People Don’t Understand Patent Law

PetaPixel reports: Patent Shows That Nokia is Working on Graphene-Based Camera Sensors. But a company need not ever make a working model or ever sell a product embodying patented inventions. (See How to Improve Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law for a suggestion to add such requirements.) Quite often companies file patents on ideas they will never pursue; an engineer might come up with it during a brainstorming session, and file it to get the patent bonus; the company files it to add to their stack of patents that they might be able to use defensively or for licensing purposes someday. (The “Productivity” of Patent Brainstorming; The Patent Defense League and Defensive Patent Pooling.)

I get that people don’t understand patent law. Not many people do. Not the engineer jury foreman in the Apple v. Samsung patent trial recently, apparently (Apple/Samsung Jurors Admit They Finished Quickly By Ignoring Prior Art & Other Key Factors). All the more reason that they should not be in favor of IP law—never favor a state law or policy that you don’t understand. At least be skeptical.