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So-called patent trolls may actually benefit inventors and the innovation economy, according to a Stanford intellectual property expert. Stephen Haber ( https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/people/stephen-haber ), a Stanford political science professor, suggests in new research that concerns about too much litigation involving patents is misguided.
A patent troll is a person or company that buys patents – without any intent to produce a product – and then enforces those patents against accused infringers in order to collect licensing fees. Some say the resulting litigation has driven up costs to innovators and consumers.
To the contrary, Haber said, his research with Stanford political science graduate student Seth Werfel shows that trolls – also known as patent assertion entities, or PAEs – play a useful intermediary role between individual inventors and large manufacturers.
http://scienceblog.com/77142/patent-trolls-serve-valuable-role-in-innovation-stanford-expert-says/
[Abstract]: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2552734
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MrGuy on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:46PM
I can completely understand the linkage where the existence of patent trolls plays a role in encouraging the filing of patent applications. The ability to monitize a patent efficiently is a benefit to patent holders.
What's less clear is the linkage between "more patents" and "more innovation." Are people who wouldn't invent new things suddenly going to start inventing things because they're getting more money? Or are encouraging people who have a marginal claim on having "invented" something to file for patents in the hope of winning the lottery?
It's hard to assess this, but anecdotally, I've seen a lot of cases in the news of vague, overly broad, and questonably asserted patents (especially in technology), which actually foreclose innovation rather than encourage it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday February 25 2015, @12:56PM
To be fair, is this the fault of patent trolls, the patent laws or USPTO?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 25 2015, @04:47PM
Fair is fair but what does it matter (to the present discussion) whose fault it is? What matters is whether the existence of NPE's benefits `innovation' (whatever this means) and there is a lot of very convincing (though anecdotal) evidence that it does not, moreover, is harmful to it.