Comment by amluto

I gave the e-ink example quite intentionally. The patents were held by a practicing entity. You could buy their mediocre implementation of their excellent underlying invention at an outrageous price and probably not with the specs you wanted.

I’m all for rewarding inventors like this for their inventions. I do not think that the reward should include any sort of ability to stifle use and further development of the invention.

The law should make it possible to build, sell, and profit from a better e-ink product at a lower price. The law should make it possible to sell things that use H.265 at a credible price without needing to be involved in the mess of figuring out who owns what patent. If patent holders, practicing or otherwise, want to sue each other, fine, but I don’t think there should be any requirement for the companies building and selling products to be parties to those legal messes at all.

As far as I know, radio in the US actually mostly works this way. To broadcast a copyrighted song, you pay a fee, and that’s it.