IP Law Is Only Going To Get Uglier

A startup company, Unified Patents, formed with the intentions of gaining backing from smaller startups and larger companies in an effort to curb "patent trolling." Patent trolling is the practice of buying inexpensive, relatively obscure, borderline-invalid patents, then pursuing companies that are in violation of the patents through litigation. Generally, the "troll" is a larger company, and the company unknowingly in violation is a smaller company. Because the cost of litigation is much greater to the smaller company, they are usually forced to either settle, or simply close up shop. Unified Patents is now backed by Google, and hopes to gain more backers over the coming months. With the combined resources of all the participating companies, they hope to make it more difficult and costly for a patent troll to pursue litigation. In return, all backing companies enjoy an increased level of protection from the coalition. Unified Patents will charge a membership fee.

This could be a big step towards patent law reform and the end of the so-called "patent wars." With enough companies backing it, Unified Patents (founded and run largely by lawyers) could make a case for major revisions to patent law that would prevent frivolous lawsuits and faster recognition of invalid patent claims. A lot of tech companies have been hampered by patent trolling, especially in the recent years as new markets have opened up. Frivolous and invalid claims waste time and resources, and can stunt progress for any company - it's just that smaller companies take the hit much harder than larger ones.

I found this interesting, since I'm just getting into designing software outside of school. It's really amazing the sheer number of useless patents there are (most famously, Apple patenting a rectangle with rounded corners, US Patent no. D670,286). Last week, I spoke in class of Oracle suing Google over misuse of the headers in their API, effectively trying to patent mathematical functions and computer algorithms. It's unsettling to think that a developer or company, at any time, might unknowingly violate some obscure, extremely broad patent, and lose everything, despite not explicitly doing anything wrong. It's my hope that within the next few years, or at least the decade, that some major reform will take place regarding patent laws.

As for mobile devices, I would consider myself an Android enthusiast, and I closely follow ULV notebook technology, but apart from that (is there anything else?), I don't have much else knowledge.



Links:
CNET - Unified Patents