It already is a Prisoner’s Dilemma. You can patent everything and try to make other companies pay you for it, but if they do it you won’t be able to so much as design a microchip without violating a few thousand patents.
I’ve heard that they used to just agree to let each other use each other’s patents, but then some companies appeared that did nothing but make patents and sue companies that used them.
The big one was when Apple sued Samsung. The big companies aren’t supposed to sue each other, they’re supposed to just use patents to keep the smaller competition out. That broke the model.
I’ve heard it argued that smaller companies tend to either fail or get bought before they can be sued, and the suits against smaller companies are usually carried out by companies that have no product and make all their money by getting patents and suing people with them. For big companies, patents are more of a cold war most of the time. I haven’t looked into this myself, so I can’t say whether that’s correct, but it seems possible. What evidence do you have of big companies that are actually software companies, like Apple, suing small competitors for patent infringement? (I’m not trying to be argumentative, I just don’t know much about the subject and want to know what you know.)
It already is a Prisoner’s Dilemma. You can patent everything and try to make other companies pay you for it, but if they do it you won’t be able to so much as design a microchip without violating a few thousand patents.
I’ve heard that they used to just agree to let each other use each other’s patents, but then some companies appeared that did nothing but make patents and sue companies that used them.
The big one was when Apple sued Samsung. The big companies aren’t supposed to sue each other, they’re supposed to just use patents to keep the smaller competition out. That broke the model.
I’ve heard it argued that smaller companies tend to either fail or get bought before they can be sued, and the suits against smaller companies are usually carried out by companies that have no product and make all their money by getting patents and suing people with them. For big companies, patents are more of a cold war most of the time. I haven’t looked into this myself, so I can’t say whether that’s correct, but it seems possible. What evidence do you have of big companies that are actually software companies, like Apple, suing small competitors for patent infringement? (I’m not trying to be argumentative, I just don’t know much about the subject and want to know what you know.)
Sure. What I’m saying is that this seems to be a different Dilemma, built on top of the old one. :)