fr33bird

"use" means you bring SOME manifestation of the patentable innovation to bear. you have to be able to point at an implementation. that means 99% of the patent trolls will bugger off because none of them wants to do any real work anyway, and more to the point, they would have no idea how.

there's nothing saying you even have to have intentions of using, marketing or giving away the implementation...but you have to demonstrate that you are actually have the capacity to create an innovation, not just churn out whitepapers to tax others who actually will implement.

absolutely agree 100%.

as would anyone who has spent any nontrivial amount of time dealing with the absurdities of our IP system...these people would understand, for example, there are entire "think tanks" that sit around doing nothing all day but cranking out white papers wherein some open standard is extended by a trivial 1%. then they wait for anyone using that open standard, and they pounce based on the extra 1% of trivial and NEVER IMPLEMENTED "innovation".

the people suing here aren't garage innovators. they are law firms that buy IP from bankrupt companies. they are whitepaper mills whose only purpose is to publish a proposal for every conceivable use of technology. thats it. then they wait and watch for victims to appear. THEY DON'T BUILD ANYTHING.

i don't think the casual HN reader understands how bad it is. if you ever hit 5 million/year in revenues, you likely will. an envelope will show up at your office detailing the infingement for something trivial, so trivial you will think its april fool's day. what won't be trivial is the amount the law firm wants to charge you to "license" the patented "innovation". and to be sure, the law firm is not representing another innovator...oh no, the law firm owns the patent themselves. its a huge cash cow now for law firms. they buy patents or arrange to have patents issued from patent-mills. then they just shake down anyone they can. frankly most people who have dealt with this stuff just see it as a shake-down, and they either pay it just to move on, or they move their business to a country that is not so hostile to innovators. if you think US law favors small innovators, WAKE UP