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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 01:40 AM EDT |
I guess what I was trying to convey is that while the current situation with
large arsenals of junk patents and thousands more being granted every month is
kind of bad for the big companies, its actually WORSE for their smaller
competitors than it is for them. So it still gives them some advantage, and
anyway most big companies are not brave enough (or imaginative enough) to really
try and get rid of software patents.
Big companies have the money to defend themselves in court, where individuals or
startups would just go bankrupt. Big companies have their own arsenals of
patents to counter-sue with (unless they're facing NPE trolls who are immune to
patent counter-suits), or cross-license in a settlement deal. Small companies
or individuals have a lot less leverage here.
When small companies are somehow threatening the market dominance of a big
company (probably with a new product that is just better than the incumbent's),
the big company might be able to buy them. But it doesn't always work out.
They might have to settle for tying them up in court for a few years, and/or
getting injunctions against the import of their product into various
countries).
The mobile companies all collude in standards organizations and consortiums, to
each get some of their IP into each standard so that they can all collect
perpetual royalties. Patents are the chips they need to sit at that table.
Every video codec standard, and most audio and voice codec standards, are
deliberately encumbered with dozens of patents for this reason (so the
established players can exclude upstart competitors from their little club, and
so they can jointly collect rents from everybody else who participates in that
ecosystem).[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: PJ on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 03:03 AM EDT |
Small fry competition are crushed with patents
all the time.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 05:57 PM EDT |
They can't compete with free, but free sure can compete with them. They try to
make free illegal, but free just moves abroad, and nobody can stop
reimportation.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 08:58 PM EDT |
It migyt be petty, but when the simplest, allegedly legal way to eliminate
compitors is to licence/sue them out of existence, companies will do so.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2012 @ 10:22 AM EDT |
I've yet to find anyone working in software (other than lawyers) that thought
software patents do more good than harm.
You may (enjoy || be disgusted
by) this podcast about patents. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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