joemullin

I'm aware that there are allegedly "bad" IPRs including the OpenSky case. The alleged "extortion" here is that VLSI, a non-practicing entity, I believe backed by a hedge fund, would lose their 20-year government monopoly and no longer be able to seek billions of dollars in court.

I have no idea who or what OpenSky is, and I don't weigh in on huge corporate cases like VLSI v. Intel where everyone has plenty of money for their own representation.

But it's really wild to me that this alleged "abuse" (that could lead to the loss of... a patent) immediately got the attention of officials, who are taking rapid action. Yet there are thousands of victims of patent troll extortion every year. These extortions are real, and documented, and hurt businesses that are much much smaller than VLSI. (and operate actual businesses, which AFAIK VLSI does not).

But here's the value proposition: It's just not wrong to challenge a government subsidy or monopoly. Period. Especially on computer software and hardware, because they're often wrongly granted.

Even if you accept that the OpenSky situation is the moral equivalent of patent trolling (I absolutely do not), it's happened to patent owners ONE time. (Maybe a few others, but it's a count-on-your-fingers thing). I wish people extorted by patent trolls for real money got 1/100th the attention of the tiny numbers of patent owners who lost (or almost lost) their patent monopolies.

I work for EFF and wrote the text of this blog post and action. Couple points I want to add.

1) EFF has only filed one IPR ever, (linked in the post), against Personal Audio, to invalidate a patent asserted against podcasting. This was crowd-funded by hundreds of people. It required years of litigation beyond the IPR process itself.

2) Patent challenges should be open to all. There's nothing wrong with a "for profit" org challenging a government monopoly - it's a public benefit. A good patent will often hold up (many do), a wrongly granted one will usually go down.

Please read the examples in the post of (very) small businesses, individuals, and nonprofits (Wikimedia) who were protected because another organization, often a for-profit, filed a successful IPR.

It's truly upside down world when USPTO is concerned its very limited monopoly-challenging services are being overused by "for-profits" that file "serial" petitions. In my career I have analyzed hundreds of shell companies that have (each!) sent out dozens or hundreds of threat letters and lawsuits demanding patent royalty payments (patent trolls). Guess what? They're ALL for-profit. They ALL file serial petitions with the hopes of a fast payout.

We have limited means to challenge this extortionate business model, and now USPTO is trying to drastically limit one of the best options. I hope they reconsider, and we ask for your support.

Thanks to all and I appreciate the discussion here.

Can you point me to the government grant program that requires patents as part of the application process? That is potentially very concerning. I would be interested to learn more.

The "invention" is DRM. You think Apple read this patent and said "a-ha, that's how you do it?"

Many internet companies, including Google, have used patents only defensively (so far). However, there are plenty of tech companies that do assert patents offensively, including Apple, IBM, Qualcomm (famously), Oracle, and lots of others.

I'm the author of the above piece. I'm a bit late to the party here, but really appreciate the conversation——it's my first time on this site as a solo blogger (former Ars Technica writer).

For those that found this interesting——especially those that are frustrated by the current software patent system——consider subscribing. It's free, just a passion project I'm doing on the side. I think writing about & publicizing these problems is one of the ways forward to a solution, which is one of the reasons I started Letters Patent.

If you have questions about what i've covered, or suggestions about what to write about, please send them my way: [email protected].

This is the party line, but it just isn't true. Patents are obtained & enforced on ideas all the time, especially in software. PMC is enforcing a patent on the idea of DRM, on the idea of error-correction in streaming video. They never implemented either (beyond a prototype which may or may not have had these features, and never sold).

I agree that patent abuse and IP abuse extends beyond trolls. That's one of the reasons I started Letters Patent -- and that's why I linked to Cory Doctorow's piece outlining Apple's long history of IP abuse.