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Judge Randall Rader Redefines “Patent Troll”

IMTFE judges



Summary: Rader defends patent trolls by extending their scope of definition to Microsoft and IBM

A few days ago we discussed the term "patent troll", which the trolls are hoping to redefine and thus escape. A leading story in the intellectual monopoly meta-industry would be these words[PDF] from Rader. According to one article:



He also said that the pejorative but popular term, “patent troll,” which is often used to describe entities who own patents solely for the purpose of asserting them, is “terminology of the Skeptisaur.” “Almost every IP owner has patents it doesn’t practice,” said Rader. “That term would also cast away universities and research institutions, who are some of our most important contributors.”

Instead, Rader defined a troll as “anyone – from IBM and Microsoft down to the smallest patent owner – who asserts a patent far beyond its value.”

The answer to this problem, said Rader, is to find a way of properly valuing IP early in the litigation process, so that the value of a particular patent cannot be too grossly inflated. “Maybe we can short circuit the troll problem by assigning proper value to patents,” said the Judge.


The above was found by the president of FFII, who also shares the following post on "how to get Software Patents in the UK patent office."

This law firm takes pride in finding loopholes to create harmful monopolies:

It is clear that patents offer greater protection over copyright and those computer programs which possess technical character should be protected as such rather than relying merely on copyright protection.


Copyright is sufficient, say programmers. Software patents are not formally legal in the UK, bar the Symbian case.

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