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0 pointsbdowling2y ago0 comments

> The more trolling they enable, the more money they get.

How do trolls pay anything to the USPTO? Usually the patents a troll tries to assert against others are purchased from others, often failed tech startups. (Note: People often forget that every “bad” patent was once someone’s startup dream. Edit: OK, maybe not every "bad" patent was once someone's startup dream.)

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cshimmin2y ago

I think your Note at the end betrays your misunderstanding of the situation. There are people who make it essentially their full time job to fill out junk patents and see what they can get approved. They are paying USPTO fees to make this happen. They then use the portfolio so built to extort actual practitioners, or they sell/trade portfolio items to other trolls. There was never any startup dream involved

pclmulqdq2y ago

If you look at the records of issued patents and which ones are owned by known "trolls," a very small minority of them come from this approach. Writing patents to anticipate future inventions is risky and expensive, and most of those patents will be worthless because a non-expert can't anticipate the technical direction of a field very well. Buying failed startups is cheaper and easier, and a lot less uncertain.

skrtskrt2y ago

Often involves buying otherwise-worthless IP from defunct companies with the sole purpose of using it to sue others

lend0002y ago

They encourage everyone else to patent everything that could be possibly be approved, regardless of value or intention to use in the business, as a defensive measure. This is the literal policy of every big tech company I've ever worked for.

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