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by lisper 2854 days ago
> 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
1 comments
Waterluvian 2854 days ago
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.
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lisper 2854 days ago
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.

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chrisweekly 2854 days ago
That is just... appalling.
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lisper 2854 days ago
Yes, it is.
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rhino369 2854 days ago
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.

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lisper 2854 days ago
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.
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