When I did write patents the lawyers were telling us:
- Everything is patentable, it is the enforcing part that is hard (i.e. remember the computer mouse)
- Patents are only valid if you have money to enforce them.
And then I heard from some start-up about another:
- What are they offering?, they don't even have IP. Nobody is going to buy them...
I got to the conclusion that they are more than any other thing a way to demonstrate value for small companies and a tool for big companies to delay competition from new entrants. I haven't understood yet how patent offices take care of the prior art...
I patented a thing while I was at university - there was some prior art but I'd come up with a neat solution (literally as well as figuratively) that actually worked - got as far as building a few prototypes.
I had a degree to finish, and barely managed to scrape the cash together for the UK and European patents. Let it sit, naively thinking that someone would want to develop this tech and would be in touch.
About six years ago a large corporation filed a patent that was substantially identical to mine - they replaced a spiral with a circle, as it's cheaper to manufacture, which, while covered by my claims, was secondary to the device. They shortly thereafter took the product to market. They did at least cite me in prior art.
From what I can gather it wasn't a commercial success, it added too much cost to the product it enhanced, but even if it had been, my recourse would've been the square root of fuck all.
So yeah. Patents are for corporations. They're there to stifle innovation and shut the small guy out.
Which is a shame, as that's literally the exact opposite of their purpose - they were developed to bring about a system that would release ideas to the public domain after a set period of benefit for their creator.
My "sit on it" behaviour is admittedly not their purpose, but neither was their "trample on it".
They are also typically used as a "mutually assured destruction"[1] war chest. For companies that have no intention of filing a patent lawsuit, but need some kind of insurance against that happening to them.
You file, buy, acquire, etc, a large enough portfolio of patents such that if another company sues you, your broad portfolio almost assures they are "violating" one of your patents. Now you have leverage to make the initial lawsuit go away.
And then I heard from some start-up about another: - What are they offering?, they don't even have IP. Nobody is going to buy them...
I got to the conclusion that they are more than any other thing a way to demonstrate value for small companies and a tool for big companies to delay competition from new entrants. I haven't understood yet how patent offices take care of the prior art...