Here's an idea I had the other day, which may be crazy or old news:
Google should start a patent pool with all of their patents. Every company would be granted full license to use these patents, as long as they commit not to sue anyone else (in or out of the pool) for patent infringement. Ideally, they would commit their own patents to the pool as well.
With enough buy-in, this could effectively null out software patents without any legislative change, at least among non-trolls, since with a large enough pool it would be almost guaranteed that a company would violate more patents in the pool than vice-versa.
Ideally, this pool would be managed by a non-profit institution, patents would be committed irrevocably, and the organization would have lawyers to actually sue any other company that filed a patent lawsuit. This may be similar to what's been done for WebM etc., but it seems like the same idea on this much larger scale could be much more powerful.
Main challenges I could see are (1) patent trolls, since there's nothing to sue them for, and (2) who decides what's a software patent -- not sure how clear-cut of a line this is.
Thanks, that is definitely related (and admirable). But, in my scheme the proposed pool would sue anyone who sues for software patent infringement, regardless of whether the original suit has anything to do with patents in the pool. To receive this coverage, the target of the suit might be required to donate their own patents to the pool first. This could create a positive feedback loop, to quickly grow the patent pool to the size necessary to have broad influence.
Presumably with the exception of counter-suing companies that have sued you? Companies build patent portfolios so that other companies will be wary of suing them for fear of being counter-sued (simplification). If being a member of this pool removed your ability to even act defensively, I don't think it would achieve its goals.
Exactly. Joining the pool effectively signs away your rights to make offensive lawsuits, in exchange for gaining the rights of the entire pool for defensive purposes.
You're right about patent trolls, but this would allow those companies to have access to a vast amount of patents, so it should become harder for patent trolls to sue any of them, although far from impossible.
But the patent pool would be mostly so those companies don't sue each other. So many companies in the tech industry are suing each other right now. It's ridiculous.
That wouldn't defend them against the pure patent troll businesses without products or research. Also, what would happen with the small open source developers if there's such a stash of legal power concentrated by their competitors. It can turn very bad.
Patent trolls: I don't have a good answer, other than (1) nobody would be worse off than before in this regard, and (2) once the only lawsuits are from patent trolls, it may be much easier to enact legal change. (Members of the pool will be incentivized to lobby for patent reform, rather than preserving the status quo).
Small developers: They just join the pool, or don't join and just don't sue anyone. Members in the pool would irrevocably sign away their rights to offensive lawsuits, so how could it turn bad? In other words, the "stash of legal power" is not concentrated by "competitors", but by "we, the people".
The problem is that Google's patent pool is relatively insignificant (in terms of size, not necessarily scientific merit) compared to some other, much older companies...
Google should start a patent pool with all of their patents. Every company would be granted full license to use these patents, as long as they commit not to sue anyone else (in or out of the pool) for patent infringement. Ideally, they would commit their own patents to the pool as well.
With enough buy-in, this could effectively null out software patents without any legislative change, at least among non-trolls, since with a large enough pool it would be almost guaranteed that a company would violate more patents in the pool than vice-versa.
Ideally, this pool would be managed by a non-profit institution, patents would be committed irrevocably, and the organization would have lawyers to actually sue any other company that filed a patent lawsuit. This may be similar to what's been done for WebM etc., but it seems like the same idea on this much larger scale could be much more powerful.
Main challenges I could see are (1) patent trolls, since there's nothing to sue them for, and (2) who decides what's a software patent -- not sure how clear-cut of a line this is.