Re: [Patents] Cross licensing strategy of big firms

[Xavi Drudis Ferran <xdrudis@tinet.cat>]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 09:00:23PM +0100, "Gérald Sédrati-Dinet (gibus)" 
wrote:
> Sure, and Robert Barr was perfectly raising this problem in the 2002 FTC
> hearings (complete text can be found on
> http://www.ftc.gov/opp/intellect/barrrobert.doc):
> 
> "Moreover, stockpiling patents does not really solve the problem of
> unintentional patent infringement through independent development. If we
> are accused of infringement by a patent holder who does not make and
> sell products, or who sells in much smaller volume than we do, our


Interesting this "or who sells in much smaller volume than we
do". Until now, I knew trying to distinguish patent trolls from other
patent holder companies was kind of a futile exercise, in the sense
that for fields where patents may have some use, the behaviour of
patent trolls is supposedly desirable (a research lab invests in
research and other firms produce the products), and that pattern of
behaviour only becomes a problem with patents that have no social
value at all, and therefore are bad in the hands of trolls but also in
other hands. So, when looking only at software patents, you usually
define a troll as a company that gets software patents and litigates
on them or threatens to do so while it does not market any products
itself. But from this quote it seems that it is not sufficient to
define it like this. A company marketing less than another one may be
regarded as a patent troll from the point of view of the company that
sells more (and therefore has more to lose than the claimant). I had
never thought of relative trollness (you may be a troll for Cisco and 
not a troll for Opera).  It's quite complementary
with what I thought, though: If your patents tell something which is
unlikely to be obtained without the patent then it doesn't matter
whether you market products on them or not, and if your patents bring
nothing to society it would not get elsewhere, then it doesn't matter
either whether you sell something or not, since you will still be a
troll for any bigger company pov. So the problem is with undue
patents, not with its use patterns.