Startups can now buy insurance against threat of patent trolls

Re:Startups can now buy insurance against threat of patent t... by mathattack on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @12:36AM (#8594173)

Being the (literally?) Devil's Advocate... Can we imagine a situation where a company has created something truly novel, and chooses to sell their patent rather than build it out? There will be a period where it isn't being used for anything.

For example - let's say I come up with a much better way to make steel for cars. I patent it right away. Since I don't own a carmaker, it will take a while for me to sell or license it, and perhaps 4 or 5 years for an auto maker to actually use it.

Again, just being the Devil's Advocate.

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Re:Startups can now buy insurance against threat of patent t... by trhway on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @02:43AM (#8594419)

patents were a way to encourage disclosure of inventions. That objective is now obsolete as pretty much anything can be reverse engineered quickly. So patents morphed into pure rent-seeking tool.

One can easily see that the idea that patents encourage inventions is just plain wrong - just imagine what would happen if patents were abolished - would inventions stop happening?

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Re:Startups can now buy insurance against threat of patent t... by mathattack on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @12:02PM (#8596616)

Inventions wouldn't, but perhaps some kinds of basic research would stop. I don't see this happening in software, but perhaps in Pharma. It's so easy to create a generic, that there wouldn't be any incentive to create something new. At this point we would need the government to fund, and decide what gets funded.

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