<story><title>Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay</title><url>http://www.rackspace.com/blog/patent-trolls-make-them-pay/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>robomartin</author><text>I&apos;ve posted this a few times on HN.  The solution to this problem is, in my humble opinion, very simple.  Rather than presenting a divided community to trolls, we have to present a united front.  This would come in the form of a legal support organization that would be 100% dedicated to fighting trolls on behalf of it&apos;s members.&lt;p&gt;Call it insurance, if you will.  Member companies would pay a monthly or yearly membership fee.  In exchange for this the organization would evaluate any and all patent lawsuits and consider them for representation.  It&apos;s stated mission would be to defend members from trolls.&lt;p&gt;How?&lt;p&gt;Well, for starters, imagine a legal organization with hundreds of 
millions of dollars in the bank.  How many trolls would dare risk going up against them?&lt;p&gt;Second, I am not a lawyer, but I imagine that there would be a way for this organization to also create a cross-licensing ecosystem for member companies.  Maybe this is ridiculous.  I don&apos;t know.  Imagine that every patent of every member company becomes an automatic IP license --only for the purpose of patent defense-- for all members.  This means that for my annual fee I could have a virtual shield consisting of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of patents protecting me.&lt;p&gt;How much is that worth?  Any company doing anything at all that is not trivial should easily be able to afford a $10K per year fee.  larger companies could do a lot more.  Smaller ones less.  It is not hard to imagine raising tens of millions of dollars per year and even reaching a hundred million.  With careful management this organization could easily amass a billion dollars in the bank over a number of years.&lt;p&gt;This would effectively destroy the troll business without legislation and it would probably do wonders towards decimating bullshit software patents (or bullshit patents in general).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vm</author><text>RPX Corporation was created to be the white knight that you describe. It is a for-profit company with a $600M mkt cap. Kleiner, CRV and Index invested significant capital in it (I believe Kleiner incubated it).&lt;p&gt;Basically, your company pays a % of revenues to be part of their patent protection scheme. They get to license your patents, which they allow other members to use. They purchase patents outright as well (though haven&apos;t been able to compete with bids from Apple, Google, Microsoft and the like).&lt;p&gt;From their website: &quot;Our pioneering approach combines principal capital, deep patent expertise, and client contributions to generate enhanced patent buying power to manage patent risks and ongoing costs. By acquiring potential problem patents, we significantly reduce patent assertions directed at our client network. We will never assert or litigate the patents in our portfolio.&quot;&lt;p&gt;This doesn&apos;t solve the problem of large companies litigating frivolous patent claims, though it does fight against patent trolls.</text></comment>
<story><title>Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay</title><url>http://www.rackspace.com/blog/patent-trolls-make-them-pay/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>robomartin</author><text>I&apos;ve posted this a few times on HN.  The solution to this problem is, in my humble opinion, very simple.  Rather than presenting a divided community to trolls, we have to present a united front.  This would come in the form of a legal support organization that would be 100% dedicated to fighting trolls on behalf of it&apos;s members.&lt;p&gt;Call it insurance, if you will.  Member companies would pay a monthly or yearly membership fee.  In exchange for this the organization would evaluate any and all patent lawsuits and consider them for representation.  It&apos;s stated mission would be to defend members from trolls.&lt;p&gt;How?&lt;p&gt;Well, for starters, imagine a legal organization with hundreds of 
millions of dollars in the bank.  How many trolls would dare risk going up against them?&lt;p&gt;Second, I am not a lawyer, but I imagine that there would be a way for this organization to also create a cross-licensing ecosystem for member companies.  Maybe this is ridiculous.  I don&apos;t know.  Imagine that every patent of every member company becomes an automatic IP license --only for the purpose of patent defense-- for all members.  This means that for my annual fee I could have a virtual shield consisting of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of patents protecting me.&lt;p&gt;How much is that worth?  Any company doing anything at all that is not trivial should easily be able to afford a $10K per year fee.  larger companies could do a lot more.  Smaller ones less.  It is not hard to imagine raising tens of millions of dollars per year and even reaching a hundred million.  With careful management this organization could easily amass a billion dollars in the bank over a number of years.&lt;p&gt;This would effectively destroy the troll business without legislation and it would probably do wonders towards decimating bullshit software patents (or bullshit patents in general).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>reitzensteinm</author><text>Ironically, this was more or less the original business model behind Intellectual Ventures themselves. I guess they quickly figured out that the money is on the other side.</text></comment>