[PLUG-TALK] [PLUG] THIS AMERICAN LIFE: The Patent Show

[Keith Lofstrom]

This thread belongs on plug-talk.

> On Tue, 26 Jul 2011, Michael R wrote:
> 
> >Summary: Venture capitalists have heavily invested in patent ownership
> >companies that extort payment for patents they control. Scary because the
> >USPO has issued thousands of patents for software ideas. As in "online
> >backup" is covered by over 3,000 patents, of which at least three have
> >identical titles. (So much for "non-obvious and unique")
 
On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 10:45:19AM -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
>   Which is why some folks have tried to push patents back to things and not
> ideas. So far they've been unsuccessful. Wait until someone patents the
> whodunit genre of crime fiction and then tries to collect payments from
> every other author.

There is a type of electronic circuit called a "bandgap reference".
There are about 12 ways to do it successfully.  There are 1300
patents, with clusters of up to 30 describing the exact same
circuit.  Many patents do have the same titles - you can't patent
a title - but the same content nonsense means that you may have
half a dozen trolls fighting over who gets 50% of your revenue.

Some of the most heavily duplicated patents are for ideas that
cannot work.  Since they will never turn into usable products,
at least those trolls are out the filing fees.

I have patents.  Microsoft is treading on a couple, using them for
products I would never license, as they are anti-customer.  But
because I cannot show any lost revenue, there would not be any 
civil damages, and nothing to pay a lawyer, even if I could find
one who would work for me rather than for them.  

In case people haven't noticed, physical invention has just about
died in this country.  And my own soon-to-be-cashiered Congressional
Representative, David Wu, helped spearhead H.R. 1249, which changes
the U.S. patent system to the European model,  from "first to invent"
to "first to file".   That makes it a lot easier for a patent troll
to file a patent on your great open source idea.

Patents are to progress as rape is to reproduction.  Rep. Wu is a
former patent attorney.  His three major activities are not dissimilar.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs