| > That patent was an asset. That line of thinking is the problem. A patent is intended as a protection to spur development, not an asset to be traded. The spirit of a patent is to protect a novel solution while a company develops and monetizes their innovation. It keeps bigger fish with deeper pockets from quickly copying your invention and monetizing it before you. What's happened however is that Large companies with deep pockets are filing patents for anything and everything they can. These patents generally come from their R&D efforts but are not necessarily linked to any product specifically. They're also usually unenforceable junk that wouldn't hold up in court. The value of these junk patents isn't in the viability to be developed into a product, rather their value is that it will take time and money to invalidate them in court. When these companies are hit with a lawsuit for violating someone else's patent, their defense is to counter sue with as many junk patents as possible. The purpose of the counter suit is to make a settlement preferable to the protracted legal fight necessary to invalidate all of the junk patents. It's the path of least expense. You could argue this allows large companies to steal innovations from smaller players by forcing cross licensing agreements. Often these patent portfolios are transferred to companies with no interest in developing products or protecting their business. These companies sole purpose are to weaponize the patents, they're Patent Trolls. Using the same strategy as companies with defensive patent portfolios, Patent Trolls seek to extract settlements (extort money) from companies by suing them with all the junk patents they can. The patent trolls are immune to counter suit because they produce nothing. Thus companies must either invalidate each junk patent or settle. Often settling is the path of least expense. |