The president vs the trolls

• Autores: Paul Marks
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2921, 2013, pág. 24
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Marks discusses a series of measures that pres Barack Obama hopes will finally end the scourge of patent trolls. The term patent troll is slang for a firm that buys up obvious patents that the US patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) should never have granted in the first place. The troll then "asserts" these patents by threatening to sue businesses that infringe them. Many will then settle out of court and pay an often business-crippling licence fee. In 2011, Boston University's law school estimated that dealing with patent trolling cost businesses in the US $29 billion. Obama says the cash should have been spent on generating products, services and jobs. So the White House is asking Congress to force the USPTO to narrow the scope of patents within the next six months so that whole fields of endeavor cannot be trolled. Obama also wants to prevent patents being asserted against the users of technologies, like coffee shops, rather than manufacturers.