Patent Troll Awarded $2.2 Billion Against Intel

Hey everyone, I came across this story and thought it would be interesting to share with everyone. The gist of it is that a company whose only business is buying old patents and prosecuting claimed infringements of them sued Intel for a cumulative $11 billion and this week a jury in Texas deliberated on two of the claims which make up $2.2 billion.

To me this story raises interesting questions about whether these sorts of lawsuits should be valid, or if not, what sort of prevention measures should be in place to prevent them. On one hand, inventors whose inventions are used in the future for a purpose that they were not intended for maybe should justifiably be compensated if their work is the basis for that future innovation, on the other hand allowing litigation of patents for tangentially related inventions likely stifles innovation. All together this makes me wonder whether patent law would benefit from a rule similar to the copyright ‘doctrine of independent creation’.