Suggestion: Engineers Go On A Patent Strike
from the nice-idea,-but... dept
Via Against Monopoly comes an opinion piece from the EE Times suggesting that engineers who recognize how harmful the patent system can be should go on a patent strike:Stop filing patents. Refuse to sign employment contracts that give your employer sole title to your inventions. Don't participate in any due diligence efforts on patent portfolios.Basically, his argument is that most engineers recognize how harmful the patent system is, but are pushed into patenting by lawyers and management, and the only way to get the message out is to stop assisting with anything having to do with patents.
It's a nice idea, and if a lot of folks really got involved it might get some attention, but I have a hard time believing it could actually be effective. While many people do recognize the problems with patents, an awful lot either don't care or don't know enough to care about it -- and they'll just keep patenting away. It's similar to calls to "boycott" RIAA music or similar such things. It sounds good, but it's effectively impossible to make such a process really work in practice.
Filed Under: engineers, patent strike, patents
