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Apple and Microsoft backed Rockstar flogs zombie Nortel patents for $900m

Michael Wojcik Silver badge

Simple middle ground solution: [blah blah blah usual rubbish].

IP is an asset. Encumber that asset, and you reduce its exchange value. Reduce its exchange value, and you make it infungible and unavailable as leverage to secure financing. That makes it harder for small inventors to get a return on their investment or realize their idea in a product, and reduces the return for R&D in larger organizations.

Making IP a fungible asset is critical to ensuring decent returns for R&D. It's often a large portion of the remaining assets when a firm goes bankrupt, and so a large portion of returning some money to creditors (including employees and suppliers and the like). It means securing a patent is a boost to the balance sheet. It justifies technology transfer from such non-troll NPEs as universities, and for major research universities that's a substantial source of income, and so both necessary for maintaining that level of research and a significant economic resource in the region.

All of the arguments against selling patents founder on the simple fact that being able to sell them is the better part of their value. Stop the sale of patents and you suppress innovation.

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