What a successful patent troll looks like

[Valmy]

you dont understand the patent troll

he wants people to use the invention...if no one uses the invention he makes no money...negotiated royalties are the trolls' livelihood

whats wrong with me buying a hundred acres of land by an exit ramp with the intent of never developing it ? nothing. isnt that my right as a property owner?

I fail to see your point valmy

Just thinking out loud.  There is nothing wrong about buying up tons of valuable property and refusing to let anybody develop that land, by the eternal principals of property rights.  And really I was just trying to think of something comparable and that might have been pretty weak.

But what value does the patent troll have then if their primary impact is to increase the costs of developing products?  How does that serve the public interest?

[Valmy]

either we accept that a patent is a property right or we dont. I continue to believe that by accepting that it is property and protectible, we incent inventors who know that their will be a payday for their delivering true novelty

Fair enough, however if a well intentioned program meant to create positive incentives is instead creating perverse incentives that were never intended then perhaps some sort of reform should be considered or the program should be rethought.  Sure it is property like selling royal monopolies was property but ultimately both of these are government creations meant to incentivize certain behaviors.  After all it is a weird sort of property you get to own for a certain number of years and then are compelled to share with everybody else.

Hey patents maybe just fine and dandy and working as designed.  I just question when this system was set up the patent troll was what they were trying to create.

[The Minsky Moment]

Just thinking out loud.  There is nothing wrong about buying up tons of valuable property and refusing to let anybody develop that land, by the eternal principals of property rights.  And really I was just trying to think of something comparable and that might have been pretty weak.

But what value does the patent troll have then if their primary impact is to increase the costs of developing products?  How does that serve the public interest?

The troll doesn't really do that (leave it empty) - he buys to let (rent) rather than to own (exclude and monopolize).
So the effect on the market is that there can be relatively free competition in the patented article because the troll will license to whomever pays, but the price goes up to reflect that licensing cost.
(unless the troll sells an exclusive license in which case economically it is the same as an owner-commercializer who excludes other and reaps the benefit in terms of monopoly rents).

There is a public policy question about whether the benefit in terms of incentives to invent is sufficient to overcome the loss of consumer surplus in either case.  But the exact form in which the rent is reaped by the patent owner is not IMO of great importance.

[DontSayBanana]

Well, nice to see google get stung by the patent system for once. Usually its them buying up everything and trying to stamp out competition.

It seems like the bulk of Google's aggression with patents was related to the ones it owned by virtue of owning Motorola.  With Motorola having just been sold to Lenovo, I suspect the volume of Google's patent suits will drop considerably.

[DontSayBanana]

Sometimes the purchaser doesn't and plans to solely make money off of licensing the invention to others better suited to get it to market. These people are called non practicing entities or "patent trolls" by some. If we devalue their property rights as asignee a whole category of buyer disappears from the market.

That's a really sweeping generalization to make: I'd never heard "patent troll" applied to a non-practicing entity in a pre-market situation.  It's almost exclusively used for NPEs that are buying valid patents on products that have already been brought to market.

You have a point about pre-market NPEs functioning as a middleman, but I'm still gonna have to go on record as against it.  With the bloat already inherent in the patent system, trying to put a window on it would just result in arguments in what constitutes "pre-market" and "on-market," with more split judicial patchwork making even more loopholes for the real patent trolls to exploit.

[Barrister]

Well, nice to see google get stung by the patent system for once. Usually its them buying up everything and trying to stamp out competition.

It seems like the bulk of Google's aggression with patents was related to the ones it owned by virtue of owning Motorola.  With Motorola having just been sold to Lenovo, I suspect the volume of Google's patent suits will drop considerably.

Google retained the vast majority of the Motorola patents though (although Lenovo did get cross-licensing deals on them).

[DontSayBanana]

Google retained the vast majority of the Motorola patents though (although Lenovo did get cross-licensing deals on them).

Ah, thanks for the clarification.  My knowledge of the deal is still just "bullet points" right now; haven't gotten a real chance to read up on it.

[Barrister]

Sometimes the purchaser doesn't and plans to solely make money off of licensing the invention to others better suited to get it to market. These people are called non practicing entities or "patent trolls" by some. If we devalue their property rights as asignee a whole category of buyer disappears from the market.

That's a really sweeping generalization to make: I'd never heard "patent troll" applied to a non-practicing entity in a pre-market situation.  It's almost exclusively used for NPEs that are buying valid patents on products that have already been brought to market.

You have a point about pre-market NPEs functioning as a middleman, but I'm still gonna have to go on record as against it.  With the bloat already inherent in the patent system, trying to put a window on it would just result in arguments in what constitutes "pre-market" and "on-market," with more split judicial patchwork making even more loopholes for the real patent trolls to exploit.

I dunno - I've heard "patent troll" being thrown around about all sorts of companies.

I thought the worst example was news reports calling Alcatel-Lucent a "patent troll" for filing a bunch of patent lawsuits.  I mean sure, Alcatel purchased Lucent/Bell Labs, but it's still a multi-billion dollar company operating in the telecommunications field.  It's hardly a non-practising holding company.

[The Brain]

The life of a patent is vanishingly short compared to say copyright. So who gives a fuck? The patent holder has to squeeze as much money from it as he can. Think of a patent as a pet. You will bury it.