Mazda Motor Corp has joined the License on Transfer (LOT) Network, a coalition operated by a non-profit corporation LOT Network Inc. headquartered in Oregon, established to counter unreasonable patent litigation. Organizations or groups that do not develop their own technologies, but acquire patents from others and demand unreasonable licensing fees or settlement fees from third parties who use the technologies relating to the patents, have been termed "patent trolls," and LOT's main reason for being is to counter the efforts of such patent trolls.
"Even in the automobile industry patent troll litigation has become an issue that needs to be dealt with urgently," said Takahisa Sori, Mazda Motor Corporation's Managing Executive Officer in charge of R&D. "As more and more companies join the LOT Network moving forward, we hope that provision of high-quality products and services to customers is protected from patent infringement litigation based on unreasonable claims. Furthermore, we expect this initiative will improve the efficacy of the entire patent system."
Patent litigation has been increasing in recent years, particularly in the USA, and much of this increase is due to patent trolls. In July 2014, a group of companies, including Canon Inc. and Google Inc, established the LOT Network with the aim of reducing patent infringement claims by patent trolls.
If a member of the LOT Network sells a patent to a non-member organization, group or person, every other member of the network automatically receives a license to that patent. As a result, even if a patent troll attains the patent, they will be unable to demand royalties from LOT Network member companies.
© JCN Newswire
5 Comments
Login to comment
KnowBetter
These patent trolls need to be charged in court when they try to 'extort' the real firms that designed and implemented the technology.
A lot of you may not even know just how much the patent trolls end up costing us all in end consumer pricing. You may not even realize just what is even affected by these patent trolls. Sometimes companies will just refrain from 'paying the piper' in protest of the extortion but in the end it is us the end consumer who ends up paying the price because something that already exists will not come to market in some regions or at all.
Case in point that some maybe aware of are the colour printers that can print directly onto white CD/DVD/BluRay discs. In Japan, those have been sold to the end user since 2001~ ish but in North America they were not sold by Canon or Epson because of a patent troll. Epson gave in first a paid those extortionists but you can imagine what it did to the price of those printers.
Just think about how many other cool items out there not sold in certain markets might be really affected by these patent trolls and not because a company thinks it won't do well in that market. Makes your blood boil that some POS is holding a ransom over potentially cool and useful products that they did nothing to invent or invest in but just found out about and beat the designer to the patent application to make easy money.
M3M3M3
Difficult issue. One man's patent troll is another man's inventor/property rights owner. The unique problem in the US is jury trials and the potential for triple damages. In other countries the ordinary damages, even for willful infringement, often amounts to a compulsory licencing system.
However, you can't actually be granted a patent for an invention that you have seen someone else invent. By definition, your 'invention' would not be novel or inventive and therefore not eligible for a patent. Unless of course you added to the prior invention in some substantial way, ...in which case you might deserve a patent?
turbotsat
Hmmm.
Patent trolls.
Like Apple, suing Samsung for using design elements that appeared way back in 1968 in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29#Influence_on_technology_and_law
M3M3M3
That highlights another confusing problem in the patent debate. Most patent trolls are buying up legitimate technical inventions. However, the ridiculous Apple v Samsung type lawsuits in the US are usually about what US law calls 'design patents' which have nothing to do with technical innovation, just the look of the product. The rest of the world usually just calls these 'designs', not 'patents'. By lumping them in with 'real' technical patents, the public is probably more hostile to 'real' patent holders than they otherwise would be if we clearly kept the two separate.
gonemad
Well, there are always two sides to every question. What do you do when you are small company with some patents, which you offer for license to one of the large corporations. They chose to ignore you and use your invention in their products, assuming that you are too small to have the resources to fight them in court without putting your own business in danger. Then, one of your options is to sell your patents to the so-called patent trolls. You get at least some money, get rid of the risks and can focus on your key business. This is absolutely not an unusual case.
The problem is not the non-practicing entities, but rather the quality of the patent granting process. Especially the USPTO is known to be rather poor in terms of filtering out prior art or trivial "inventions" and it is based on deliberate political decisions, driven by the lobbies of the large corporations. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.