Morinville on "hunting a comic book character – a patent troll"

Paul Morinville wrote:


To slay the patent trolls, since 2005, virtually every significant change to patent law has had the by-product of increasing the risks and costs for inventors. The America Invents Act did this in 2011, and now, four years later, we are told the patent troll problem has worsened and we need to pass the Innovation Act, which would further raise those risks and costs. The result is that the solution is creating a new problem.

I have invested tens of thousands of my own dollars and many years of my life in my inventions. It turned out I was wrong to feel safe talking to big companies. The big companies I met with in search of a partnership just stole my inventions and, using their financial and market power, saturated the market with infringing products and ran me out of business. And that was before many of the recent changes that have weakened the patent system even further.

Our nation’s patent policies are going the wrong way, and this is severely damaging our innovation economy. We need to strengthen patent rights, so patent pirates know the patent can be enforced and the price of infringement is high. They need to know any inventor can assert his patent rights and can win.



link: http://www.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/guest-commentary/guest-commentary-patent-reform-could-be-end-of-invention/article_a43716d7-e676-5471-a8a4-7a6ae6615560.html