What is a patent troll?

A patent troll is a derogatory term referring to as an individual or organization that acquires patents solely for the purpose of extracting royalties from companies that might be using their patents. Wikipedia has a good definition for Patent troll. Traditionally companies file patents to prevent other companies from using their inventions in their products or services for the life of the patent.

There is a general belief that the patent troll practice (usually executed by contingency-based attorneys) is simply stifling innovation in the industry. Some believe that patents are handed out too liberally due to the enormous backlogs at the patent office. The patent office is a profitable enterprise and the pressure to allow patents is certainly there. As a result the validity many patents are now being debated in court.

Should I post prior art for the ideas posted on this site?

Yes absolutely. We believe in the patent process “duty to disclose” applies here too. That will make your post incredibly useful because it helps establish the date of the original concept. 

Why not publish an Idea in the traditional way?

You can publish but it takes a long time. There are a lot of ideas that probably don’t warrant publishing at least not without a lot of time, research and money. There also may not be anywhere you can publish your invention. The most important thing is to get your invention posted and timestamped. Another useful feature is that you might get feedback on references that you didn’t know about. This will assist in determining if it’s worth taking the idea further or publishing it in the traditional way which you still can do. Wikinvents is ideal for collaboration on inventions on a large scale.

What if I post an invention on Wikinvents only to discover someone already filed a patent?

That certainly may happen. It would be a good idea to do a prior art (patents and patent application) search yourself at the US Patent Office (USPTO site or Google patents site) just to make sure there is nothing obvious first. You might find out someone applied for a patent from someone who responds to your idea. There are a number of things that could happen (all good):

1.             Someone could find prior art and post it here,

2.             If the patent hasn’t issued then the prior art could be sent to the patent office for consideration

3.             As a result of your effort the patent may not be allowed because of prior art found and posted here. This could happen for existing patent applications.

Other Issues with the Patent System

The patent system achieves its goal of protecting the investments that go into the creation of certain technologies. However, there are some problems that have come up in the last few years.

1. The patent office is overwhelmed with so many patent applications because companies are increasingly filing patents on just about everything. The reason is that they have to build a defensive patent portfolio just in case someone sues them. This costs companies millions to file and maintain many inventions that would not otherwise be patented purely for defensive reasons.
2. On the other side of the coin are “patent trolls” A patent troll is a derogatory term referring to as an individual or organization that acquires patents solely for the purpose of extracting royalties from companies that might be using their patents. Wikipedia has a good definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll. Traditionally companies file patents to prevent other companies from using their inventions in their products or services for the life of the patent. There is a general belief that the patent troll practice (usually executed by contingency lawyers) is simply stifling innovation in the industry.

Defensive Publishing

One way to prevent inventions from being patented is to publish them. In other words turn your inventions into prior art. This is often referred to as “Defensive Publishing”. Inventions that are published in print cannot be patented provided these ideas are publicly available. This site is intended for that purpose. There may be a lot of ideas that you will never want to commercialize but hope someone does just to improve every day life.

The downside of Defensive Publishing is that one can monitor Wikinvents and file patents that improve on the ideas presented here.

Wikinvents hopes people will join in the effort to openly improve inventions and not file patents on improvements for ideas presented here – that’s just slimy. At a certain critical mass there should be enough collaboration where the best ideas/method will quickly be disclosed (much quicker than a troll searching for something to improve upon).

If you are worried about it you can either wait until you’ve done enough research that you feel really comfortable in posting the invention.

Patents and Standardization

The issues around patents are particularly dangerous for standards bodies like the IETF, IEEE etc. Standards are collaborative efforts where many companies get together to ensure interoperability which is absolutely necessary for a particular technology to be successful. The Internet would not possible without interoperability.

Many standards bodies such as the IETF have adopted RAND (Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) policy around intellectual property licensing. That in itself doesn’t completely address the patent issues. It just says that you will offer a reasonable license. 

Other standard bodies are more “closed” meaning the participants have to give up their IP for the standard. In that case the standard has a patent pool and try and deal with the IP issue up front. This happens often in consumer electronics standards. Manufactures give up their IP to the group in order to create interoperable products for the future. 

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is a good example where members must give up their IP to participate and use the technology.  It's been wildly successful.  

What about patent holders that don’t participate in these standards? What typically happens is that if the standard becomes widely accepted, then the patent holder usually turns into a patent troll because there is so much money to be made after the fact. This is a concern for standards bodies but if successful then the members likely have enough prior art to protect them.