(via
Slashdot) An article
on CNET covers congressional hearing on patent trolls. Leading the charge against patent trolls: Amazon. My favorite part of the article
"Could not Amazon.com be accused of being a troll for patenting the one-click?" Smith asked, a wry smile on his face.
Misener defended the patent as "a radical departure from the shopping cart model" when it was granted in 1998. "We only exercised the patent against someone who at the time...had publicly announced intention to crush our business," he said. "This wasn't some scheme to hit up small users."
Yeesh. Apparently a patent troll is everyone else who wants a patent except for you. While I'm generally in favor of patent reform that would make patent trolling more difficult, it is pretty clear that the legislation is being pushed by large companies that want to preserve their own ability to garner monopoly through patent, while making it harder for the little guy to do so. This isn't surprising, and it is the main reason why patents should be eliminated. As long as they exist they create an enormous incentive for rent-seeking, and the big guys are always going to win that game.
I just don't see how software patents are ever going to help the little guy. I've been reading some of Richard Stallman's essays, and came across this that I think describes the situation accurately:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/stallman-patents.html
The scenario is like this: Suppose there is a brilliant designer of whatever of whatever. Suppose he has spent years starving in the attic designing a new wonderful kind of whatever and now wants to manufacture it and isn't it a shame the big companies are going to go into competition with him, take away all the business and he'll "starve". [...] But it is conceivable that somebody could have an idea and this idea along with 100 or 200 other ideas can be the basis of making some kind of product and that big companies might want to compete with him. So let's see what happens if he tries to use a patent to stop them. He says "Oh No, IBM. You cannot compete with me. I've got this patent. IBM says let's see. Let's look at your product. Hmmm. I've got this patent and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one, which parts of your product infringe. If you think you can fight against all of them in court, I will just go back and find some more. So, why don't you cross license with me?" And then this brilliant small inventor says "Well, OK, I'll cross license". So he can go back and make these wonderful whatever it is, but so can IBM. IBM gets access to his patent and gets the right to compete with him, which means that this patent didn't "protect" him at all. The patent system doesn't really do that.
Software patents are terrible.
