So much for 'protecting' innovation and creativity (of firms that create nothing)...

Summary: Technology patents, and notably software patents, continue to be the big hole in companies' pockets (and the wet dream of patent lawyers)

AS EXPECTED when we wrote about it yesterday, the Unified Patents figures start making headlines. "Anti Software Patents" wrote "Tech 90% Patent Troll rate" and cited the original which is saying: "Almost 90% of High-Tech litigation continues to be NPE related (Figure 8). Extrapolating 1st half 2016 litigation to the full year would result in 4374 cases (Figure 11). All top 5 most frequent plaintiffs in 2016 were PAEs (Figure 16). PTAB appears to have reached a steady state of filings and cases pending (Figure 18)."

The EFF, in the mean time, starts a new kind of campaign which it compares to Open Access in academia. "When Universities Sell Patents to Trolls," says the summary, "Publicly Funded Research Is Compromised" (a subject we covered here before in relation to the world's largest patent troll, which is somewhat of a Microsoft assertion proxy).

Sadly, many patents that are granted to benign (and sometimes taxpayers-funded) entities end up in the hands of patent trolls that are often secretly connected to large corporations which exploit them for loopholes (cannot sue patent trolls in return or allege antitrust violations). ⬆