<story><title>Super Soaker creator awarded $72.9M from Hasbro</title><url>http://www.ajc.com/news/business/super-soaker-creator-awarded-729m-from-hasbro/nbjmm/#!</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rdw</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s interesting to me about this story in light of current events is that Johnson Research and Development Co., seems in many ways like an NPE.  He doesn&amp;#x27;t make products directly, he simply licenses the patents to other companies that do make the products, and sometimes sues them.&lt;p&gt;Obviously, he&amp;#x27;s not a patent troll, but what&amp;#x27;s the bright line between what he does and what a patent troll does?  This is a critical question in the patent troll discussion, because it is absolutely the case that every Intellectual Ventures, Lodsys, and Rockstar thinks of themselves as being innovative inventors like Lonnie Johnson.  They&amp;#x27;ll hold independent inventors like him up whenever legislation is proposed and say that it&amp;#x27;ll hurt good old-fashioned American invention, and maybe they&amp;#x27;ll even be right.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s critical that there be a clear division there, or else reform will never go through, or worse, end up hurting actual inventors.  How can that line be drawn?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>noonespecial</author><text>He invented a real (specific) product with prototypes and everything, licensed that product to a real manufacturer who then made it, gained lots of money, and then stiffed him on the payment they promised.&lt;p&gt;Trolls would have produced no toy at all, for anyone, kept the whole process a secret, and then sued every child who ever flung water at another at a birthday party.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Its the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.&amp;quot; You know it when you see it.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Just for clarity, its the direction the arrow points. Lonnie Johnson created a product and then went out and sought a company to &lt;i&gt;start&lt;/i&gt; producing it. Trolls do it backwards, they go out and find companies that are &lt;i&gt;already&lt;/i&gt; producing it and then threaten them with forcing them to &lt;i&gt;stop&lt;/i&gt;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Super Soaker creator awarded $72.9M from Hasbro</title><url>http://www.ajc.com/news/business/super-soaker-creator-awarded-729m-from-hasbro/nbjmm/#!</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rdw</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s interesting to me about this story in light of current events is that Johnson Research and Development Co., seems in many ways like an NPE.  He doesn&amp;#x27;t make products directly, he simply licenses the patents to other companies that do make the products, and sometimes sues them.&lt;p&gt;Obviously, he&amp;#x27;s not a patent troll, but what&amp;#x27;s the bright line between what he does and what a patent troll does?  This is a critical question in the patent troll discussion, because it is absolutely the case that every Intellectual Ventures, Lodsys, and Rockstar thinks of themselves as being innovative inventors like Lonnie Johnson.  They&amp;#x27;ll hold independent inventors like him up whenever legislation is proposed and say that it&amp;#x27;ll hurt good old-fashioned American invention, and maybe they&amp;#x27;ll even be right.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s critical that there be a clear division there, or else reform will never go through, or worse, end up hurting actual inventors.  How can that line be drawn?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>etler</author><text>In this case it seems to be entirely a royalty dispute, and has nothing to do with the patent. Hasbro properly licensed the product, the just didn&amp;#x27;t properly pay out the royalties.&lt;p&gt;Also, the patent reform bill[1] that was featured not so long ago isn&amp;#x27;t about holding companies, it&amp;#x27;s about making the trolling process harder. One of the provisions is requiring the &amp;quot;real party of interest&amp;quot; to be exposed in the litigation, so a shell company litigating on behalf of microsoft would have to get microsoft involved with it. The other big thing has to do with validity and pleading. In many cases the lawsuits are brought about without any valid claim, and are just used as a harassment tactic to get small companies to pay up their fee instead of going through an expensive and painful legal process. Under the bill, the discovery process is halted until the patent is interpreted, and it forces the patent holder to be more specific about which claims are actually at issue.&lt;p&gt;None of the things put in that bill seem like they would affect the likes Johnson, had this case even been about patents, as he has legitimate and valid patents, and he himself is the real party of interest.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.eff.org/issues/current-legislative-proposals-patent-reform#ia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eff.org&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;current-legislative-proposals-pat...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>