Do a Google search for "patents are killing innovation" and you'll turn up more than 6 million results. Patent trolls, people who sit on a patent without actually contributing to it just so they can sue companies that do, have long been a problem in the tech industry, but a new law would force these squatters to pay the legal fees in a court case, if they lose it.
A study found that patent trolls account for 61 percent of all patent disputes, TechCrunch reports, but the Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act has been widely praised by the tech industry as a step in the right direction. Bob Goodlatte, who helps to set the congressional technology agenda, says that he wants to “to focus on reforms to discourage frivolous patent litigation and keep U.S. patent laws up to date.”
Alexander Poltorak, CEO of the General Patent Corporation, argues that the SHIELD Act would be used to intimidate patent owners who don't have the backing of an enormous corporation. He said in his op-ed for The Hill that people overestimate the number of frivolous lawsuits.
Although the SHIELD Act may help to prevent frivolous lawsuits, it doesn't actually solve the problem of patents infringing on innovation, says Erik Kain at Forbes. "Patents should cover the narrow definition of theft, not the broad definition," he writes regarding intuitive controls such as the slide-to-unlock feature that Apple invented, rounded corners on a rectangular phone as it accused Samsung of copying, or the pinch-to-zoom function. He purports to be a big fan of "competitive collaboration," which is based on copying someone else, and then innovating on their creation.
What large corporations such as Apple, Samsung and HTC are doing now is fighting for the market, and patent squabbling wastes huge amounts of money that could better go into research and development.
"It's one thing to claim that you created something you did not create, or to copy something someone else has written or invented without giving due credit," Kain writes, "It’s another thing entirely to see a clever idea someone else has created and say 'I’m going to use that, and I might even change it in such and such a way to improve it.' "
