Written by: Lex Protector|December 11, 2012
Patent troll is a heinous method of acquiring by filing a lawsuit of patent infringement against others. The patent law allows any person or organization to purchase and sell a number of ideas. However, there is no provision in the law to make the ideas into realities. With the power of these clauses, anyone can purchase the technology from the inventor and sit on that technology waiting for others to invent similar type of inventions. Then, he will monetize the patent suing or charging a license fee. The monetization closely monitors the status of the applied patents. “Non-practicing entities (NCE)”collect the information from the websites, newspapers and news channels. Their main targets are financially weak companies who cannot bear the financial burden of continuing the infringe litigation for a long time. The financially weak companies go for the early settlement due to want of fund. Then, patent troll purchase the patent according to their term.
According to a study of University of California, Hastings College of the Law University of California, Hastings College of the Law, the patent monetization has been dramatically increased from 22% to 40% in the last five years. Boston University School of Law also mentioned that the direct cost of patent assertions by “non-practicing entities (NCE)”was $29.00 billion in the last year. The medium and small companies had to bear most of the burdens. The researchers of the law school also found that the threat of lawsuit is enough to frighten and acquire the invention from the young scientists. Monetization does not only affect the small companies, even the giant company like Google also has to spend $12,500,000 on 17,000 patents in the last August. Patent troll has posed a unique threat to new invention in the field of technology and the economic development of the country.
The people related to the patent and invention has become vocal against these malpractices. They have said that the present patent system is the root cause of this malpractice. The excessive patent registration charge, lengthy and expensive process of patent infringement case is mainly responsible of this malpractice. Google and Cisco are the hard critics of US patent Policy. Both the companies alleged that legitimate companies have to spend millions of dollars due to the loopholes in the patent law. In the last week, Google (GOOG) general Counsel Kent Walker requested the Government to take an effective step to make patent trolling less profitable. He also urged the Government to raise the standards of software patents and strict guidelines to eliminate the substandard patent content. Conceding the demands of the people, The US antitrust enforcers begin to monitor closely the infringement of patent cases.
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