The Myth of Patent Reform by Anecdote

"At last, some data on patent litigation," writes Solveig Singleton, at the IPcentral weblog in his description of an excellentDecember 2, 2005 presentation by Peter Detkin, Managing Director, Intellectual Ventures entitled Patent Reform: Winners, Losers and Prospects...And Myths excerpted below. When defined in the presentation as non-practicing entities in technology, "'Trolls' are only about 2 percent of patent litigation."

In Mr. Detkin's view, the "good troll v. bad troll" hypocrisy abounds simply because some defendants hate the thought of not being able to countersue product-less plaintiffs for infringement. "If you don't have a culture to respect patents, [then] troll = plaintiff," he notes. In fact, the lesson that he draws from this and other data in the presentation is a bit more guarded. "Patent reform is important," but "cultural issues [are] still dominating [the] discussion." It would be "irresponsible to change [the] law based on anecdotes."