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The limits of a patent poolThe limits of a patent poolPosted Dec 7, 2005 18:16 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)Parent article: A look at the Patent Commons Project and OIN A strong patent pool will deter aggression from large companies, as they would have to worry about a counter-attack. But a patent pool is of much more limited value against a lawyer-only shop that owns one or more patents and decides to sue. These parasites are unlikely to go after individual FOSS contributors, since they are trying to maximize their revenue and the little guys don't have any. But they are likely to prey on companies that rely on FOSS code, and it's much easier for the parasites to go after alleged infringment in code that they can read the full source for.
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The limits of a patent pool Posted Dec 7, 2005 23:55 UTC (Wed) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] The thing smart companies should have learned though from the whole SCO debacle is that if you attack FOSS you bring thousands of people out of the woodwork in defense of whatever is attacked.
Any company that goes this route better have a heck of a lot of money in the bank. Because they are going to have the fight of their lives.
The limits of a patent pool Posted Dec 8, 2005 1:51 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Right, but "companies" that don't have a product to sell don't need good PR, they just need a credible threat.
The limits of a patent pool Posted Dec 8, 2005 7:09 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] This is true. Unfortunately patent-pools also don't defend against patent-sharks. Since they normally neither produce nor sell any product whatsoever by themselves, they definitely won't infringe on any of your pooled patents.
The limits of a patent pool Posted Dec 8, 2005 16:32 UTC (Thu) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] True but as the SCO case shows, attacking FOSS is an invitation for a million very annoyed fire ants to come pay you a less then friendly visit.
Will this stop Microsoft and their proxies from future patent related attacks? Probably not, but you can bet they'll think long and hard before going that route again.
The limits of a patent pool Posted Dec 8, 2005 19:18 UTC (Thu) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link] Indeed, this was my first thought while reading the article.
The only defense against such litigants, if it can be called a defense, is what U.S. Senate Republicans might call the "nuclear option". If some surrogate troll (I like PJ's term) sues a Linux shop or company using Linux, we sue Microsoft to ban them from shipping infringing software, and sue a bunch of big companies to ban them from using it. The whole ecosystem goes down, software patents are shown to be a fraud, and unthinkably immense pressure builds to get rid of them -- just so we can all compute again!
It may never come to this, particularly before Europe commits to software patents, since any big patent attack now exposes the fraud, leading to an anti-swpat outcome in Europe. But this is a scenario which we need to prepare for ("we" not implying that I can do anything here :-).
Are there any suggestions for alternatives to the above "nuclear option"?
The limits of a patent pool Posted Dec 13, 2005 2:17 UTC (Tue) by aigarius (subscriber, #7329) [Link] Ok, is there a reason why we cant just "blow the whole thing up"?
The limits of a patent pool Posted Dec 9, 2005 16:41 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] ...a lawyer-only shop that owns one or more patents and decides to sue. These parasites ..."Parasite" isn't an accurate term here. A parasite is something that takes a free ride -- a tick that benefits from a dog's blood and gives nothing back. The lawyer-only patent shop paid good money to the inventor for the patent and deserves every penny of royalties to which it is legally entitled. The price it paid for the patent was based on the entitlement to royalties. If there's a parasite, it's the inventor who put an insignificant amount of work into inventing something obvious and took advantage of the patent system to get paid for it. Whether the inventor files lawsuits himself or cashes out through a company that specializes in that, I don't see how it makes a difference in who is getting rich off of whom.
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