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The broadest patent trumps the rest in terms of market control even if they may co-exist in law. | 457 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
No it doesn't - but...
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 12:01 PM EDT
The broadest patent means that the inventor of the improved mousetrap *has* to
license the over-broad "all mousetraps" patent in order to be able to
make and sell the improved mousetrap. The "inventor", in exchange for
a functional patent on the idea of trapping mice, can set license terms that
take a large chunk of the profits from those who invented actual mousetraps.

That seems (pardon the pun) patently unjust.

MSS2

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The broadest patent trumps the rest in terms of market control even if they may co-exist in law.
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 03:00 PM EDT
The only real use of patents is in the fact that their power
can be applied to exert control of the market. The broadest
patent trumps all other narrower patents in their ability to
control the market.

The broad patent holder can ask the less broad patent holder
for royalties or can block the less broad patent holder from
exploiting his invention.

The reverse is not true - unless two conditions are
satisfied:

1) The broad patent holder decides to actually produce a
mousetrap - unlikely since the owner can just sit on his fat
ass and extract as much royalty as he asks for from every
mouse trap maker for twenty years, for doing absolutely
nothing, and
2) The broad patent holder infringes on the narrow patent.

There is no incentive for the broad patent holder to cross
license. Instead he can act as a non producing entity and
insist on one way payment from the narrow patent holder even
if that invention is the one that is far more useful, or in
the case of a monopolist like Microsoft, they can use it to
enforce exclusion of competitors.

Hence, even if a number of patents for mousetraps can exist
at the same time, the broadest patent trumps the others
economically and it terms of control of the market, even if
it is trivial and worthless - simply because it can be used
to block everything else.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Lol - Prove it
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, June 07 2013 @ 08:21 PM EDT

Patent X is 100% read on patent A.

What I mean by that:

    Patent A is broadly worded, so everything claimed in patent X from the smallest claim to the largest whole - A covers!
Perhaps you can explain how patent X is granted when it should totally fail the prior art evaluation.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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