Is The Troll Problem Overblown?

Gene Quinn, attorney with Zies, Widerman & Malek and custodian of the blog IPWatchdog, citing a recent Atlantic Magazine poll of Silicon Valley executives and tech experts, maintains that patent trolls are not the problem they are cracked up to be. He also argues that what passes for “patent reform” these days is essentially, and short-sightedly, anti-patent – and that the prevailing notion that software or process patents are not and should be patentable is part of the same problem. “The truth is there is nothing easy, trivial or inherently obvious about creating a piece of software that actually works. Anyone who says otherwise is simply not being honest, or they have convinced themselves by listening to propaganda that is aimed to mislead,” he says. In the Atlantic poll, 92 percent of respondents selected a number of other issues (“government regulation/bureaucracy”; “immigration policies”; and “education; shortage of talent”) as a more significant barrier to innovation than “the need for patent reform.”