patent suits

Google, Verizon, HP, Cisco and some others are apparently teaming up to put money towards buying patents to keep them out of the hands of patent hoarders who would turn around and sue them.

This isn't a new concept, and has been tried before -- and it didn't help much. The problem is that many of the worst patent suits aren't from "known" patents, but someone claiming a patent on some minor feature that everyone thought was obvious.

IT News: "If Red Hat had taken the case to court and disputed the patents' validity, the company could have had the patent struck down thus preventing future litigation against open source projects that use similar technology, they argue."

Over the last year or so, we've seen two disturbing trends in enforcing patents. The first, is seeing patent holders suing a bunch of companies at once rather than just one or two, as used to be standard.

They do this because they fear that some type of patent reform is coming, either via Congress or the courts.

So they want to get as many patent suits in as quickly as possible.