Patent Trolls: Would this work?

Umpteen

United Kingdom1570 Posts

November 19 2013 14:24 GMT

Patent trolls make most of their money in out-of-court settlements. Increasingly, they are targeting smaller businesses, relying on the enormous expense of court arbitration to persuade their victims to cough up without a fight.

So how about this for an idea:

First, make it a legal requirement for all licensing demands related to a particular patent to be recorded at the patent office.

Second, make it a legal requirement for all out-of-court settlements of such demands to be similarly recorded.

Third, enact a law such that, in the event of a patent being struck down in court, all prior out-of-court settlements (or a percentage thereof) must be repaid. Only claims upon which a court has ruled are exempt.

This creates a framework whereby victims of patent trolling may effectively place a bounty on the head of the troll by committing to pay any 'white knight' willing to challenge the patent in court some fraction of the reimbursed fees, should the patent be struck down.

Fourthly, anyone wishing to assert a patent in court must be able to underwrite the outstanding 'settlement balance' hanging over the patent.

This creates an ecosystem for 'Patent Troll Hunters': law firms who scour the patent register for bad patents that have large outstanding settlement balances. Victims of patent trolling would then be able to engage their services on a 'no win, no fee' basis.

Crazy? Idiotic? Awesome? Non-legal minds want to know...

Djzapz

Canada10681 Posts

November 19 2013 16:15 GMT

I'm no lawyer and I'm not even sure that I understand, but to me it just seems like this would be extremely heavy to carry for the public bureaucracy which is already quite fucked up because none of those clowns know what they're doing. It could be functional but it would be heavy.

felisconcolori

United States6168 Posts

November 19 2013 20:25 GMT

It would be far easier and more effective to reform patents so that they were used in accordance with their original intent, with more scrutiny and the possibility of getting a definitive "NO" answer without the possibility of appeal.

(A patent application, in the US, can be denied. However, that denial can be appealed. Endlessly. Over and over and over again. And the patent itself can be amended to add more claims. If you keep slamming it against tired, overworked, generally frustrated patent officers, eventually one of them will crack.)

MarlieChurphy

United States2063 Posts

November 21 2013 06:22 GMT

Here's a better idea. Let's just have judges that actually make a decision and throw these fucks out of court and tell them to fuck off with their trolling.

Umpteen

United Kingdom1570 Posts

November 21 2013 22:09 GMT

On November 21 2013 15:22 MarlieChurphy wrote:
Here's a better idea. Let's just have judges that actually make a decision and throw these fucks out of court and tell them to fuck off with their trolling.

That's just the point, though: it costs 1-5 MILLION dollars to take the fight to court in the first place. So do you pay that, or the 100,000 the troll is demanding?

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