Comment by klntsky
5 hours ago
That would bring down the price of patent spam even more. The problem is the cost of protection relative to the cost of attack, you can't do much.
5 hours ago
That would bring down the price of patent spam even more. The problem is the cost of protection relative to the cost of attack, you can't do much.
But it would also make patent spamming much less valuable and arguably more expensive for the spammer. If you spam patents and get one issued for something that isn't novel and/or already has prior art, everyone can fight it and it quickly gets its metal tested in court.
I imagine a fine for egregious patents could also be implemented. If your patent is demonstrated in court to lack standing, the civil liability is on you, not the patent office.
The hard reality is that nobody actually knows a priori what innovation is. Or how much an innovation is actually worth. If you removed patents that would pretty easily and trivially stop the spam.
The first problem is that what's written in the law and what actually happens are pushed apart by the ridiculous costs of using courts. If fixing that such that courts are fully accessible to anyone without worrying about the cost doesn't produce the desired outcome, then one should look to legislate that outcome. Bad legislation is thus the second problem.
It would allow anyone to patent spam though, that could be a good thing.
How? Compare to email spam where the cost is zero. Is that in any way better than a world where it takes substantial capital to send email spam?
Lower cost = more patents = more patent trolls = less innovation.
Maybe they think it'd be a good thing because it would eventually phase out patents?
That would lead to even more centralization of email than we already have, and that's a bad thing.
What if you have to pay a fee for each patent application that gets rejected?
Then companies with deep pockets can reapply, while individuals who get rejected due to mistakes won't be able to afford it.
The problem is the size difference between the applicants, and just saying "charge by their income" wouldn't help when a shell company with no income applies.
Correct, bad actors would use this.