Verizon dan Google pada Selasa mengumumkan a global patent cross-licensing agreement that will cover a broad range of technologies. Perusahaan mengatakan akan menurunkan risiko litigasi paten sembrono di masa depan.
"[T]ia Johnny datang-belakangan pemilik paten tunggal dapat mengancam ekosistem yang inovatif seluruh,” Verizon wrote in a blog post describing the deal. The post also states that the arrangement will reduce the number of potential patents available to so-called patent trolls.
Kesepakatan itu mencerminkan tiga yang sebelumnya yang menandatangani Google dengan Cisco, Samsung dan LG awal tahun ini. Untuk Google, the goal of such deals is to show that cross-licensing is a better model than “patent privateering,” in which companies farm out patents to shell companies that then threaten to sue a broad range of targets.
Penyalahgunaan paten telah menjadi masalah yang sedang berlangsung dalam beberapa tahun terakhir, in part due to the millions of low-quality patents flooding the system, and due to economic asymmetries in the litigation process that favor patent plaintiffs over defendants. The end result is often that companies simply pay to make dubious patent cases go away rather than bear the cost of fighting them.
Posting blog Verizon juga mencatat bahwa lisensi silang dapat menjadi perlindungan terhadap "pajak inovasi yang troll paten sering mengumpulkan,"Tetapi menambahkan bahwa tindakan demikian tidak memadai, and called on Congress to pass patent reform.
While a reform bill called the Innovation Act enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress last spring, akhirnya gagal at the hands of Senate Democrats. The new Congress, yang akan dikendalikan oleh Partai Republik, diharapkan untuk meluncurkan ukuran dalam 2015.
Sumber: gigaom.com
