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At a minimum, I'd like to see Non-Practicing Entities be unable to sue for infringement.


Define that.

Because surely all a patent troll would need to do is implement a product that demonstrates a single patent in their pool.

Or are you suggesting that every patent must be implemented as a product for it to be enforced?

And if so, as an example of similar things, the UCI (cycling body) state that all Olympic track bikes must be available to the public, and this is true of Team GB equipment that you can order, for a price in the region of GBP 100k per bike.

So would it be enough for a patent troll to offer an implementation of a smart phone for USD 5m?


I don't think that will help a whole lot... There are some uses for non-practicing entities (eg, groups of patent holders like the MPEG LA doesn't do anything but it'd be impossible for anyone to licence an H.264 decoder without them because you'd have to get licences for hundreds of individual patents from a whole lot of other companies instead).

We need to get to the source of the problem, which is that most software patents are either too vague or are for obvious things, and the term of protection is far too long.


Just make patents non-transferable instead, so they always must be licensed from the originating named individual or individuals (no direct patents by corps). That at least restricts the ability to amass a sizable monopoly over a whole sector.




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