<story><title>Big companies are stopping Congress from fixing the patent system</title><url>http://www.vox.com/2015/4/30/8521263/patent-reform-trolls-quality</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bnolsen</author><text>The US congress was supposed to be made up of ordinary citizens who part of the time lived at home in their districts. ran their businesses and affairs and occasionally went to vote on federal government issues.&lt;p&gt;What we have is a political class that only does law and politics.  Most of them look down on those of us who have to actually work and produce to make a living.  Small business individually have almost no revenue or clout compared to these larger entities even though collectively we are the ones who represent most of the economy (or should be representing almost all of the economy if it&amp;#x27;s healthy).</text></comment>
<story><title>Big companies are stopping Congress from fixing the patent system</title><url>http://www.vox.com/2015/4/30/8521263/patent-reform-trolls-quality</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nfc</author><text>Wouldn&amp;#x27;t it make sense for small companies to commit their patents to a mutual &amp;quot;patent fund&amp;quot; that would protect them in case they are sued?, are there legal reasons why this has not been done?&lt;p&gt;An ideal version of this mechanism would work like this: once you commit a patent to the fund you can not use it offensively in the future (to avoid worsening the problem), but you&amp;#x27;ll be protected by the &amp;quot;patent fund&amp;quot; when someone sues you. The sum of the patents of lots of small companies could quickly be enough to deter most suers that are not patent trolls.&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I&amp;#x27;m not american so my knowledge of the patent system is quite superficial, perhaps a similar mechanism already exists?</text></comment>