Patent Law

Time for a Change

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

I read it on the World Wide Web; it must be true. The patent system is broke. Patents are being bought by fake companies who are not even doing what the patent is for. Then, these fakes, make what they call shell companies, like seashells, nobody home, with no real business but patent monkey business, sue companies that make the products we all love. These shells, scum of the earth, are acting like trolls. They are patent trolls. Wow. I like the sound of that.

Something must be done. "Whack-a-mole a la patent troll" sounds good. That "a la" part sounds French. Classy.

Let the Supreme Court rule that trolls can't stop a company from infringing. Money should be enough for these lowlife. But only spare change, like the gutter-crawling beggars they really are.

Make everything obvious. If Joe Six-Pack were a genius, there wouldn't be any patents. So, have the Supreme Court decree that there's this incredible creature that knows everything from the past, and can whip up anything from the past like it was nothing. The Supreme Court can say that ideas are like Lego blocks; you just snap them together. Those Supreme Court guys are smart, especially that sarcastic guy with the Italian name that looks like he was in the Sopranos. Call the know-everything creature Obzilla, like some crazy creative creature from the black lagoon. If a patent troll can't out-think Obzilla, no patent.

Pass laws outlawing patent trolls. Hunt them down, like... trolls.

Make the trolls count, down to the penny, exactly how much the novelty they have. Only the percent of the sales dough raked in that can be attributed to the novel part of their so-called invention, adjusted for inflation and phase of the moon, before they can even think about getting one red cent.

Don't let patent trolls go to court anywhere but Alcatraz. Then, only let baboons live on the island, wearing robes, so the trolls will be fooled from a distance, while rowing their boats to the island to file their crappy complaints, that the baboons are judges, outside for some fresh air. They won't be able to tell the difference. Judges look like baboons anyway. At least the one who sent me up upstate for a stretch did.

Don't forget publicity. Get some pointy-heads to study patents and declare they stink, and they smell even worse if a patent troll wiped himself with it. Law professors, real respectable, like Mark Lemley and Michael Meurer. They write like they know what they were doing, even if you can't follow it because it don't make no sense. Makes my head hurt.

Make Obama president. He's got that Lemley guy on his team. Obama's got lots of experience. He could run with Obzilla - the Big O ticket. They'd wipe the floor with that old fart who got brain damaged from being in a cage for five years during the Vietdamn war.

Get big tough corporate guys who know shit like shineola (they are the same, right?). Let them lead a patent troll goon squad. Make people think it's good, like Fox News, fair and balanced. Call the patent goon squad something powerful like "Bunch Of Corporate Guys With More Money Than You'll Ever See For Patent Fairness." They could strut around in paramilitary uniforms and BIG shiny badges, carrying truncheons with little troll-head tops. That would be cool. Hire those Iraq freedom fighters who ran Abu Ghraib to show the trolls what real novelty feels like.

Telling the same lie over and over makes it true.

I'm tired, and my head hurts. Would you guys pay me for writing this now, please?! You said you would.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on April 01, 2008 (boomark / email).