Bonum Certa Men Certa

Obama Administration Misuses the 'T Word' (Troll) to Dodge Serious Issues

Perpetual siege: Only the large corporations always get their way

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney



Summary: Failing to see how patents themselves actually distort the market for everyone (not just some large corporations), Obama wants to wash his hands with legislation that will resolve nothing and legitimise the notoriously unsupervised patent regime

The debate about privacy notwithstanding (it's not quite a partisan/political issue, as the policy was actually put in place by Bush/Republicans, then expanded by Obama/Democrats), we must focus on the ongoing progress when it comes to patent monopolies. Just before the whole press got flooded by PRISM coverage the White House said it would target patent trolls [1, 2, 3].



Patent trolls are a bit of a phantom enemy, or an enemy to large corporations. Well, this is why they are being tackled by the government which is funded and run by large corporations, directly or by proxy (lobbyists).

According to this recent post, a troll is targeting some large corporations again -- the hallmark of a true troll. To quote:

On June 4, a patent holding company named PatentMarks Communications LLC filed patent infringement lawsuits in the District of Delaware against a slew of electronics companies. The companies accused of infringement include at least Dell, Futurewei, HTC, Kyocera, LG, Motorola Mobility, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and ZTE. (The complaint against HTC [LINK here] is exemplary). PatentMarks — who is the assignee of six U.S. patents, according the USPTO — accuses these companies of infringing U.S. Patent No. 8,400,926, which is titled “Multi-Protocol Telecommunications Routing Optimization” — and which just issued as a patent on March 19, 2013. The ’926 patent generally claims an optimized method and system for transferring files over a telecommunications network.


A lot of the companies above are Android vendors. It's hard to miss that. Pamela Jones asked: "Now do you see why the President wants to retrain patent examiners on the topic of making sure claims are specific to the invention and not as broad as a Nebraska sky? This patent just issued in March."

What about the targets of litigation?

Anyway, trolls are not the main issue, never mind the support for Obama from large corporations and their lobbies. Expectedly, patent lawyers are trying to get their views in sites syndicated by news aggregators, contributing to a mixed debate where both 'sides' do not speak for the public at large, just for minority interests in business. Here is another example of the Android leader (Motorola/Google) getting sued and extorted massively over software patents. Therein lies the issue: patenting scope.

At the same time we find lawyers bickering over sales of patents as if that's a good idea when we see companies like Microsoft arming trolls like Vringo and MOSAID. One lawyers' site reveals this:

New Patent Exchange Hopes to Be Nasdaq for IP



Are companies ready to buy and sell patent rights the way investors buy shares of stock?

That's the idea behind a new financial exchange, Intellectual Property Exchange International Inc., that launched Wednesday with the aim of creating a standard marketplace for patent licenses.

The Chicago-based IPXI is structuring the licensing process like a public equity offering, bringing familiar financial principles and standards to the murkier world of patent licensing by assigning values that are market-driven and transparent.


This is what we find in Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft's biggest patent troll. Will Obama tackle the real issues based on market realities rather than broad generalisations and simplified classifications? Trolls are a symptom, not the problem. The President of the OSI agrees on this and I might be meeting him tomorrow.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Disputing the Achievements of IBM's CEO, Who Already Terminated Many Jobs at Red Hat (Which He Had Allegedly Suggested Buying)
Buying a company to gut it within about a year?
 
Gemini Links 15/10/2024: Magic of Radio and Misfin-Server 0.5.9
Links for the day
[Meme] No Choice, No Reuse, No Effect
Let people throw away tens of billions of batteries each year and charge them too much for this 'convenience'?
Markets Without Fair Competition and Effective Regulation
There are many examples where a lack of true choice encourages cartels
IBM Bribery Scandal in China
IBM has a long history of bribery and other crimes
XBox Turmoil Continues, Head of XBox Game Studios Resigns After Less Than One Year
There are many signs that XBox is dying - something that many sites have predicted for a while
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 14, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, October 14, 2024
Links 14/10/2024: One Year Since Activision Blizzard Demolition 'Officially' Began and Amazon Corporate Layoffs Accelerate
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/10/2024: Dabbling in GemText, Unit Testing
Links for the day
Links 14/10/2024: Keeping Multiple Blogs, Wrestling With Misinformation
Links for the day
[Meme] Class of Microsoft
"Everything started with Microsoft DOS!"
History Education and Rejecting Creation Myths
The creator of Linux isn't the creator of GNU/Linux
Microsoft's GitHub is Losing Traffic, Based on an Extensive Web Survey, and Its Future is Uncertain
Remember that Microsoft keeps close to its chest the operations and finances of GitHub (because it's embarrassing!)
How to Follow Our Updates About EPO (or Everything Else for That Matter)
follow us via RSS feeds
EPO Administration: Wait Several Months or Until Next Year for Clarifications
"After the intranet announcements of 18 September and 27 September and recent emails from CIGNA concerning opting into the VECOZO network, colleagues have been contacting us with queries and requests for guidance."
[Meme] Shoestring Budget With Record Profits (Because Hundreds of Thousands of Fake European Patents Get Granted)
Record profits? EPO staff does not benefit!
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 13, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, October 13, 2024
Unrest at the European Patent Office as School Costs Eat Away the Income
"Letter to the administration on the Education Allowance - DISDH - German School"
Gemini Links 13/10/2024: ArcMenu, Emacs decide-mode, Midnight Pub Mass-Deletion Option
Links for the day
Links 13/10/2024: Science, Politics, and Some Gemini
Links for the day
Links 13/10/2024: Writing, Remembering John Wheeler, Voice Cloning
Links for the day
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Falls to 0.7% in Geminispace (It Was Around 12% Just 2 Years Ago and 7.5% This Past February)
Let's Encrypt is down again
Gemini Links 13/10/2024: Self-hosting Snac2 and Invasion of e-ink
Links for the day
SDxCentral, which the Linux Foundation Paid to Produce Marketing SPAM, Has Now Become Slop (LLM Spew) Disguised as 'Articles'
Google should delist it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 12, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, October 12, 2024