Patently Wrong
The United States patent system needs a lobotomy. Or just stiff medicine.
Oddly, the big technology news of recent weeks wasn’t about technology at all. Yet again, it was about patent litigation, and Research In Motion’s (RIM) decision to pay a staggering $612 million dollars to avoid the threat of a court-ordered shutdown. Never mind that RIM didn’t infringe any patents and would have been vindicated had the judicial process continued; instead, NTP was able to hold millions of Blackberry users hostage to a bluff and collect a tidy ransom.
The outcome of the case is unfortunate. Sadly, the resolution is likely to only further entice patent trolls. And why not? The patent system in the United States is so broken that it actually encourages abuses. Patents aren’t vetted widely enough to ensure that only true innovations are awarded patent rights. Hence, dubious yet nonetheless” valid” patents muddy the water, allowing competitors and trolls alike to subvert other applications for patents and torpedo legitimate businesses. And unlike the rest of the legal system, an alleged patent infringer is seemingly guilty until proven innocent. It is often far cheaper — orders of magnitude cheaper — to simply settle a baseless claim than defend it. RIM CEO Jim Balsillie fought valiantly to avoid intellectual property blackmail; however, even Balsillie couldn’t refute the potential harm of his Blackberry service going black.
