[cityzen]

I recently watched the documentary The Patent Scam with the XPlane guy... it was disturbing to say the least. My question is this... With "method" patents being an absolute joke, what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"? I'm serious, these patents seems so stupid, I don't see why you couldn't just get that patent and sue all of these people?

Then again, if it is patentable, I'm sure some troll owns that one too.

Good documentary, though. It's currently on Hulu.

[lisper]

> what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"?

Absolutely nothing other than your willingness to pursue it and pay the fees.

As an exercise, I once applied for a patent on a device that would violate the laws of physics (specifically allowing faster-than-light communications) to test the theory that you can in fact patent anything. The result was receiving U.S. patent number 7126691.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US7126691B2/en

[Waterluvian]

That's fascinating because in my talk with a patent lawyer, they have a very special set of rules for "perpetual motion machines" that make them quite easy to reject.

[lisper]

Yes, there are a few crackpot ideas for which there are special rules, including perpetual motion. But anything else is fair game, and there is a fairly foolproof process by which you can get a patent on anything. It goes more or less like this:

1. Draft the patent application. You don't even need to do any research. The PTO will do that for you.

2. Wait for the application to be rejected, which it almost certainly will be the first time around. But the rejection is required to contain specific reasons for the rejection, which will almost always be citations of prior patents that already cover what you have claimed (because there is no shortage of stupid patents). In effect, the PTO does your homework for you.

3. Tweak the application to get around the specific objections the PTO cited and re-submit.

4. Iterate if necessary. But I have never had to go more than one round, and I have eight patents.

[chrisweekly]

That is just... appalling.

[lisper]

Yes, it is.

[rhino369]

This is pretty much how it’s done. But if you don’t tweak (or amend in patent terms of art) well you end up with a pretty worthless patent.

You also can only tweak with regard to disclosures already described in your application.

[lisper]

Yes, that's true. You do have to plan ahead a little bit. But other than that getting a patent is pretty much a no-brainer under the current regime.

[komali2]

I really wish I could remember the sci fi book I read this in, but basically there was a guy who forewent currency, instead inventing things, patenting them, then giving them for free to people. In return the oss community supported him.

But he'd also do this thing where he'd ddos via patent lawsuit evil companies, filing like hundreds of thousands of lawsuits against a single company in the span of a day.

[amanaplanacanal]

Sounds like Accelerando by Charlie Stross.

[noobiemcfoob]

The hero we need

[otp124]

Funny, I recall seeing a post on HN that such a patent did in fact exist. From the NPR [1]:

> It turns out, a couple giant companies — IBM and Halliburton — have been working for years to patent what patent trolls do.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-...

[bitwize]

> With "method" patents being an absolute joke, what would stop me from patenting, "A method of acquiring patents for the sole purpose of litigating infringement without actually creating a licensable alternative"?

I believe that IBM actually has a patent on this, to whip out in case a troll decides to step to Big Blue.

[zeckalpha]

Prior art

[entwife]

Sounds like a "covered business method", not patentable.