Will you feel bad if one of your former employers goes out of business and the patents are bought up by someone else who will use them to attack, not defend?

Fair point. But somehow, if you're employed, you don't own your inventions: your company does. Your company's policy is sadly not taking your beliefs in account… and if they sue people using your invention, you can't complain.

So basically, you'd have to make the difference between personally owning a patent (in which case you do whatever you want with it) and inventing something for your company (in which case you can't control it).

Congratulations. That means you basically worked for a company that manufactured land mines.

Explain yourself.

I don't see any reason to not own patents in order to protect your work from being patent trolled.

Let's say you invent the novel. Right? You don't patent it because you think patents kill babies. Then I act fast enough and quickly patent the novel, because no one did so before. I did it quickly enough to make it unclear who was first. Then I sue your company for copyright infringment.

Yeah, that means I'm an asshole. Doesn't matter, I'm rich now. That's why you should patent you ideas, even if you don't mind other people using them.

> I don't see any reason to not own patents in order to protect your work from being patent trolled.

Patents last a long time. Longer, sadly, than many companies. A good-faith company that owns several patents has no control over those "assets of the company" if they go out of business. If those patents end up in the hands of patent trolls there is nothing that the good faith company (or the ex-employees) can do.

Your novel analogy shows just how broken the patent system is.

Perhaps here is a simple and effective minimizer to the evils of patents: make them non-transferrable. The original legal person (natural person or corporation) that was granted the patent holds it until expiration or death/dissolution/acquisition. Fewer patent trolls could operate if there are no patent transfers.

>Then I act fast enough and quickly patent the novel, because no one did so before.

This is incorrect. Prior art would invalidate the patent, since someone is already selling novels--patents have to be novel(no pun intended). You can't patent the idea just because it hasn't been patented already.

If you don't mind other people using your idea, all you have to do is establish prior art by releasing it to the public, either by selling it or publishing it, to prevent anyone else from patenting it.

If you want to make doubly sure the patent office actually finds your prior art when doing a prior art search after someone else applies for a similar patent, you can file and abandon the patent by failing to pay the fees.

In practice, novelty is determined by prior patents because that is what the examiners search.

"Yes, for the patent definition of obvious, basically all the parts are going to have to be either patented, or in some printed publication." -- Patent Examiner "lordnecro" (http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/ww982/iama_patent_e...)

See the rest of the thread for the example where an idea is used in open source software prior to a patent application by a third party. The patent examiner concedes that this would likely not be found by the examiner, therefore the patent would be granted. It likely would not stand up in court, but that doesn't help anyone that can't afford the legal defense.

Did you skip the part where I said to ensure the examiner finds it you can file and then abandon?

You still have to prepare the application and pay some fees. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee092611.htm

If a doubly-linked list is patentable, how many things have you built this month that are also patentable? Do you really have time to write all those bogus patent applications? In academia, it's a much better use of time to publish scientific papers, present at conferences, and put it in open source software. Industry has market-driven motivations.

It has been said before, there is a huge gap between the prototype and the product that will be sold. That means that a company powerful enough will be able to sell/patent your invention faster than you do if they can lay their hands on the prototype. You'll be screwed, and there's nothing you'll be able to do about it.

This is just ridiculous. I'm not a fan of most patents, but you don't need to invent a bigcorp bogeyman. You seem to be deteremined to believe that bigcorp can completely screw you regardless of the evidence.

Commercial products are often different than the prototype. However, if it uses the same basic innovation, it's generally not going to be so different that the patent doesn't protect it. Patent protection is generally pretty broad.

If the final product doesn't actually use the novel innovation demonstrated by the prototype what advantage does the prototype offer bigcorp?

For example I invent a screwdriver that can work with any screw without a bit change, and I make the handle from rubber, I then file for a patent and am granted it.

Bigcorp comes along and decides to file a patent for the same thing, but for the production version that uses injection molded plastic instead of rubber.

The patent office will reject bigcorp's patent.

That's a really poor metaphor.

It's more a like a nuclear arms race. We focus on mutually assured destruction if you come after us. Keeps the checks and balances in place and stops random invaders and gets us respect.

The problem we face is the terrorists getting arms themselves (the patent trolls) and attacking us with nothing to lose.

Sure it would be awesome if we had no arms and I would support disarmament but it needs to all happen at once by everyone. Until then, we have to play the game.

I've used the nuclear arms comparison before, but I've decided land mines are a better metaphor. Nuclear arms, in the view of some including myself, have (so far) proven to be a net good thing. They have forced world leaders to grow up and learn to get along with each other. They have cost us trillions of dollars to design, build, stockpile, and maintain, but if the MAD doctrine has in fact forestalled WWIII, its value is beyond any price. Not everyone agrees, of course, and that's reasonable, but still, you can't argue with the outcome of nuclear deterrence thus far.

Land mines, on the other hand, kill people who have no idea what they're stepping on. They are cheap, ugly, technically-uninteresting things, often resold on illegitimate markets and used by everyone from superpowers to tin-pot psychopaths.

Instead of preventing wars, or at least forcing adversaries into negotiations for their own self-preservation, land mines kill innocents and belligerents alike. And when they do kill innocent people, it happens years, even decades, after the mines were planted. They kill long after the initial conflict is over, when its outcome is no longer "innovative."

So IMHO, comparing patents to nuclear weapons is an insult to nuclear weapons.

(Edit: your metaphor fails on another level, as does mine. If I start a nuclear war or plant a land mine that kills a non-combatant, nobody will ever consider me a hero. But kids are brought up to respect "inventors" and the patent process. We literally celebrate people who bushwhack the productive and industrious. That's fucked up.)

Ideally this could be done under a system where the company gives away the right to use the patent offensively unless the inventors agree. That way hopefully the patents won't end up being used in different ways if the company is bought out later.

I've thought about that, but the problem is, such an encumbrance would zero out the value of the patent. Your employer wants you to file patents not because they make their products more valuable, but because they make the company more valuable.

A possible compromise might be joint ownership of patents. Maybe that's what you had in mind? Under an arrangement like that, the engineer wouldn't have the right to stop his employer or a future owner of the patent from suing people, but he would have the ability to license the patent rights himself.

I like this idea because it leaves the value judgment to me. If I don't agree that the cause is just, I can stop any offensive legal action simply by offering to license the IP to the defendant for $1. If I work for Google and they want to get into some kind of galactic pissing contest with Apple, they can knock themselves out for all I care. But if my patent ends up the hands of Uniloc, Acacia, or that Myhrvold asshole, I can shut them down.

Co-ownership of patents would still devalue the IP substantially, but that might be ameliorated if I agree in advance not to license the rights to anyone who has initiated any other legal action against the patent holder. That would help maintain the patent's defensive value. It could still be used in a FRAND licensing pool, for instance.

It would devalue them, but this doesn't matter if you are truly only registering for defensive purposes. If you are then selling your portfolio 10 years down the track for massive money, they weren't really defensive were they.