Trade body, universities row over US patent troll act proposals

Re: Time to copy the UK...

>The US needs a loser pays system.

They already do for civil cases like patents.

The problem is that the troll can just create a paper company that owns only the single patent, if it loses it goes bankrupt since the patent is worthless anyway.

But Sony/Apple/IBM against a lone inventor can just put armies of their internal lawyers onto a case so that the legal costs are $1M/day. They can then ask that the judge force the nasty inventor to put up some guarantee against being able to pay their costs if he/she loses.

Lone inventor can't do this and judge throws out case.

Nailed it.

This. Let's reform the Patent Office first. Then we can go after existing patents that should not have been granted in the first place. That will destroy the patent troll industry without making another law that can be twisted by unscrupulous attorneys (redundant I know) and various greedy non-producers.

Re: Inventor based system

There is already a system where the inventor has control of their IP - the current one. They are free to, for example, sell their intellectual PROPERTY to somebody else to exploit.

I imagine few people would accept downstream rights over their physical property, even though corporations might like it. When I buy a car, the manufacturer can't tell me what I can do with it, or who I can sell it to. When I buy a house, the previous owner can't tell me what colour to paint it.

Corporations would love this sort of control, and are trying to implement it, by preventing people from selling software secondhand, for example. Consumers are less happy, in general.

Re: wait wat

Patent troll = non-producing entity = somebody who just owns patents but doesn't make anything = sounds a lot like a university.

It's doubly annoying when you ,as a company, pay taxes which fund universities which then patent basic software algorithms and stop you using them.

It's more the public sector amateurism combined with VC slime-ball approach that many of the university IP offices are taking, and the inability to get a straight answer out of any of them.

You work in a university, you get a new contract saying the university now owns all your IP.

So that means I can't contribute to an open source project?

Yes, erm well no, erm we will get back to you.

Does this new policy have anything to do with Microsoft paying for your new building ?

No, erm well erm ....

You want me to list work that was done at a previous institute but was published after I moved here - on your department rankings? How does this square with them owning the IP?

I want to attend a conference. The funding body will only pay for the travel if I am presenting a paper. If I present a paper you can't patent anything in it. So I need approval from the IP office before I can say anything in case they want to patent it. And they will respond in 6months.