“If we accept that you can patent things that are obvious and also that economic leeches who produce/invent nothing can accumulate ideas—then, sure, those leeches have a right to their royalties.
But hording intellectual property as a sledgehammer to use on small companies that haven’t infringed on any patents but don’t have the deep pockets to ward patent trolls off seems to be anti-competitive in nature.”
Plum CEO Andy Kuan feels strongly about this, and I agree with him. Because that’s what patent trolls do—they leech money off obvious ideas and other people’s hard work.
If patent trolls were right, we would all owe Leonardo Da Vinci’s descendants a Fort Knox load of money for the things he invented 500 years ago—the helicopter, hang glider, “hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells and steam cannon,” according to Wikipedia.
Back to the court proceedings in Tyler, Texas…
Wired correspondent Joe Mullin wrote that the jury members were awe-struck by having Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Internet, and such a high-profile Internet case visit the sleepy East Texas town.
And why there?
In a podcast on This American Life, NPR reported that patent trolls scour the country for small towns with federal courts where they can set up dummy companies and file their lawsuits.
They do this, according to NPR, because the drug war in the 1990s clogged federal courts—patent trolls couldn’t get their suits heard because criminal cases take precedence over civil cases.
So they had to go to smaller towns like Tyler, Texas, which has less than 100,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Or Marshall, Texas, which has a population of under 25,000 yet every year ranks in the top three for number of patent suits cases tried by a federal court, according to NPR.
It’s in towns like Marshall and Tyler where patent trolls can file suit after suit.
“That’s what’s really sickening—that a patent troll’s greatest weapon is its ability to threaten legal action.
Especially as it impacts small companies that can’t defend themselves effectively. As far as I’ve seen, every time a big company waves their legal stick at a smaller company, the smaller company folds without a fight.”
Well, this time it looks like the small company was the one waving the legal stick against the big companies. And the big companies took the stick and stuck it…well, you know.
