News - Tech behemoths back Microsoft in patent standard change

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Big players’ bid to make infringement standard defendant-friendly.

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Read more.

Oh wow look at that long list of supporting monopolies/duopolies.

I'm guessing the current law is just fine.

TBH, if monopolys are struggling with patent infringement, then either their R&D investment is lagging, or other companies are deliberately trying to make money by patenting ideas that are too broad.

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Originally Posted by Lucio

... or other companies are deliberately trying to make money by patenting ideas that are too broad.

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I believe this is the crux of the matter. It seems like you can patent just about anything in the US, as long as a patent doesn't already exist. There've been several high profile cases over the last couple of years where I've read about an alleged "patent" infringement and wondered how it ever got registered in the first place. It seems to be this is just about working out where to draw the line.

And whilst you can be as sceptical as you want about the large companies backing this move, don't forget that they'll all have patents registered too and the move would affect their ability to pursue patent infringements too...

Patents in general need a worldwide overhaul.

You should, at least, be required to make use of the patent during its protection period, either yourself or by licensing it to others, rather than sitting on it to prevent others using the same idea.

This is particularly important when people patent processes as its often the only way to do something and people will come to the same method even without reading a patent document.

The whole purpose of patents is so that others can see what youve invented and either improve it or pay you to make use of it themselves, not so you can horde them for litigation purposes.