Reading 13: You Have to Pay the ~Patent~ Troll Toll
First Things First: What is a Patent?
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) itself, “a patent is an exclusive right for an invention — a product or process that provides a new way of doing something, or that offers a new technical solution to a problem”. This seems to make sense. A person comes up with a new solution to a problem through a product, or process, or method and wants to own that creation.
If someone is intelligent or creative enough to come up with something genuinely useful that provides value, they should be able to get credit for that. Others should have to come up with their own solutions to the problem or at least pay in order to use the original owner’s in some way. This way, a creator can benefit economically from their creation. All of this seems to make plenty of sense and seem necessary in order to have a proper functioning economy.
WIPO also argues that patents provide incentives by offering this potential material reward as well as recognition for invention. Furthermore, they quite optimistically pose that this system encourages innovation and thereby enhances quality of life for humanity.
As ideal as this sounds, I disagree on the merits of patents. Even though the concept of patents sounds like a good idea in order to reward the creators in our society, the actual implementation, especially with our current system, leaves a lot to be desired.
Unfortunately, patents in the real world are much more often used as a legal weapon than a defense for someone’s inventive idea.
Do you want to maybe optimize a newspaper for a digital screen, especially for a mobile device with limited space? Sorry, there’s a patent for that.
Do you maybe think you could create a fun VR app or game in which users interact with each other in VR? Sorry, there’s a patent for that.
Maybe you have an online store or a publication of some sort and you want to suggest additional products/content to the user based on what they’ve already been browsing? Sorry, there’s also a patent for that.
I’m sure you can catch on to the pattern.
The patent system is so broken that seemingly fundamental and basic ideas can get patented and allow companies to pursue legal action against others. Patents are awarded for “ideas” that are much too broad for anyone to reasonably assess that they represent innovative ideas or products.
Frankly, patents need to be heavily restricted in how they are granted, how long they last, and how they are allowed to be litigated.
I can understand the idea that an individual or company may believe they deserve to have the leg up on the competition for an idea that they came to first. However, current patent rights last for roughly 20 years. That is an absurd length of time to have a complete monopoly on an idea, especially in the rapid innovating society we have today. At a maximum, patents should be granted for a couple of years.
Additionally, our patent office needs to be much more restrictive on granting patents. An idea should only be granted a patent if it is very specific and indisputably represents a new product, process, or method. Patents shouldn’t be handed out for ideas that are broadly defined and perhaps don’t even represent new ideas.
Even then, I feel as though patents may not be necessary for our economy at all. If the United States really prizes a market economy as important, then surely it should do more to promote competition. Patents discourage both competition and innovation. Without patents, the market would have much more competition for all sorts of products and markets, which feasibly would end up benefiting the consumer substantially. Additionally, without the threat of violating someone else’s patent on some tangentially related idea, individuals and companies would be much more free to innovate.
Everything just expressed applies especially to software. The software industry develops so quickly that it should not be bogged down by the weight of patents. Google and Facebook both improved on existing ideas in order to create their products. Neither represented completely new ideas. Patents slow down and even stop this rapid development and innovation.
Within software, agile methodologies and rapid incremental improvements are preached as the most effective ways to develop. When extrapolated to the wider industry as a whole, its simple to see that a lack of patents and litigation would promote this for the entire industry.
So certainly, patents make a bit more sense for physical products, however, even then, they still create more problems than solutions.
So, why is patent litigation so prevalent anyway?
Because of the trolls! Patent trolls to be specific.
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s website, “a patent troll uses patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming up with new ideas”. That’s right, our patent system is so broken that companies have built an entire business model on simply suing other companies over patents.
For example, a company called VirnetX Holding Corporation sued Apple and won a $502.6 million judgement (verdict may not stand on appeal, however) for claimed patent infringement, according to this article from Ars Technica.
In another example, from the EFF website, a patent troll called Lodsys targets small app developers and sues them claiming that in-app purchasing technology infringes Lodsys’ patents.
Neither Lodsys nor VirnetX makes any products or provides any services. Essentially, they benefit the economy in no way whatsoever, but simply purchase and file patents in order to sue other companies as their business model. Oftentimes the companies patent trolls sue do not even go to court. Instead they choose to settle for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid spending millions of dollars and multiple years fighting the lawsuit. Patent trolls know this, and will sue small companies that they know cannot afford a lawsuit so that they have to pay a settlement fee.
Is this really a system that promotes innovation? Is this really a system that promotes development of new ideas and products?
Patents are broken, and they need to be fixed, or better yet, destroyed.
So go ahead and brainstorm and develop that next great idea. But know, you may just have to pay the troll toll, and it isn’t cheap.
