In the previous two posts I defined and illustrated what a Patent Troll is a delved a little into their significance in our modern market. This time I would like to look a little bit into what companies can do to protect themselves from Patent Troll litigation. Some of these strategies are:
- Design Arounds -- used to place an upper limit on licensing fees often equal to the cost of "designing around" the patent in discussion
- Patent Watch -- routinely monitoring patents related to a company's own business activity to determine what is already patented.
- Clearance Search -- a search of patents and pending patent applications that cover important features of a potential product before it starts to be developed. These patents can be acquired to avoid litigation, or the design process can shift to a different product
- Opposition Proceeding -- One can call for a reexamination of a patent with certain limitations
- Litigation -- Going on the offensive can be advantageous. By examining prior arts that question the patentability of the specific patent they can question whether the technology in question is actually infringing the Troll's patent. If this un-patentability of the troll's patent is proved, then not only do the company win their case, but the troll will also lose the option of suing. This is such a scary alternative that oftentimes trolls will back off from the case or at least lower its settlement request.
- Early settlement -- can oftentimes be less expensive than litigation costs or late settlement costs.
- Patent infringement Insurance -- this is a special kind of insurance that protects companies when they infringe patents by accident.
- Defensive Patent Aggregation -- this is the purchase of patents from specific patent holders to avoid their acquisition by trolls. The patents are searched for in relation to the company's specific necessities and products. This phenomena can also be performed by groups of companies to mitigate costs.
That's all for this week! Feel free to watch the video below for a discussion on the above!
See you in class!
Oliviero,
ReplyDeleteGreat post on how companies can protect themselves from patent trolls. Although companies may inadvertently step into the realm of other patents, it seems quite ridiculous that the purchase of IP is even a thing (i.e. buying a patent to sue someone else) My favorite of all of these is definitely the clearance search to truly see if there are REMOTELY any ideas out there that interfere with the fruition of whatever I am trying to make. Seems like a logical step to take before you proceed with developing your idea.
Cheers
I appreciate how you gave a deeper analysis and discussion of the topic of patent trolls by talking about some of the approaches companies can use to protect themselves. You gave a succinct overview that effectively captured the main idea of each of the strategies. I also agree that defense patent aggregation is very interesting as a technique to fight back against patent trolls litigations because it allows you gain more rights and patents for your other products. With that said, I'd love to hear about some of the issues / challenges that these techniques have to face. Other than that, good job!
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