So, I’m sufficiently old to recollect when the U.S. Congress quickly intervened in a patent dispute over the expertise that powered BlackBerries. A U.S. Federal choose ordered the BlackBerry service to shutdown till the matter was resolved, and Congress decided that BlackBerry service was too integral to commerce to be allowed to be turned off. Ultimately, RIM settled the patent dispute and the BlackBerry rode off into expertise oblivion.
I’m not right here to argue the deserves of this almost 20-year-old case (the truth is, I coincidentally had mates on each authorized groups), but it surely was once I was launched to the thought of firms that buy patents with the purpose of utilizing this bought proper to extract cash from different firms.
Patents are an essential authorized safety to foster innovation, however, like all programs, it isn’t good.
At this week’s Open Supply Summit North America, we heard from Kevin Jakel with Unified Patents. Kevin is a patent lawyer who noticed the injury being carried out to innovation by patent trolls – extra kindly often called non-practicing entities (NPEs).
Kevin factors out that patents are mental property designed to guard innovations, granting a time-bound authorized monopoly, however they’re solely a sword, not a defend. You should use it to cease folks, but it surely doesn’t offer you a proper to do something. He emphasizes, “You might be weak even when you invented one thing. Somebody can come at you with different patents.”
Kevin has watched an entire business develop the place patents are bought by different entities, who then go after profitable people or firms who they declare are infringing on the patents they now legally personal (however will not be one thing they invented). Actually, 88% of all high-tech patent litigation is from an NPE.
NPEs are rational actors utilizing the authorized system to their benefit, and they’re pushed by the truth that virtually the entire time the defendant decides to settle to keep away from the prices of defending the litigation. This perpetuates the issue by each lowering the chance to the NPEs and likewise giving them funds to buy extra patents for future campaigns.
With regard to open supply software program, the issue is on the rise and is barely going to worsen with out strategic, constant motion to fight it.
Kevin began Unified Patents with the purpose of fixing this drawback with out incentivizing additional NPE exercise. He needs to extend the chance for NPEs in order that they’re incentivized to not pursue non-existent claims. As a result of NPEs are rational actors, they’re going to weigh dangers vs. rewards earlier than making any choices.
How does Unified Patents do that? They use a three-step course of:
Detect – Patent Troll Campaigns
Disrupt – Patent Troll Assertions
Deter – Additional Patent Troll Funding
Unified Patents works on behalf of 11 expertise areas (they name them Zones). They added an Open Supply Zone in 2019 with the assistance of the Linux Basis, Open Invention Community, and Microsoft. They search for calls for being filed in court docket, after which they selectively choose patent trolls out of the group and problem them, making an attempt to disrupt the method. They take the patent again to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace and see if the patent ought to have ever existed within the first place. Sometimes, patent trolls search for broad patents to allow them to sue a lot of firms, making their funding extra worthwhile and fewer dangerous. This implies it’s so broad that it most likely ought to by no means have been awarded within the first place.
The end result – they find yourself killing a whole lot of patents that ought to have by no means been issued however are being exploited by patent trolls, stifling innovation. The purpose is to sluggish them down and ultimately convey them to a cease as shortly as they will. Then, the subsequent time they go to search for a patent, they give the impression of being some other place.
And it’s working. The picture beneath exhibits among the open supply tasks that Unified Patents has actively protected since 2019.
The Linux Basis participates in Unified Patents’ Open Supply Zone to assist shield the people and organizations innovating on daily basis. We encourage you to affix the battle and create a real deterrence for patent trolls. It’s the solely approach to extinguish this risk.
Study extra at unifiedpatents.com/be a part of.
And if you’re a die-hard fan of the BlackBerry’s iconic keyboard, my apologies for dredging up the painful reminiscence of your loss.
