Stupid Patent of the Month: Microsoft’s Design Patent on a Slider

Re:Stupid Patent of the Month: Microsoft’s Design Patent on ... by tensor on Monday December 28, 2015 @11:36PM (#10805234)

Patents don't protect small companies anyways. If you are sued by a giant, the lawsuit will probably bankrupt you alone. Plus, that giant will come at you with multiple infringing patents, because chances are you are in fact infringing multiple patents.

The only use of patents for a small company is to make the company more valuable in an acquisition, and also as a marketing tool.

The way you profit from inventiveness is keeping trade secrets, and building things that are difficult for a competitor to easily copy.

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Re:Stupid Patent of the Month: Microsoft’s Design Patent on ... by throwawaykf05 on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @01:04AM (#10805485)

> If you are sued by a giant, the lawsuit will probably bankrupt you alone. Plus, that giant will come at you with multiple infringing patents, because chances are you are in fact infringing multiple patents.

Actually, in practice this "patent predation" is rare (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1396319):

> This Article also reports on the other major narratives of patent litigation. 4% of the suits were initiated by individual inventors (David v. Goliath), 18% of the suits were brought by small private companies against public or large private ones (small v. large), 16% pit one small-or medium-sized company against another (limited stakes), and in 8% of the suits, a large firm sued a small one (predation profile)

This study also finds that patent trolls are behind a minority of patent lawsuits.

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