Long ago I had some ideas. I took 5 patents and extended them in major industrial countries. They were all delivered. It meant a lot of money invested. My idea was very simple: replace electric switches by optical switches.

As I had worked for the government, I had many connections with the major companies of my country. Before they were published, I managed to get several meetings and had them signed non disclosure agreements. This is not easy at all! In fact, I discovered that companies were not so keen about innovation (destructive power of creation - Schumpeter). This was long ago. I do not know if they have really changed.

The department of defense showed a real interest because I told them I could build intrinsically Tempest computer keyboard with my technology. They learned everything from my small company and finally concluded the market with one of the big firm (bigger = safer and more serious) that had signed a non-disclosure agreement with me two years before.

I discovered the case (classified - national defense). A I told this company that I had the know-how and suggested that we cooperate. They treated me very badly. I started a law suit against them which lasted 10 years, which destroyed them and which I won .

In the meantime (5 years after the beginning of the law suit) I managed (high relations at the governing level) to compete with them before the Ministry of defense. They had the money (huge research market). I had the know how (2 prototypes bought). The comparative Tempest showed a 100% success for my company and a 0% success for them. This killed my technology because the administration cannot be wrong.

I also managed (through Presidency of the Republic - not less) to present a Total Safety Plug to the Research Labo of the leading electric plug company of my country. This worked with our safety optical switch (Called Switchop) connected (connectors called Clickop) to an electric plug through optical fiber (Plugop). I spend a day with them in Limoges. I showed them the tests made on Switchop (including a test of several billion manoeuvers without one error).

At the end of the day, I was told that everybody had been very strongly impressed and that they would like to see me back as soon as possible to start working together. I called the Director of research the next day. He told me they had deliberated and that “it was not in their strategy”.

We had invented many other products. We had tested a small optical microphone (Microp). It was of course undetectable. I did not have the opportunity to show it to anybody.

I stopped the optical research and gave more time to the President of the Association of European Inventors who had asked me to become his personal adviser. I discovered that my case was not exceptional. That this was the general situation of “independent inventors” in Europe.

I worked during more than 10 years as personal adviser to this great President: Mr. Georges Herrmann. We finally discovered that patent was not necessary to own a creation. Patents are just a proof instrument sold by the administration, giving a time stamp and a none certifying examination.

Inventors think that when the patent is delivered, their idea starts to have value. This is not the case. Patents are mirage agitated by the “Establishment” to get the inventors publishing their ideas. Patents are very expensive. They are mainly used by big companies to draw their borders through minor technical details.

The Establishment also says that idea have values and are of free use. This is not the case either. My President and I discovered that literary, artistic and scientific ideas are protected by global laws (see the answer I have already published on this subject on Quora).

Just before he died, the President Herrmann suggested me to write a standard in order to implement these global laws. That is what I did and I will publish it soon.

I know you asked for firsthand accounts but no one wrote any answers in 2 months, so I will relay what I heard today from a professional patent troll who gave a lecture on intellectual property. I am not a lawyer and so I do not know how much of the following is true.

Basically he said that companies labelled as patent trolls are not usually evil people trying to patent everything and make a ton of money. For the most part they are helping the little guy who cannot do anything to prevent a bigger, well financed company from stealing his IP. The reason he got into this business was because he had patented an invention many years ago and hired a company in Taiwan to manufacture his product for him. He had patented it in the US but not Taiwan. That company, made a marketing materials that looked like his and sold the products they were supposed to make for him, completely cutting him out of the process. When he confronted them about it, the head of the company told him, "when a lion eats a lamb, it is the lamb's fault for being weak."

The best he was able to get from them was royalties but because he was so far behind them to market, his company never got off the ground. Instead he was labelled a "patent troll" because he was a non-practising entity (NPE) who was suing for patent infringement. Now he works to make sure that other people do not get taken advantage of.

He presented it very nicely, and mentioned a dozen times that inventors should not take it personally. Big companies calculate how much they are going to have to pay for infringing on someone else's patent and it is all part of the business. In the US patent infringement is apparently not a criminal act, it is purely civil and so it is all about money. So if someone infringes on your patent, you should go to one of these patent holding companies and work out a deal to get the infringer to pay you licensing fees. If you go to a big company as an individual, chances are that you will never be able to compete with their team of lawyers, but these PHCs have experience dealing with this legal space.

I had never thought of it that way, it certainly makes things confusing for me as an inventor.

Eric Truebenbach has summed up the answer and question perfectly. Patent trolls can be best described as ‘Patent Holding Compony’. Sometimes they (Trolls) are also referred to as non-practicing entity, patent assertion entity, non-manufacturing patentee, patent shark, patent assertion company & patent dealer.

One of the best example is a case between then (Research in Motion) RIM v NTP. Now a days RIM is known as ‘Blackberry’. In this suit that was finally settled in 2006 RIM (Blackberry) paid NTP in full settlement 612.5 million USD. In case of RIM-Blackberry, the troll NTP is non-practicing entity.

These actions are perfectly legal. These things happen due the very way patent law functions. As patent is a monopoly- limited in time, is also a monopoly limited by claims. The scope of your patent/s is defined by what you have claimed and its applications. These assertions are broad as they try to claim or maintain control over the technology by assertion that it belongs to applicant. At the same time the claims are definite to have strict control.

However, while prosecuting the patent every applicant – preferable via his attorney always try to control technology area more than it claims by showing an expanded area that is equal to or analogous to what is patented. Whereby making the patent broad and denying technology space to next follow on invention. Another way to achieve is to build collection of patents described as ‘Patent Portfolio’.

Many of the trolls do have a large collection of patents. This broad basis allows the troll to launch claims against other patents by charging infringement or validity of the patent/s itself.

These actions are not the traditional actions taken by concerns in usual way of trade. The concerns that are normally associated with this type of action are not companies engaged in active manufacturing or in trade with production of patented article. These concerns also try to enforce patent claims above and beyond claims.

Trolls act as more like Speculators. Where return on the investment – that is law suit if successful is considerable. The trolls are considerably active in buying patents either from inventor/applicants or in bankruptcy proceedings where they can have easy pickings of technology patents. Simply because companies going out-off business are not in position to put up much fight for their patents and negotiate for better price.

The next infographic is based on arsetechnica report in 2015.

In the absence of IP to protect your competitive edge, be sure to out-execute and out-perform your competition in terms off product usability, features, value proposition. Are there ways in which you can keep innovating and out-pace your competition? Can you increase efficiencies in your manufacturing and distribution? What do you do better than anyone else, and how can you stay ahead of your competition?

Basically, you’ll have to really focus on the usual business fundamentals of focusing on making products that your customers will buy at a price that will give you profits. Nothing exotic.

Hope this helps.

god let’s hope not

The simple answer is no—you cannot patent an idea for an invention. The invention itself has to be produced or a patent application containing the invention must be filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). While all inventions start with an idea, not every idea can be called an invention.

That aside though, why my comment?

In a global economy, there are 7,796,919,907 people earth.

There are 195 countries

I can’t even find a reasonable count but there are something north of 100,000 governments in the the world; organizations that make laws (not national governments alone, obviously).

So, based on the # of people, the odds that your idea is original is some fraction smaller than the odds that there is intelligent alien life in the universe.

Not sure I phrased that properly… so let me restate it this way… I’ll be my life savings that there is intelligence life in the universe over your idea being original.

7,796,919,907 OTHER people.

What you’re proposing is not only that you alone have an idea but that you should be able to make it illegal for anyone else to do anything with that idea unless they pay you.

That practice needs to die.

Too, because, forget the thousands of governments, let’s just stick with the 195 countries… who’s law reigns supreme?

Say you could get a patent in the United States. Do think China gives a damn? Or flip that idea… say North Korea patents something… do you think the U.S. shouldn’t (or wouldn’t) allow someone here to develop the idea??

There is a notion in startup communities that “ideas are worthless.”

This is an important point of view to appreciate because at the end of the day, patents only empower very few while severely handicapping innovation and putting every one else in the world at risk of violating something.

Now, don’t misunderstand, I support copyright, trademark, and patent of DEVELOPED WORKS. People who DO it, who MAKE it, should be protected a bit in order to be valued for that development.

But the ideas?!?! People who sit on patents and do don’t anything with them are predators in our economy. The entire model needs to be torn down and revisited. Ideas can’t be patented at all; bottom line. But patent reform in general is severely needed.

You have an idea? Do it. Make it. Build it. OR… socialize it and pass it on so that those can, can and do.

Footnotes

True patent trolling has nothing to do with the amount of diligence you have done prior to creating something, it has everything to do with using the patent laws to engage in modern day extortion.

I have been on the receiving end of two patent infringement cases in the last year, and they both would fall into my definition of 'patent troll'. In both cases, a company blew the dust off of an old patent, identified 40-100 companies that have a product that in some way could be seen as possibly infringing and hired a legal firm to go after them for a piece of the action.

In both cases, the suing company did very little if any actual diligence to determine infringement, and in both cases all attempts to actually prove that we didn't infringe were ignored. In both cases, the patented idea had never been implemented in any way. The 50+ companies swept into the legal action all had some product that at very cursory examination might have something that could infringe. In both cases, several hours of diligence on the part of the suing company would easily prove that there was no infringement. The problem is, they had no interest in whether you actually infringe.

In these cases, the objective is to grind you down until you get so tired of paying legal bills that you will just pay them to go away. It can cost anywhere from $50K to $100K just to do the very minimum to avoid falling into a deeper legal pit, and you are out this money before you can ever present your case, which is usually ignored. They will sit down and entertain settlement offers only after you have been ground down.

If you get angry and decide to fight the whole thing, you quickly find yourself in a position of spending $200K in legal fees to save paying a much lower settlement. Usually you figure this out after your legal bills begin to mount and you end up settling anyways.

Three of the four parties involved win. The troll wins when you settle, their legal firm wins because they get a piece of the action when you settle, and your legal team wins because they get the billable hours.

This is nothing more than modern-day extortion in my opinion. These cases all seem to be filed in a specific court in eastern Texas that has a very generous view of the patent process and favors the troll. I'm have not figured out what is in it for eastern Texas, but they have specific laws that make all of this possible.

It would not be difficult to write laws to prevent this kind of legal extortion. Requiring implementation of a patent would be one way. Requiring more up-front diligence by the troll and allowing some response from the party being sued prior to a case being accepted would be another. If these few laws were passed at the federal level, the vast majority of patent troll cases would never be filed.

Neither of the two cases I am involved in even came close to being an actual infringement, we were just swept up with the other 50+ companies

First, be clear exactly what do you mean by patent trolling. The term gets used by all kinds of media these days and generally when that happens there are a number of definitions that ends up being used and these definitions are not equal to each other.

If you mean patent trolls are simply non-practicing entities that own a patent, there is absolutely nothing that can be done to prevent that in the US nor should there be. Just because you own a patent does not mean you should be forced to practice it. Many times inventors come up with an idea that might work in the marketplace, so they apply for a patent. After applying for their patent, they may try to test their invention in the market and just simply find that there isn’t a market for it. Should they be forced to lose money to continue to produce an invention that no one wants?

If you mean patent trolls are companies that aggressively sue other companies for patent infringement even when there is no patent infringement and they know it, this is a challenge, but how do you prove that the company fully knows that there is no patent infringement? There are steps taken by some states against filing baseless lawsuits, and this is probably the most realistic route to prevent this kind of patent trolling. This way, companies that engage in this aggressive lawsuit filing will have to think more carefully and perhaps do more due diligence to be sure there is a high chance of actual patent infringement. The downside is that anti-lawsuit penalties can lead to the need to create more companies that specialize in patent infringement lawsuits, as the bigger corporations with their stacked legal teams will overpower any small company that would try to fight them in the lawsuits. So your intention of preventing patent trolling would just result in the need for smaller companies to band together and become these patent trolls to even have a chance in court if the penalties get too high.

Despite what others have said here, patent trolls are real. They are entities that own patents but do not practice them, have no intention of practicing them, and exist only to threaten others with legal action. The patents the trolls own may or may not be valid, or relevant to their targets, but they are generally close enough that the cost of defending against a lawsuit is high. So the trolls threaten legal action against anyone who might be remotely close to infringing on the patent, and collect settlement fees from people who think a payoff is a better bet than defending against a lawsuit.

Owning a patent but not practicing it is perfectly legal. It’s even used by people who do practice patents. They may have found a better way later, or they may want to draw a larger circle around their field of practice by patenting less-good but still valid technologies. There is nothing illegal or immoral about this.

What is arguably illegal is filing a frivolous lawsuit, or threatening a lawsuit, against someone who you don’t really think is violating a patent. This is what patent trolls do. They legitimately own the rights to a patent, but they assert it against a large number of companies who they don’t even think infringe on it. This is illegal in some states, and others are adopting laws against it.

I have no idea what you mean by “applying for a patent giving them ownership.” Patent trolls own a patent: they bought the rights from someone else. This is a granted, and presumably valid, patent. Applying for a patent gives ownership to no one. Patent trolls buy granted patents. No one buys applications. And applications can’t be asserted against anyone.

I honestly think that the only way that we can reduce or eliminate patent trolling is through modification of the existing Patent laws in the US. To wit:

(1) Impose some form of practice requirement on patent filings, thus limiting the number of NPEs that are out there just waiting for someone to unwittingly cross one of their many patents;

(2) Limit or eliminate the patenting of "business processes" and software;

(3) Provide some form of "safe harbor" provisions protecting against inadvertent violations of someone's patent - perhaps limiting damages or something similar;

(4) Implement some mechanism of limiting damages in some or all cases to "actual" damages.

I think some combination of the above would go a very long way toward addressing the patent troll issue, and would foster innovation rather than stifling it because of fear of some later lawsuit.

Disclaimer:

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Applying for a patent doesn’t give anyone ownership of anything, but receiving a granted patent gives the applicant ownership of whatever concept the granted patent covers.

So let’s say you wanted to fix the patent troll problem, and your idea is to make it a requirement that someone practice their patented invention as a prerequisite to sue for patent infringement. Problem solved, right? Well…

Now you have to worry about unintended consequences. Here’s one:

Suppose there’s a guy with a brilliant idea — say, a cure for cancer, a faster microchip, or whatever. He does not have the resources to implement the idea, but he can easily take the reins at a company that does have the resources. Step 1, get a patent. Great, now his patent is pending, so Step 2: find a partner in industry.

Let’s say he’s very naive, legally speaking. He calls up his old buddy, an executive at MegaCorp, to talk about his idea. He tells MegaCorp all they need to know, including the key fact that his idea is patent pending.

The executive at MegaCorp steals the idea, making the calculated risk that there’s no way our solo guy is going to be practicing his invention in order to sue them — he doesn’t have the resources.

Okay, rewind the clock. Let’s say our guy isn’t so naive, and he realizes that his patent isn’t going to protect him. So when he calls up his old buddy at MegaCorp, he wants to sign an agreement before talking: that MegaCorp promises not to practice the idea that he’s about to disclose, unless they do so in partnership with him.

There’s no way in hell MegaCorp is going to sign that. First, they don’t even know what the idea is. Second, since they’re MegaCorp, they might figure they have enough smart people working on the problems that are important to them. They’ll work with other people, but not if it means abandoning the idea that they can discover whatever it is independently.

Either way, our solo guy is stuck. He has the idea, he has the patent application, but he can’t really get it off the ground.

This isn’t what we want out of our patent system. We want patents to be, among other things, valuable tools to help people raise capital and bring good ideas to market.

There are no definitions that don't catch too many people in its net, which was the main/only reason why all anti-trolling legislation has failed. Defining "patent troll" would be a fun project for Quora to tackle as only it could.

So let's try here, starting with a use case:

Photo courtesy Slworking2 on Flickr

Say you invent a water bottle that refills itself magically. Your natural competition is the governments of the world and the giant utility companies. You mortgage your house to get a good solid patent. You spend the rest of the mortgage opening a store. You're convinced that you could make this happen. But since you're the kind of scientist who can create a magic water bottle you're not naturally the kind of guy who thrives behind a counter in the mall. So you try to sell it to a major company. It takes you a year to get an appointment with anyone who can make decisions, and they don't get it. A month later you see they actually got it, but ripped you off because there are no statistically significant consequences to prevent a mega corporation from stealing from a lowly inventor. Now your water bottles are everywhere. The government announces its new idea, a water bottle for soldiers. You call some AM radio show to complain, because that's all you can think to do. They laugh at you, because you ain't nobody, and think of the soldiers. The internets are filled with posts about how this invention was obvious, or at least is now, about how even if someone invented it it should be given to the people, because of the interests of the world. The government should overturn your patent. How dare you invent this?! Heck, if we can go to war for "US interests" we sure as heck can commandeer one loser's idle weekend to save the children in Africa. You lose your home, your spouse leaves you, you can't buy food. All you have left of any financial worth is the one thing they can't take away--your patent. You could sell it for food money, or ironically you could come up with a few hundred thousand dollars to sue the government (good luck!)

This situation happens many times every day, and most people just opt to forget about their one shot and quit inventing. In fact, name me any inventor who hasn't been through exactly this.

But first, back to your options:

1. you can sell your patent to a water company, who as we know doesn't really need to buy it, so they'd just be buying it to ensure their compliance and to prevent their competitors. Wait, that makes them trolls. But it's not trolling when a company with product we all love does it, right? Okay,
2. you could sell it to a rich friend, who would just get it so he could try to open a water company because he'd be the only person with a government sanctioned monopoly--oh, but enforcing that would make him a troll. And it's everyone's favorite companies stealing from him, so that's okay, right? Or
3. you could find a lawyer who's willing to represent you for a percentage, and you'd sue them yourself. But you're not that type of guy, and besides, that makes you a troll. And every cool tech magazine would call you a monster and you'd never be employable in silicon valley again. Better to get an hourly job and hope you strike gold again.

The end.

So tell me what feels incongruous to you about that story, and we'll work it into the evolution of this definition, which I got from the wikipedia.

A patent troll is a person, company, etc. that holds and enforces patents in an aggressive and opportunistic manner, often with no intention of marketing or promoting the subject of the patent.

That definition above would more or less cover all 3 options above, leaving our poor inventor to die in the street because he went to science school instead of business school. Talk amongst yourselves...

Ideas are not patentable. Teachings and disclosures that present solutions in what is called a preferred embodiment for a method, product, process, or (new) use (for an exiting process or device) in commerce can be applied for. These types of patents form the bulk of financially-significant issued documents called utility patents; there is another class of patents that relates more to fine artistry, and they are called design patents (which have different, less-stringent requirements and rules).

To be patentable (as a product, process or use), qualified examiners must examine the patent application’s disclosure and claims and reach a conclusion that the patent application in its present form constitutes intellectual property that is all of the following:

• New
• Useful
• Not obvious to one skilled in the (prior) art

In a nutshell, a patent consists of a synopsis called an Abstract, followed by a surmisal of the present invention’s distinction versus all prior art/patents (prior art includes any published work, even devices depicted in catalogs, newspapers, magazines or videos) called Background. The Disclosure is usually closely correlated with a set of Drawings that give a visual depiction, while the Detailed Disclosure explains precisely how the device is structured and constructed and works.

The final key element is the section called Claims, wherein the inventor(s) make(s) legal claim to enumerated claims explaining what is unique about the invention in order to maintain rights as inventor(s) to make, use and sell the invention on their own terms.

Most patents are either created by engineers under the auspices of a university or the research and development division of a business, typically a large corporation. If the invention constitutes (a) “work for hire” meaning the inventors were paid to develop and apply for it, the organization paying them owns all of it. If it was developed and applied for by one or more individuals, they own their respective contributions in the proportions specified in the application.

Due to the volume of new patents constantly under examination, and the financial implications of certain significant (occasionally historically-significant, termed “landmark” inventions), the approval process if not prevented by formal interference or lawsuit(s), usually still takes a period of a few to several years to reach patent issuance, following the award of Approval (the key moment of official recognition when no interference is delaying issue) by the Patent Office.

There is also a significant presence of independent “kitchen/garage” inventors who do their work under their own auspices, often self-funded or privately so. But given the present situation where roughly only 10% of new patents are issued to individuals, the trend strongly favours well-funded corporations. But in 2016, significant meant only about 11%.

Due to the stringent requirements for submission format of disclosure (e.g., rules for drawings and internal classification/examination standards), there is typically a fairly costly process along with getting one’s patent application even Accepted for Examination, not to mention Approved.

There are also fees required to maintain each patent in force, called Maintenance Fees that accrue every four or so years for the 17-year life of the patent. The Filing Fee and Maintenance Fees amount to thousands of dollars in every case, and they are rarely if ever waived for proven cases of inventor financial hardship. These fees make the USPTO self-funding. I don't know how other countries’ patent office work, but I’m sure that they operate differently, and in socialist countries the process is quicker and less costly. Still there is no imprimatur more valuable on its face than U.S. Pat.

So if you're thinking of becoming an inventor because you have great ideas in your field(s), I suggest you also think of the rest of the process which includes all aspects of engineering, finance, production and marketing and realize that at any point a financially-challenged inventor may be unable to compete at the patent office much the same as there are barriers to competing in the marketplace.

Before submitting any patent application, do a careful and thorough patent search. If you find prior art that “reads on” your disclosure and claims, consider revising your invention or doing something else, because the examiners will surely locate all prior art.

It takes money to make money. In addition to solving problems with technology, learn to work with people. Especially people willing to support you and your work for good reasons. in capitalist countries, profit motives are not bad reasons. Every phase of a new product/production process development costs money!

The federal government is not eager to award patents to people for being brilliant inventors. Most effective patents are licensed or sold to a business that can do the other parts that engineers and inventors cannot accomplish alone.

Unfortunately, from my experience in dealing with several attacks from patent trolls, the best way to prevent them from starting a legal process that will tie up your time, dollars and ego is to negotiate a settlement as quickly as possible. In the vast majority of cases where a true patent troll is at work, a few thousand dollars will do the trick. The strip-mall legal firm handling these attacks will be getting a large percentage of the settlement so if they don’t have to spend any time and can make a few bucks, they will typically grab the opportunity.

The issue is your (my) ego. It is truly galling to pay these cretans ANYTHING, they are never in the right, slimy and the lowest form of legal representation. You will want to take them to the mat and prove them wrong and win in court blah blah blah.

Here’s what is going to happen. You will spend a ton of time preparing the documentation proving them wrong, proving that you DO NOT violate whatever patent they are throwing at you. You will submit it, and they will completely ignore it. This is because it isn’t whether you violate some patent, they likely know you don’t. It is all about getting settlement dollars, and the longer you drag this process out, the higher the settlement will have to be. The only way to prevent paying them anything is to prevail in court, and this will take you years and probably 10X or more in legal fees that a settlement would cost.

They typically file these suits in a specific district in Texas that is very friendly to patent trolls. Almost impossible to get a dismissal. I know, I’ve been down there in arbitration trying to shake these guys off me. You can’t win unless you have very deep pockets and are willing to spend a ton to make a point. Their strategy is that you aren’t and they will grind you down. They don’t have to spend anything on legal fees, they are small-time lawyers and this is what they do to make a living. They have it all down to a process.

I spent over $75K in legal fees defending against my first one and made absolutely no progress, finally settled for about $10K a year or two later. Settle fast, make them go away. It’s hard to swallow but the cheapest way to get rid of them.

Keep it (as a trade) secret. Often this presents an issue at the commercialization phase.

You can ask those parties you may need to progress ‘the idea’ with to sign a Non-disclosure agreement (“NDA”).

Written notes can be introduced in evidence at a later date, it is a good idea generally to record these in a bound journal, making a note of the date of the meeting, who it is with and key points, that you can follow up with minutes of the meeting.

You can create your own ‘records of invention’ ideally these should be date-stamped by an independent party. I often send mail to myself with a date stamp (along with a copy document by signed for mail to the disclosee).

The realist (cynical) answer is “because it works”.

In the wake of Apple v. Microsoft, which essentially threw a lot of the basic concepts of GUI design and human interface devices into the public domain (because Xerox gave them away to Apple, Microsoft and a couple other companies with no expectation of confidentiality or partnership), the tech industry in the US, at risk of being forced to insulate completely with each other with no standardization or information sharing for risk of losing IP rights of any RFC to the public domain, pressured Congress and the USPTO to change the rules for patent protection from “first to invent” to “first to file”. Had this rule change been in place as of Apple v. Microsoft, Apple would have won the case and Microsoft could well be out of the OS market, because Apple was the first to apply for patent protection of the technology gained from Xerox, and the fact that Xerox actually invented it would be immaterial unless Xerox had explicitly released the knowledge into the public domain. The change allows inventors to be more certain of who “owns” IP.

The flip side, however, is that patent applications do not require a working prototype. They simply require a description of the patented idea in enough detail to know what is being protected and what might be different enough to be a new idea unrelated to any patented one. That means that people with enough savvy in the tech world and in patent law can file patents for conceptual ideas that they have no hope of implementing with their own resources, but when another company implements the idea, they're infringing on it and owe the patent holder money.

This turns the patent system into a speculation market; small firms can perpetuate their existence simply by filing patents for ideas in various subject matter, basically spending the filing fee and the legal expenses to compile the paperwork as a bet that this patent will be infringed in a big way by a big industry player within its 17-year validity period. The industry conglommo then gets caught with their pants down; the small firm had a patent on the concept, their most popular new product line infringes it, they can’t afford to pull the product or to re-engineer it to be non-infringing, so they end up settling for “licensing fees” at a net profit to the patent holder of millions or billions of dollars.

Sure, they can be fought. You can argue the patent is too broad in scope (you can’t, for instance, patent the idea of immunostimulant drugs in general, even if you’re sure you have developed the only way such a drug can be made). You can argue the patent itself is “infringing” on older patents (in other words, that someone else not only invented it, but patented it years or decades before the troll got to it).

Perhaps the most intuitively valid argument, however, hasn’t worked very well so far; you can’t generally argue in a legal proceeding that the plaintiff suing you is a patent troll. The fact that the IP holder does not have, and in fact never had, any plans to develop the idea into a marketable product is legally immaterial; they proved to the USPTO that they had the idea before you did, therefore it’s their idea and their property to do with as they please, including to sit on it until the patent runs out.

It may sound extremely intuitive and common sense that patent holders should be expected to develop and market their patented ideas for the overall good of society. But the reality is, IP is protected and then buried all the time. It’s extremely common in related copyright law; someone writes a book or a screenplay with subject matter similar to something a studio already has in the works. Rather than have to fight that potential movie at the box office (think White House Down vs. Olympus Has Fallen), the studio will buy the author’s work, or at least the film rights, and then put the manuscript in a vault where it won’t see the light of day for decades if ever, in order to protect the film they’re already working on. Should the “patent troll defense” ever become a valid legal tactic against a patent infringement suit, the analog in copyright law would become extremely difficult for many of these same businesses finding themselves having to deal with patent trolls.

Contracts, contracts, contracts. This includes the Invention Assignment Agreemeant mentioned by Brandon, and non-disclosure agreements as mentioned by Brad.

Keeping your aim secret like Brad mentions can be counter-productive, in that if the folks working for you know the aim, they may come up with better ways of reaching it. For this you need to have some sort of a bonus structure, to make it worth their while to contribute everything. If you don't, you may find them patenting a better version of your idea...

Contracts MUST be beneficial to both parties. If you treat the people working for you badly, they will treat you badly, and that can have a negative impact on the value of your future patent. If you treat them well, the reverse will occur.

If you have a valuable idea or invention but lack a patent or manufacturing capabilities, you can still monetize it in several ways:

1. Sell or License Your Idea

• Idea Licensing: Pitch your idea to companies that might be interested in licensing it. They handle production, marketing, and distribution, and you earn royalties.
• Outright Sale: Some companies may buy your idea for a one-time payment instead of ongoing royalties.

2. Use a Provisional Patent Application (PPA)

• A Provisional Patent gives you a one-year window to market your idea as "patent pending" without a full patent investment.

3. Find a Strategic Partner

• Collaborate with someone who has the manufacturing, funding, or business expertise to bring your idea to life in exchange for a revenue share.

4. Crowdfunding

• Platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundMe can help raise funds to develop and market your idea, even without a patent.

5. Sell Market Research & Insights

• If your idea solves a real problem, companies might pay for your market research, concept validation, or consumer insights related to it.

6. Freelance Consulting or Speaking

• If your idea is part of a broader industry trend, monetize your expertise by offering consulting services, workshops, or speaking engagements.

7. Leverage Online Content

• Create a blog, YouTube channel, or online course around your idea or expertise, earning money through ads, sponsorships, or paid memberships.

8. Competitions & Grants

• Many companies and government organizations offer innovation challenges, grants, and contests where you can pitch and win funding.

9. Trade Secrets & Non-Patent IP Protection

• If your idea is a business method or a unique process, consider keeping it as a trade secret instead of patenting it.

Would you like help identifying companies or platforms that might be interested in your idea?

You can reduce your risk by ordering an Infringement, Freedom to Operate, Right to Use, Clearance type patent search from a search service. I recommend National Patent Services. See National Patent Services.

They quote the cost at $1,500+, which isn't bad. You can look at the patents they identify and see if any of your anticipated products they are covered by the patents the search uncovers. In particular, look at the independent claims.

If need be, you can design around patents that are close to your anticipated products. That's what the big players do.

The risks you run are that there may be recently filed patents, not yet published, that you may infringe or the search might miss a key reference.

If you need help interpreting the patents, try a small firm or solo practice, which usually have lower rates than high profile national firms. Inventors familiar with the patent process may be able to help as well.

And also, file patent applications for your technology. These add value to your company and are useful in defending against infringement suits.

Disclaimer:

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No. And even if there were, it probably wouldn't do you any good.

There's a pervasive idea that all you have to do is get a patent, and you're guaranteed to get-rich-quick. It's a lie. Just like every other get-rich quick scheme. You're better off buying a lottery ticket. In all probability, you still won't get rich, but you'll have spent a whole lot less time and money in the process.

I call this the Idea-Reward Fallacy.

Ideas alone do not beget rewards. Even hard work does not necessarily pay off. The only thing our capitalist economy truly rewards is risk. All risk carries a chance of loss.

If you're not willing to risk your own time, effort or money to develop your idea into a product, then why would anyone else?

The problem with the notion of inventing something, getting a patent and then "finding a company to commercialize it" is that you aren't providing anything of value. No offense, but your idea probably sucks. Most of them do.

Turning any idea, no matter how good, into a successful product requires a trial-and-error process of building, customer testing, revising, and re-building. That process takes time and money. Spending time and money on something with an un-certain outcome is risky.

No one is going to pay you for the privilege of taking all of the risk of building your idea. Build it yourself or forget about it.

My co-founder and I did it in our first startup.

Neonatal breathing circuits for prem in the NICU were made with hard tygon tubing which virtually anchored the babies in the closed incubators and they couldn’t be moved much or they would be extubated.

Hence, we figured out how to make miniature flexible corrugated circuits. Along the way I designed all the miniature fittings & temperature probes to make it work well. Nothing was unique enough by itself to get a patent.

But when we added up all the variations NICUs wanted with different length tubing and different options, we had many dozens or more of circuit designs.

Our competition tried to have just 2 or 3 designs and in the end could not compete. So they did what they could and bought our company!

There is always ‘more than one way to skin a cat.’ Look. Recognize. Dream. Imagine. Improvise. Invent. Do it.

The following is another story on the subject that has been published very recently (which, actually, I have just read today). It is a story by Gil Elbaz about his company Factual and their dramatic fight with the company called Locata. Please read it here: Beating Back the Patent Trolls — NewCo Shift.

While I liked (and upvoted) the story, I was curious enough to visit Locata's website and relevant Wikipedia article, before labeling them a Non-Practicing Entity (aka "patent troll"). Perhaps, I'm mistaken, but the company (at least, the main one, Locata Corporation) doesn't seem like an NPE to me, considering documented deployments of their technology. I'm not making any conclusions, since there is not enough information on the topic, but I felt that it's important to "hear the other side".

When I worked as in-house patent counsel for a computer manufacturer, our first rule was to ignore any demands printed by dot matrix printers (humor). Seriously, it depends upon the policy and culture of the target company. Some companies are happy to be practical and pay assertions, no matter how baseless, if the amount demanded is below a certain threshold. Others simply will not give in to ANY demands of an asserting party until and unless a thorough examination of the adverse intellectual property indicates that it is valid and enforceable against the target. Even then, some targets will still litigate if the risk/benefit analysis indicates the probability of a positive outcome.

You cannot sell something that you do not own. The idea of patenting is to protect an inventor for his efforts spent on developing his idea and converting into a an application.

Remember, not just an idea but the concrete demonstration of that idea in a tangible form, with truly distinguishing features that are unique and innovative to the idea.

Just an idea, without it's practical demonstrations in a tangible form cannot be patented. Communism or capitalism, they are political ideas but not something that can be patented.

However, science and its applications in the form of technological tools is patentable. Purely idea within the realm of science can't be patented, unless you can translate that science into a workable technology, subject to its novelty and uniqueness.