Why Patent Reform is so desparately needed
Two firms begin suing the entire LCD industry asserting that at least four patents are being violated.
This is clearly an attempt to cash in on the hard work of others. Let us assume for a moment that Guardian and Honeywell do indeed have patents that are being infringed. I’ve been using products with large dot-addressable LCDs for at least ten years. Active Matrix has been around for at least 8 of those years.
The time to file these complaints was 8 years ago. But, the technology’s future was uncertain then, why spend the money to get in on the ground floor. Wait until it takes off, and then cash in on ten years of stored profits!
This should be illegal. At the very least, it must be argued that these companies knew that their patents were being violated, and they did nothing. They didn’t even attempt to mitigate any continuing violation of their patent. No request for injunctive relief. No demands for licensing fees. NOTHING.
In my world, patent reform would have at least the following characteristics:
- A hard time frame for implementation or licensing of the patent
- A hard time frame for litigating against violators of the patent
- A requirement that injunctive relief be sought to prevent further damage to the patent holder until a court can decide the merit of the violation claim
Failure to do any of these things would result in the forfeiture of the patent to the public domain. If a patent holder decides to forgo the rigorous defense of their patents in the hope of making a much larger payday down the road, they should lose those patents.
Likewise, a patent holder that patents something with no intention or ability to produce it, hoping that someone else will either independently discover it or use their patent as a guideline to develop something similar, and again hope to sue themselves rich should lose that patent.
Some other time I’ll get into the concept of the “predatory patent”, whereby someone patents something that comes from an open forum, or public prior art, and then sues everyone in sight (hint: think RAMBUS).