[marknutter]

You know what I think we should do? Institute a law where you can't sue a company for patent infringement unless you do so before they introduce and make a substantial amount of money off that product. Say, 1 million in revenue or something.

[crystalis]

Company A makes patent infringing product. Company A makes puppet Company B that licenses product for <substantial amount of money>, successfully fulfilling any sort of patent infringement limitation you can think of for the low low cost of a few lawyers.

Any policy you think of is going to have ridiculous loopholes and require companies to have patent 'watchdogs' who will need to search out fledgling products to make sure they're not infringing on any patents. These company watchdogs will have to justify their wages... by making even more patent lawsuits than there are now.

[philwelch]

Even marketing a product (or service) employing the patent I would be happy with.

Fuck, even implementing the patent I would be happy with.

Requiring some minimum revenue before the patent counts for you is a great way to have your patents wantonly violated by larger firms before you can get started. Software startups are too agile for patents to matter much, but that's not as true for other industries.