Bonum Certa Men Certa

LOT Network is a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

LOT Network's Ken Seddon



Summary: Another reminder that the "LOT" is a whole lot more than it claims to be and in effect a reinforcer of the status quo

THE idea that we need to fight patent injustice by hoarding more patents was always a laughable one. The IBM-led OIN, for example, had us believing that it would somehow tackle the issue by making patents "defensive" (that can never be; it's just not how patents actually work).

There's an old saying along the lines of, to understand what an organisation stands for just check who's running it. At the EPO it would be Battistelli and at the USPTO Iancu, part of the patent microcosm.

"There's an old saying along the lines of, to understand what an orgnisation stands for just check who's running it."The LOT Network charm offensive and puff pieces aren't over yet. We're seeing Susan Decker's Bloomberg piece licensed and reposted even more than a week later; we responded to it a couple of times before and 3 days ago we saw Wayne Williams in Beta News issuing another belated LOT Network puff piece in which he said:

Ken Seddon is the CEO of the non-profit patent protection network LOT. The organization’s members include Google, Red Hat, Lenovo, Pega and other big players, as well as dozens of startups in areas such as transportation, blockchain, and software.

Startups are disproportionately impacted by patent trolls and we chatted with Ken about how a smart, assertive IP strategy can help protect their businesses.


"Startups"-themes nonsense is the typical thing we also hear from Battistelli's EPO. It's pure marketing, trying to quell dissent from those who suffer the most. LOT Network is led by Google, which has a massive number of patents; all the key members are large companies, not SMEs (the term typically favoured in Europe).

"LOT Network is no solution to software patenting; it merely perpetuates all the same problems."Ken Seddon the famous scientist (with an OBE) died earlier this year. The above Seddon, however, "drafted over 300 patent applications while at Motorola and Intel, and managed all US patent prosecution at Intel," according to his official biography (later today we'll remark about Intel's patent policy). He is also connected to IPO and AIPLA, two front groups of patent maximalists. They -- like Intel -- promote software patents. That tells us what LOT Network really boils down to. LOT Network is no solution to software patenting; it merely perpetuates all the same problems.

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Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock