Patents are a tool that can sometimes be useful, sometimes destructive. Here, we look at the destructive side. One large case, Plumpy’Nut, has a page of its own.
General issues
Aug 07, 2012. Trolling on the human rights. A dystopian view on how IPR could be used to trample on basic human rights. Perhaps overly cynical.
Sep 5, 2012: Patents — non-conventional warfare? “But if patents are non-conventional warfare, even these measures of “quality” become largely irrelevant. A “quality” patent is one that manages to frighten targets enough that they pay up. Nothing more, nothing less.” [JM]
Sep 4, 2012: Patents–conventional warfare? “After all a patent is only what it is claimed to be under its claims, nothing more, nothing less. And even those are eventually validated in courts, not in patent offices. So in real life, nobody knows what has been patented until it has been tried in a court. …. It is only about patent strategy and tactics. If you don’t have one, your competitor might have. It is war after all.” [TT]
Case Sipco: Environmental sensors (technical)
Aug 13, 2012: CleanTech 1. Transmitting pollution information over an integrated wireless network. “This is really no different from saying ‘If my invention sees a problem, it solves it'”. [JM]
Aug 16, 2012: The trolling triad. Analysis of a probable troll company (Sipco LLC). “So is Sipco a patent troll? I follow the old adage: ‘If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it probably is a duck.’ Sipco even smells like a duck. You decide.”
Aug 22, 2012. CleanTech 2. Systems and methods for remote irrigation control. “As inventors ourselves, we think this was already trivial somewhere around the year 1900 (the invention of radio).” [JM&NP]
Aug 28, 2012. How farmers were punished for using a shovel. A case study from the 1870’s. Unfortunately, the same mechanisms are in place now, and something equally ludicrious could happen today. [JM]
Case Intellectual Ventures (highly technical; for hardcore enthusiasts only)
Sep 10, 2012. Pollution week 1: “My” application. Defining a simple application, I found that an Intellectual Ventures patent that is worrysomely close.[JM]
Sep 11, 2012. Pollution week 2: What’s preventing me? “I will now try to see guess whether “my” software would infringe the ‘002 patent. And I do mean “guess”; there is no way of finding the “truth”, as has been discussed earlier. The “truth” can only be discovered in court, when the patent owner sues someone.” [JM]
Sep 13, 2012: Pollution week 3: How does Intellectual Ventures do this? I dissect the innovation process that Intellectual Ventures appears to use. [JM]
Sep 14, 2012: Pollution week 4: Could we do something about Intellectual Ventures? Some ideas about ways to attack patent factories like Intellectual Ventures. [JM]
Sep 15, 2012: Pollution week 5: Summary. What did we learn this week? [JM]