Last year I got a letter from a Florida attorney letting me know my options. My very small business had developed and sold a product for about 10 years. We weren't the first to create this novelty item, many had come before. We just did it a little differently. The competitors were all aware of one another and without discussion we crowded the field harmoniously. My options: pay a royalty or go to court.
The lawyer represented one of these competitors. In fact, this company copied our product, packaging and all, about five years after our debut. The buyer at a major retailer, whom I worked with, warned me in advance that this much larger manufacturer was about to enter the field. Apparently they also went out and secured a design patent, which they sent to me. Five or six other similar patents had been issued to other applicants over the past 20 years (talk about failure of government). My staff panicked. I decided to ignore the threat. Almost a year later, still no word. In some ways I welcome the phone call, if it comes (hopefully not, of course. I might see myself as a little bit of a badass entrepreneur, but I'm not totally delirious!)
App developers are the latest and greatest to ditch the dream of innovation and head for the exits. The fire on their backs - they're known as "Patent Trolls". The Guardian ran a piece on these under-a-bridge guys this week (no doubt upscale expanses located primarily in northern California).
App developers are withdrawing their products for sale from the US versions of Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market for fear of being sued by companies which own software patents - just as a Mumbai-based company has made a wide-ranging claim against Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and a number of other companies over Twitter-style feeds, for which it claims it has applied for a patent.
Software patent owners in the US have latched onto potential revenue streams to be earned from independent developers by suing over perceived infringements of their intellectual property - which can be expensive for developers to defend even if they are successful.
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Yikes. is this just another class of people making tons of money while not actually creating anything? This American Life devoted their entire program to the topic today. Pretty brilliant.
"It's quite reminiscent of scenes you see in movies when the mafia comes to visit your butcher shop and they say it would be a real shame if somebody else came and sued you. Tell you what, pay us an exorbitant membership fee and we'll keep you protected."
You can listen to the promo and podcast here:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
The technical difference between an official patent troll and my little troll was that my troll was actually making something, albeit a knock-off and then securing a patent in a predatory after-the-fact way. There are lots of ways to troll, and much of it is legal. Software giants are amassing billions of dollars worth of patents. As if the equivalent that's gone missing in Iraq isn't enough to keep you up at night. Remember a simpler time when we talked of corruption in terms of local and rip-offs in terms of millions?!