<story><title>Politicians want “loser pays” rule for patent trolls</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/pissed-off-politicians-want-loser-pays-rule-for-patent-trolls/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bigiain</author><text>This is a problem that needs to be addressed carefully in my opinion.&lt;p&gt;Right now, it&apos;s a perfectly valid decision for an inventive/creative person(or team or company) to choose to spend their time inventing new things instead of commercialising &quot;finished ideas&quot;, since the laws are (and have been for decades) written to allow an inventor to sell their patents.&lt;p&gt;If you&apos;re the world&apos;s best battery chemist, I&apos;d rather you spent this year looking for an even better battery, rather than needing to be involved in making and selling last years &quot;best battery&quot; to earn any money from it. I don&apos;t want the top cancer researchers &quot;wasting time&quot; being personally involved in making drugs at commercial scale and doing deals with Walgreens, I want them doing cancer research - and having a patent/legal system that allows them to earn a living doing so (with the understanding that they&apos;ve got a choice to license or sell their patents, and whether they get to share in the spectacular riches that some big-pharma company will make if they&apos;ve just saved millions of lives will depend on how they chose to structure that transaction).&lt;p&gt;Somehow, we need to allow inventors to continue to be &quot;NPEs&quot;, while stopping the obvious &quot;patent troll&quot; techniques of buying up uncommercialised patents with the only intent being to use them to litigate.&lt;p&gt;(And note, by &quot;inventors&quot; I&apos;m including &quot;companies set up to do inventing, either as their sole business or perhaps with a few staff or division who &apos;invent&apos; as part of their regular work&quot;. I know of companies like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novogen.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.novogen.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mesoblast.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mesoblast.com&lt;/a&gt; who are pretty much teams of biotech researchers intending to work out how to cure cancer, then sell the knowledge to other companies to commercialise it. I also know people at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecoult.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ecoult.com&lt;/a&gt; who didn&apos;t invent the technology they&apos;re commercialising, but have licensed the patents from the government research organisation that did invent/patent them.)</text></item><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>So patents are only valid if held by their originator? That would make the IP non-transferable. In ARM&apos;s case, it would mean a takeover would invalidate its value.</text></item><item><author>nitrogen</author><text>One could argue that ARM&apos;s &quot;practice&quot; is producing designs.  They are heavily involved in the creation and implementation of their patents, making them different from any troll that licenses &quot;patents&quot; they bought rather than &quot;designs&quot; they created.</text></item><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&quot;&lt;i&gt;The bill would allow patent defendants to file a motion seeking to have a judge rule that the patent owner is a certain type of &apos;non-practicing entity&apos;—although the bill doesn&apos;t use that term. If the motion is successful, the lawsuit can still proceed, but if the patent-holding company loses, it will be on the hook for legal costs.&lt;/i&gt;&quot;&lt;p&gt;The bill is essentially a judicial shortcut to make patent litigation riskier for non-practicing entities, precisely, non subsection (d) entities. Unfortunately, there is little judicial consensus (to the best of my limited knowledge) on what this means. ARM produces nothing tangible - it licenses designs. That makes ARM look like a non-practicing entity. Yet few would brand it as a patent troll.&lt;p&gt;Having losing plaintiffs pay is good. But it still leaves the defendant bearing the risk of adverse judgment. Even the non-practicing entity shortcut means hiring a lawyer. Perhaps, for patent suits, the plaintiff should have to, as part of filing the suit, dislose whether they or their beneficial owners&apos; related entities have a history of filing patent suits deemed frivolous.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>belorn</author><text>Nothing in this bill prevents a inventor to sell his finished invention once to whoever want to commercialize it to a product. Nothing. He doesn&apos;t even need a patent to do this.&lt;p&gt;Say that the best battery chemist invents a way to make current lithium-ion battery packs 25% better. In a bidding war, the price would easy reach hundred of millions, because the practical effects of having better batteries are economic interesting for companies being restricted by ineffective batteries.&lt;p&gt;Regarding cancer research, I find it quite wrong that state funded research is being patented. Most serious medical research is being paid for NiH with the use of tax money. Society has already paid for all the step regarding the research and it due to get what it paid for. Research which has no bases on NiH funded research theories, and has no relation with any public funds what so ever is an exceptional case, and there is a lot of companies out there that produce derivative works from NiH produced research and gets a patent for it. derivative works that has been created from tax money should not allow someone to get a 20 years state enforced monopoly on it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Politicians want “loser pays” rule for patent trolls</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/pissed-off-politicians-want-loser-pays-rule-for-patent-trolls/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bigiain</author><text>This is a problem that needs to be addressed carefully in my opinion.&lt;p&gt;Right now, it&apos;s a perfectly valid decision for an inventive/creative person(or team or company) to choose to spend their time inventing new things instead of commercialising &quot;finished ideas&quot;, since the laws are (and have been for decades) written to allow an inventor to sell their patents.&lt;p&gt;If you&apos;re the world&apos;s best battery chemist, I&apos;d rather you spent this year looking for an even better battery, rather than needing to be involved in making and selling last years &quot;best battery&quot; to earn any money from it. I don&apos;t want the top cancer researchers &quot;wasting time&quot; being personally involved in making drugs at commercial scale and doing deals with Walgreens, I want them doing cancer research - and having a patent/legal system that allows them to earn a living doing so (with the understanding that they&apos;ve got a choice to license or sell their patents, and whether they get to share in the spectacular riches that some big-pharma company will make if they&apos;ve just saved millions of lives will depend on how they chose to structure that transaction).&lt;p&gt;Somehow, we need to allow inventors to continue to be &quot;NPEs&quot;, while stopping the obvious &quot;patent troll&quot; techniques of buying up uncommercialised patents with the only intent being to use them to litigate.&lt;p&gt;(And note, by &quot;inventors&quot; I&apos;m including &quot;companies set up to do inventing, either as their sole business or perhaps with a few staff or division who &apos;invent&apos; as part of their regular work&quot;. I know of companies like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novogen.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.novogen.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mesoblast.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mesoblast.com&lt;/a&gt; who are pretty much teams of biotech researchers intending to work out how to cure cancer, then sell the knowledge to other companies to commercialise it. I also know people at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecoult.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ecoult.com&lt;/a&gt; who didn&apos;t invent the technology they&apos;re commercialising, but have licensed the patents from the government research organisation that did invent/patent them.)</text></item><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>So patents are only valid if held by their originator? That would make the IP non-transferable. In ARM&apos;s case, it would mean a takeover would invalidate its value.</text></item><item><author>nitrogen</author><text>One could argue that ARM&apos;s &quot;practice&quot; is producing designs.  They are heavily involved in the creation and implementation of their patents, making them different from any troll that licenses &quot;patents&quot; they bought rather than &quot;designs&quot; they created.</text></item><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&quot;&lt;i&gt;The bill would allow patent defendants to file a motion seeking to have a judge rule that the patent owner is a certain type of &apos;non-practicing entity&apos;—although the bill doesn&apos;t use that term. If the motion is successful, the lawsuit can still proceed, but if the patent-holding company loses, it will be on the hook for legal costs.&lt;/i&gt;&quot;&lt;p&gt;The bill is essentially a judicial shortcut to make patent litigation riskier for non-practicing entities, precisely, non subsection (d) entities. Unfortunately, there is little judicial consensus (to the best of my limited knowledge) on what this means. ARM produces nothing tangible - it licenses designs. That makes ARM look like a non-practicing entity. Yet few would brand it as a patent troll.&lt;p&gt;Having losing plaintiffs pay is good. But it still leaves the defendant bearing the risk of adverse judgment. Even the non-practicing entity shortcut means hiring a lawyer. Perhaps, for patent suits, the plaintiff should have to, as part of filing the suit, dislose whether they or their beneficial owners&apos; related entities have a history of filing patent suits deemed frivolous.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lawnchair_larry</author><text>The problem there is that Intellectual Ventures would be allowed to remain, but they&apos;re the largest patent troll in the industry and a large part of the reason that this conversation is even taking place.</text></comment>