MAL

I propose a new acronym for the lexicon. Recently, Google purchased Motorola for 12.x billion dollars. I say this is strictly for the patents. Why? Well, Apple and Microsoft get a portion of every Android phone because of patten lawsuits. Now, Google has all the patents from Motorola and can use them to fend off patten law suits by other companies who compete with them.

MAL: Mutually Assured Litigation. You want me to pay on your patents, I'll make you pay on my patents. This is how companies are going to defend themselves from patten infringement from now on.

Right now pattens are being used to quash what I would call legitimate competition. They are also used in a sort of camping scheme where a company buys up and creates pattens that are based on obvious and expected advances in technologies. They then sit on the pattens until someone comes along and tries to make money with the patten. The patten camper then springs the trap and makes the innovator pay even though the camper did nothing to help the innovation happen.

The way to fix Patten camping is to have some sore of use it or loose it clause in the patten laws. There needs to be a balance in place to prevent a race to an Assembly line with the crappiest venison of whatever innovation can roll off the belt in to a box, but people should not be aloud to simply patten and wait in the shadows stroking their lawyers.

The rules for patten enforcement must be fixed. If no one is able to do anything except twiddle their thumbs because of pattens preventing them from doing so, someone will win a patten on twitting your thumbs.