Stealth Research and Theranos: Reflections and Update 1 Year Later

Re:Stealth Research and Theranos: Reflections and Update 1 ... by Animats on Friday May 20, 2016 @11:25PM (#11743049)

Stealth research is a byproduct of the weakening of the patent system. It used to be that, for something like this, you got a patent before talking to VCs. This allowed more review of whether the technology actually works.

Now we have VC money being invested based on how well someone can pitch. This doesn't work for things which are technically hard. Hence Theranos, uBeam, and possibly Cruise.

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Re:Stealth Research and Theranos: Reflections and Update 1 ... by ben_jones on Saturday May 21, 2016 @12:22AM (#11743190)

I'm trying to think of a company that proves the opposite, but I can't.

For example Tesla and Space X seem like likely candidates, but Musk, and any founder with a billion dollar + exit, is an absolute cheat code in fund raising and can't be used as a standard for any normal company. And yes, most of the companies you mentioned are completely normal with founders who are categorically not Elon Musk, or in the case of Theranos, not Steve Jobs.

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Re:Stealth Research and Theranos: Reflections and Update 1 ... by petra on Sunday May 22, 2016 @09:09AM (#11748453)

Has the patent system really weakend ? or it's simply that today, the options to build something are so varied, and people have more knowledge of that, so you cannot patent them all ?

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Re:Stealth Research and Theranos: Reflections and Update 1 ... by Animats on Sunday May 22, 2016 @04:26PM (#11750130)

At least three things made it much more expensive to enforce a patent:

1. The America Invents Act (2011), with its new post-grant review provisions. Now, if you try to enforce a patent, the infringer can tie you up for a few years with review proceedings, which means the inventor has to spend money to defend the patent.

2. The eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. decision (2006), which made patent infringement injunctions much harder to get. This decision basically means that the worst thing that can happen to an infringer is that someday they have to pay royalties. It's essentially compulsory licensing of patents. So infringers have no incentive to negotiate.

3. The In re Seagate Tech decision (2007) and some related decisions changed the standard for willful infringement (and triple damages) to include a requirement of "reckless disregard", which is almost impossible to prove. These decisions also reduced the power of juries in patent cases.

It's also harder to get discovery in patent cases now, which means that if infringement can be kept a secret, it's usually possible to get away with it.

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