Revisiting Big Tech's Patent Troll Boogeyman

Real Clear Politics ^ | August 9, 2020 | David Kline

[Pelham]

Late last month the CEOs of four of the most powerful tech companies in the world — Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Alphabet, which owns Google — testified before the House Judiciary Committee, which has spent a year investigating their companies’ alleged anti-competitive and monopolistic practices.

That’s quite a fall for Big Tech, which just a decade ago was viewed by Congress as an unalloyed social good. With every aspect of Big Tech’s behavior now under review, perhaps it’s also a good time to revisit its “patent troll” narrative. This is the notion, unlikely on the face of it, that somehow the richest and most powerful companies on the planet have become the “victims” of a handful of small-time bad actors using the threat of patent litigation to extort settlements and supposedly “stifle innovation.”

To be sure, a decade ago there were a few shady characters, such as the infamous troll MPHJ, who threatened mom-and-pop businesses with patent suits to extort cash settlements. But to the extent the patent troll problem ever really existed, it has clearly now been solved. Patent suits against Big Tech companies are down by as much as 50% compared to earlier in the decade. Meanwhile Big Tech’s revenues and market value have skyrocketed by 40% and 58%, respectively. Big Tech is hardly the “victim” here — each of the four companies testifying last month is worth more than the GDPs of all but the 16 largest nations in the world.

Nonetheless, Big Tech’s lobbyists have deftly deployed this patent troll narrative over the last decade to achieve what economists call “regulatory capture.” They secured the passage of the America Invents Act of 2011, got the Obama administration to appoint Google deputy counsel Michelle Lee as director of the patent office,

[Pelham]

"the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned as early as 2017, the PTAB “provides a channel for bad faith actors and injects a great deal of cost and uncertainty for patent owners.” According to an analysis by Josh Malone, policy director for the nonprofit organization U.S. Inventor, the PTAB invalidates 84% of patents challenged by Big Tech companies. Former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Randall Rader called the PTAB a “patent death squad.”

"Many of these PTAB challenges are brought by Big Tech defendants facing patent infringement lawsuits in federal court — including cases in which the courts already ruled that those companies had infringed the patents in question. Take VirnetX, for example, a startup that invented the “Jason Bourne” technology that allowed CIA agents in the field to make the kind of secure encrypted phone calls to headquarters in Langley depicted in the movie “The Bourne Identity.” VirnetX spent more than a decade proving in three separate federal trials and two appeals — all of them victorious — that Apple had used VirnetX’s patented technology in its FaceTime application. "

[SunkenCiv]

:^)

[Fungi]

I can remember this site during its inception and I listened to Hugh Spewitt at the time. Tom Bevan was a frequent guest, noteworthy for his begging for monetary support and his childish interviews--more hesitation markers than a dog in heat.

Good to see they are doing well and don't know about his interviews as Hugh Spewitt's show has been relegated to a time slot when no one can listen, and I don't. Mark Levin has supplanted Spewitt's show because he is better than that clown whose interminable joke concerning his "if I only had a producer" Duane Patterson, a cancer survivor, seems to be his only joke, one that lost its intent 10 years ago. Duane, quit putting up with his crap.

The moniker "Spewitt" is not mine, but from a Freeper on this forum. Cannot remember when I first saw it but it is supremely appropriate.

[scrabblehack]

Does the League for Programming Freedom still exist?
I thought their position was that Big Tech abused the little guys rather than the other way around.
LPF opposed the concept of software patents altogether -
copyright yes, patent no.

[scrabblehack]

Anyway they said some fairly trivial algorithms had been patented - things like the exclusive or algorithm.

[Nifster]

Yeah the good old chamber of commerce that lobbied for all the work visas tech could ever want

[Starcitizen]

Most traitorous part of big tech: the abject refusal the hire Americans, preferring Indian scumbags

[Pelham]

Hugh Hewitt has achieved the obscurity that he richly deserves. He tried his best to scuttle Trump's campaign for his GOP Establishment cronies and was exposed for the elitist fraud that he's always been. He's also weird as hell:

[Pelham]

This is perhaps the only time that the No Americans Need Apply US Chamber of Commerce has stumbled into being on the right side of an issue.

Once they realize what they’ve done I’m certain that they will reverse course.

[SueRae]

I had a good number of Virnetx shares and remember this legislation only too well. Apple stole it(encryption technology). They were found guilty. But then appealed to the PTAB and many patents overturned in whole or in part. Virnetx won a judgement against Apple recently but hasn’t yet been paid. Yes, they are still fighting...at a greatly reduced share price. Damn the lot of the 0bama administration.

[Pelham]

That’s been a 10 year legal battle. It would have been rolled up years ago if not for the PTAB star chamber created under Obama.

‘Efficient Infringment’ and the PTAB have done enormous damage to the value of American patents. In reality inventors and investors have no assurance that patents have any value at all.