacia Research's 2nd round of wielding a patent claim...
first round with V-Chip, they got knocked down, but that was before they got
companies to spend MILLIONS of dollars on "licensing their patent".

Round 2 is where they are making the broad claim to owning the process to
downloading of audio or video from a website.

Acacia's attorneys cite that 150+ other patents reference their patent, as
if that was some form of validation for the patent... more like the other
patent holders citing all possible prior art as required by USPTO.

But Acacia's patent claims are like claiming to have a patent on a ball.
Others may have a patent on a red ball. In this example, Acacia won't sue
the patent of a red ball, but will sue not only the manufacturer of the red
ball for patent infringement, but also the toy store that carries the red
ball, for contributory infringement.

Patent Law allows them to do this... this is clearly patent abuse.

In real terms, Acacia is suing websites that have audio or video on their
website.. they have yet to target companies like Microsoft, Real, or Apple
for infringement.. these targets would fight back and tie them up on court.
Based upon their failed V-chip patent, but successful licensing campaign, it
seems to be the business model to throw a patent and some infringement
letters at comanies who use the "alleged infringed patent" to "convince"
them to license their patents.. using things like an "amnesty" cut-off date,
where retroactive infringement fees could be accessed.

Most websites don't have the money to pay $10k-$35k to do the initial legal
dance, so they have no choice but to license the patent.  The kicker here,
is that in the event the patent is invalidated by companies who do challenge
the patent, they DON"T GET THEIR MONEY back from the license.

This kind of stuff really gets to me, that's why I started
FightThePatent.com and my hopes to extend that work to Fight the Patent
Foundation.

This is the new, new,new, new economy with the new kind of business plan.
Get patents, get people to license the patents and bet that most won't be
able to fight it, and will just settle.  For those that do fight it, it gets
stuck in court for years, but in the mean time, they collect licensing fees
and continue to "convince" companies to license the patent.

This is wrong!

-brandon