““Patent trolls” are entities that own patents that they use not to further innovation or manufacture a product but to conduct a kind of legal extortion racket. ”
Letter to the Editor
NY Times
October 28, 2015
letters@nytimes.com
In reply to “The Patent Troll Smokescreen” of Oct 23
infringers and their paid puppets’ definition of ‘patent troll’:
anyone who sues us for stealing their invention
Can you say dissemble? All this talk about trolls and so called ‘patent reform’ is just spin control by large infringers and their paid puppets to cover up their theft. If you tell a lie often enough and can dupe others to repeat that lie, eventually it is accepted as fact. As Mark Twain said, ‘truth is not hard to kill, and (that) a lie well told is immortal’. Those who use the amorphous phrase ‘patent troll’ expose themselves as thieves, duped, or doped and perpetuate the lie.
It’s about property rights and jobs. When government fails to uniformly and justly enforce property rights they contribute to the wealth and power of the well placed few, suppress the ability and rights of the rest to make better lives for themselves and their families, and support giant monopolies that enslave and impoverish the public and commandeer the government.
The patent system now teeters on the brink of lawlessness. Call it what you will…patent hoarder, patent troll, non-practicing entity, shell company, etc. It all means one thing: “we’re using your invention and we’re not going to stop or pay”. It’s a pure red herring by large invention thieves and their paid puppets to kill any inventor support system. Their goal is to legalize theft. For the last several years now they have been ransacking and looting small entities taking everything they can carry. The fact is, many of the large multinationals and their puppets who defame inventors in this way themselves make no products in the US or create any American jobs and it is their continued blatant theft which makes it impossible for the true creators to do so. Invention thieves well know many inventors lack the resources to enforce their patent rights so their only recourse is to sell to or ally with others who do have the resources. Otherwise, large invention thieves just thumb their noses at you and steal at will. To infringers the only patents that are legitimate are their own -if they have any. Meanwhile, the huge multinationals ship more and more American’s jobs overseas.
Property rights should not only be for the rich and powerful. America’s founders: Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and others felt so strongly about the rights of inventors that they recognized and affirmed those rights to their creations and discoveries into the Constitution.
From ‘Section 8 – Powers of Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;’
They understood the trade off. Inventors are given a limited monopoly and in turn society gets the benefits of their inventions (telephone, computer, airplane, automobile, lighting, etc) into perpetuity and the jobs the commercialization of those inventions bring. For 200 years the patent system has not only fueled the US economy, but the world’s. If we weaken the patent system as have Congress and the courts since Mercexchange, we force inventors underground like Stradivarius (anyone know how to make a Stradivarius violin?) and in turn weaken our economy and job creation. Worse yet, we destroy the American dream -the ability to prosper from our ingenuity for the benefit of our families and communities. To kill or weaken the patent system is to kill all our futures. Show me a country with weak or ineffective property rights and I’ll show you a weak economy with high unemployment. If we cannot own the product of our minds or labors, what can we be said to truly own? Life and liberty are fundamentally tied to and in fact based on property rights. Our very lives are inseparably tied to our property.
Prior to the Supreme Court case eBay v Mercexchange, small entities had a viable chance at commercializing their inventions. If the defendant was found guilty, an injunction was most always issued. Then the inventor small entity could enjoy the exclusive use of his invention in commercializing it. Unfortunately, injunctions are often no longer available to small entity inventors because of the eBay decision so we have no fair chance to compete with much larger entities who are now free to use our inventions. Essentially, large infringers now have your gun and all the bullets. Worse yet, inability to commercialize means those same small entities will not be hiring new employees to roll out their products and services. And now those same parties who killed injunctions for small entities and thus blocked any fair chance at commercializing now complain that small entity inventors are not commercializing. They and SCOTUS (Supreme Court) created the problem and now they want to blame small entities for it. What dissembling! If you don’t like this state of affairs (your unemployment is running out), tell your Congress member. Then maybe we can get some sense back into the patent system with injunctions fully enforceable on all infringers by all patentees, large and small.
Those wishing to help fight big business giveaways should contact us as below and join the fight as we are building a network of inventors in each state and their allies to lobby Congress to restore property rights for all patent owners -large and small.
American Inventors for Justice 