If Your Business Strategy Relies On Suing Others, You're Not A Business, You're A Leech On The System
from the face-facts dept
Canadian patent troll Wi-LAN has a long history as trying to tax any and all wireless innovation with patent threats. With the news that it's suing a bunch more companies -- including Apple, HTC, HP, Dell, Sierra Wireless and others, the company is merely cementing its reputation as a taxer of innovation, rather than a builder of anything useful. The company doesn't seem shy about this. As the link above notes, the company seems to brag about this "business" strategy:What's more, Skippen said he believes "that our past investment in litigation could generate a significant return in the future. Our record revenues and earnings in the first quarter signal the beginning of that return to WiLAN and its shareholders."It's hard to read such a comment and not feel sickened by the pure net loss on the economy and innovation from such leeches. Any company whose business model focuses on litigation is not contributing positively to society and innovation. There are times to file a lawsuit, but when that becomes central to your business model, something is broken.
The very core of a functioning capitalist system is that companies make transactions in which there's a buyer and a seller, and both sides come away from the transaction feeling better off. The buyer values the product or service more than the money paid, and the seller values the money more. That's good business. Any time you involve a lawsuit to force someone to pay, you're doing exactly the opposite of that and you're setting up a system that is not working to benefit everyone, but is actively using the force of the courts to try to force a company to "buy" something it has no interest in buying. It's not good for the economy and it's not good for innovation.
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Filed Under: business, economics, patents, strategy
Companies: wi-lan
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As far as patents are concerned, the NSF funds a ton of research (you can find that info on its website) and it's been discussed on Techdirt how private corporations wind up with the patents.
and lets not forget that most of what Pharma claims to spend is exaggerated yet pharma absolutely refuses to allow independent auditors to audit how much it spends on R&D. They essentially want an unregulated government established monopoly and they don't want to allow the public the ability to ensure that those monopolies are justified.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050817/0314229.shtml
Also see
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100429/0214049233.shtml
Fact is, there is very little pharmaceutical advancement in the U.S. anymore, and what little there is is mostly taxpayer funded and it ends up patented by private firms. I read about medical advancements on slashdot, examples include 360 degree camera pills with higher resolution (developed in Japan, though they do have patents they aren't nearly as strict as the U.S.), among others, and most of it occurs elsewhere, not in the U.S. (or it's occurring out of a tax funded university).
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091111/0152276888.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/article s/20110429/03154714083/how-one-startup-used-patents-to-kill-better-competitor.shtml#c1086
http:// www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9004.html
http://www.vjolt.net/vol8/issue1/v8i1_a03 -Locke.pdf
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=bayh-dole
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=bayh- dole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act
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http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/20/5/202.long
The industry on the other hand spent something like $10 billion.
You believe Cuba is strong on IP?
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/health/2011-09/07/c_131111574.htm
Do you believe India and Brazil are strong on patents?
http://www.healthtechnica.com/blogsphere/2011/01/03/medical-research-in-india/
Not to mention that India is at the forefront of telemedicine, with initiatives that already are in place in large scales.
http://www.telemedindia.org/
Anti-cancer drug discovery and development in Brazil: targeted plant collection as a rational strategy to acquire candidate anti-cancer compounds.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10884497
"Brazil's investment in transgenic animals shows how opposition to such technologies in the United States is opening opportunities elsewhere."
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26582/
Not to mention the Chinese and Russians.
I want to find the quote of a Brazilian drug manufacture that said "Yes we copied it is not against the law in Brazil" when asked if they copyed a drug from an American manufacturer.
You think those people are incompetent?
Keep dreaming and someone will kick your ass.
http://www.brazilmax.com/news.cfm/tborigem/fe_business/id/7
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Title correction
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I'm not saying it has always been that way, but that is the current state of IP.
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You been to East Texas again?
It is you pardner, with the cow dung upon thy boots.
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http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=441
Unless you can explain why Intellectual Ventures that never ever launched a product and seems to keep expanding its patent portfolio through acquisitions and not research is able to make a buck and not call that a racketeering scheme with a strait face I fear you are full of shit.
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Re: Selling protection
As far as I'm concerned, trolling patents is nothing less than legalized extortion, and it's time Congress passed laws to shut it down.
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FTFY.
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It seems more than a tad two faced, don't you think?
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Are you talking about the mining industry or what?
If your post attempted to be in any way related to this discussion you went off such a wild tangent that you face a very real risk of crashing into the sun.
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Patent troll aren't good for the system but they don't excuse those who choose to actively violate a patent, or actively violate copyright. If we are going to look at leeches on the system, perhaps it would be high time to look at those who choose to ignore the law.
My initial "FTFY" is just to point out that there is equally outrageous behavior occuring at the other end of the scale, tacitly approved of by the Techdirt business models. It's a glass house issue, really.
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Please provide a link.
Then, when you are unable to find one, maybe your confusion will clear, and you can participate in the discussion in a meaningful way.
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I doubt anyone will be holding their breath.
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I have no quarrel with actual inventors seeking redress for infringement of actual inventions, but suing for infringement of naked patents with nothing to protect is crossing the line.
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Or how about the Righthaven farce, where there was shady undertakings by themselves and another company called Stephens Media.
OR what about Davenport Lyons, who were sanctioned over their "Sue and threaten" technique? Or Evan Stone, who not only sued, but then ignored a judge, not once, not twice, but THREE times, and has now been officially benchslapped?
Moreover, the recent "most important gig in modern history" was given to Queen for their LiveAid performance. Musical notes are not copyrighted, and they are raw materials.
So in other words, STFU and GTFO.
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Uh, it depends
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Re: Uh, it depends
- Agreed, but isn't that for a court to decide? It is a sad state of affairs when the defendant is not given their day in court.
"Sometimes people are just too cheap to pay for content "
- Agreed. In addition, the threshold of proof is too low and the award amounts are too high.
"The web aggregators have a business model that depends upon not paying the writers or the photographers"
- All of them? Really? I would like to see the data which supports your statement.
"Sometimes people just deserve to be sued"
- What warped point of view.
"the people who are sued are the leeches, not the plaintifs."
- Wow, it is that simple huh ... why do we even need a court system because the plaintiff is always right. It is this sort of thinking that has resulted in the three strikes and six strikes laws where you do not even get your day in court, you get to pay even though you didn't violate their precious copyright. WooHoo - party time!
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Re: Uh, it depends
The patents are given out to people who intend to do something with them, beyond waiting for someone else to come up with a similar idea that they feel overly broad patent gives them the rights to.
Please show us where Wi-LAN has done anything with the patents they control other than file suit.
They exist simply as a bottom feeder hanging out at the bottom waiting for a small enough fish to swim by that they can attack.
They get enough of these small fish, and then move on to larger prey. They use the awards to fund getting larger fish, rather than producing anything.
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, except a group of lawyers owns the whole concept of mousetraps and will demand you give them everything you created independent of their patent.
This causes there to be no new development in mousetrap technology, because people with new ideas can't afford the massive lawsuit. This means some new idea is not seen by someone else, who could use it in a different device to make improvements there.
There is a ripple effect, money that could be used to refine the idea is used instead to run a check to make sure there is not a patent on some overly broad idea that has never been brought to market. Some money is set aside to try an prepare for the lawsuit that will be coming. And some money is spent to buy something in East Texas so they can try and sway the courts there.
The only people winning in all of this? The people of East Texas having all of these lawyer teams coming to town to argue cases.
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My neighbor works for one of them
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Re: My neighbor works for one of them
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Capitalism has always been broken.
It's the same flaw that brought the Soviet Union to it's knees. The only difference in a capitalist culture is the masses are kept in the dark by filling their brains with meaningless drivel on TV and pressure to always have the next upgrade.
The majority are so distracted by trivial material concerns they can't see the majority of the worlds wealth being concentrated increasingly in the hands of a minority of very, very few individuals.
By the time the world wakes up. It will be too late.
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propaganda
Masnick, you are such a shill. In another era I would slap your cowardly face and challenge you to a duel.
“Patent troll”
Call it what you will...patent hoarder, patent troll, non-practicing entity, etc. It all means one thing: “we’re using your invention and we’re not going to pay”. This is just dissembling by large infringers to kill any inventor support system. It is purely about legalizing theft.
Prior to eBay v Mercexchange, small entities had a viable chance at commercializing their inventions. If the defendant was found guilty, an injunction was most always issued. Then the inventor small entity could enjoy the exclusive use of his invention in commercializing it. Unfortunately, injunctions are often no longer available to small entity inventors because of the Supreme Court decision so we have no fair chance to compete with much larger entities who are now free to use our inventions. Essentially, large infringers now have your gun and all the bullets. Worse yet, inability to commercialize means those same small entities will not be hiring new employees to roll out their products and services. And now some of those same parties who killed injunctions for small entities and thus blocked their chance at commercializing now complain that small entity inventors are not commercializing. They created the problem and now they want to blame small entities for it. What dissembling! If you don’t like this state of affairs (your unemployment is running out), tell your Congress member. Then maybe we can get some sense back in the patent system with injunctions fully enforceable on all infringers by all inventors, large and small.
For the truth about trolls, please see http://truereform.piausa.org/default.html#pt.
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Re: propaganda
What a bad analogy.
"Prior to eBay v Mercexchange, small entities had a viable chance at commercializing their inventions"
Certainly there are much worse SCOTUS rulings than eBay v Mercexchange.
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Re: propaganda
Hey! Let's cut the ad hominem attacks, please.
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From there, with patent owner have no will to execise the idea covered in these patent, you can be sure progress of innovations around these ideas will be slowing down if not completely stalled.
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On a somehow related note. Some provinces of China where "properties companies are just buying lands but no building anything in order to push up property price level" have made law that if the properties company bid the land and not building house and sell them within 5 years, they'll lost the right to the land and the land deed will be returned automatically to the government. Perheps we should have patent law containing similar "use or lose" statement.
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IP is Property
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Re: IP is Property
Not illegal, but very annoying / troubling to those who build things that's to make other's life easier.
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