Week 5 EOC: Patent Trolls

You can't really expect much from a patent troll, these are people who's job it is to find people who are using patents that in most cases have expired. In other words they are trying to take a shortcut and no pay to refresh it. This is viewed as a form of stealing, which is against the law. The article by the Wall Street Journal points out that, "patents have a life span of 17 or 20 years. To keep them valid, companies must pay maintenance fees every four years. Once they expire, the holder is expected to remove the numbers from products." Simple enough right? Not for the ones wanting to spend a little less. Patent trolls are performing a worthwhile service though and they believe it themselves, "Every plaintiff who brings one of these cases is a private attorney general who is doing a service to the United States, and I'm doing the same," says Mr. Stauffer, a lawyer in Roseland, N.J." However all these cases can be seen as a waste of time, money, and resources because these aren't hurting anyone, or causing damage of any kind. The fact that so many of these types of cases exists tells us there's a lot of people with too much time on there hands. Take Mr Tompkins for example, he heard about all the court rulings so, "He and his wife then spent hours poring over Internet advertising to check for outdated patents on products, a process that can be relatively simple because patents are numbered chronologically." Makes it sound simple enough that anyone can do it almost, but you do have to know what to look for. Perhaps hiding the patent numbers a little better will keep the trolls away.

Original article: 

New Breed of Patent Claim Bedevils Product Makers By DIONNE SEARCEY