The broader threat of patent trolls

This entry will stray a bit outside the bounds of being strictly about podcasting, but will start in that realm.

For some time, well-known podcasters were backing and helping promote the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to fight off patent trolls, companies formed solely to attempt to capitalize on patents by stretching the definition of what patents actually cover. Patent trolls were suing popular podcasters or sending them cease and desist notices, claiming they owed licensing fees for the use of a patent that supposedly covered the practice of podcasting, in what any reasonable observer would say amounted to extortion.

The patent trolls were dealt a disabling blow in April 2015 when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office invalidated Personal Audio’s patent on podcasts because podcasting is “prior art,” meaning information or technology that was already publicly available and not a trade secret.

EFF is still fighting a much more pervasive and broader battle against patent trolls, however. Podcasting was only the tip of the iceberg, apparently.

Universities’ research, funded directly from federal and state grants that come out of citizens’ tax dollars, typically produces patented technology or biomedical discoveries. The trick is that some of these seeming innovations are akin to “prior art.” Universities actively market their patents through technology transfer departments. Third parties can buy these patents and profit from them – legitimately, by producing the technology, medication or other products derived from the patented material – or illegitimately, by taking the patent troll route.

Now, even in the legitimate route, one could argue that the public deserves some royalty or licensing income for contributing to the funding that made these discoveries possible. The counterargument is that society benefits from the innovation and discoveries – and that is the payback, which does make sense, now that I’m writing it.

As the EFF cites, though, patent trolls have taken questionable patents, like one from Stanford University on a natural amino acid, and used them as ammunition to sue workout supplement manufacturers. As John Oliver once related in an episode of “Last Week Tonight,” supplement makers aren’t the most ethical bunch either, but being able to extort any industry on flimsy claims of ownership is also wrong.

The point I want to make is that this phenomenon is exactly the sort of thing that should spark constituent and citizen demands to legislators and governments, since it’s public money supporting extortion. For more details on the story, I encourage you to check out EFF’s background article.