Talk:Patent pirate

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[edit] Merge to patent troll Disambiguation or redirect to patent infringement

Can't we merge "patent pirate" into "patent troll"? It seems that only in the 19th century the meaning was different. --Edcolins 11:51, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Ed, "patent pirate" has been consistently used up to the present date as a pejorative term to describe one who deliberately infringes an early stage broad patent. A 2005 report by Georgia Tech, for example, quotes a 1933 text as follows:
2. The main concern driving academic patenting is represented in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Committee on Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks 1933 report on patent problems which quotes Hoskins and Wiles (1921): “There is at large a type of engineer commonly called a “patent pirate”, who thrives by monopolizing the practical applications of the abstract discoveries of others. The patent pirate is a menace to industry and a parasite on the community. Nothing would so hamper his activities as to have the real discoverer take out broad patents in every case.” (as cited in Mowery & Sampat, 2001a, p. 784). [1]
Hence I feel that the commonly accepted usage of "patent pirate" is very different from "patent troll". In the past few years, however, "patent pirate" has been used to mean patent troll in some circles.
to see how patent pirate has been used over time, you can google "patent pirate" YEAR Where YEAR is a year in question, such as 1950, 1960 etc.--Nowa 20:45, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Nowa, I googled the expression "patent pirate" and indeed "patent infringer" seems to be its most widely used meaning, but this meaning is not the only one used. IMHO, the article should either become
* a disambiguation page, pointing towards (1) patent infringer, (2) patent troll and (3) user of submarine patents (for the meaning "patent troll", see for instance [2] [3], for the meaning "user of submarine patents": see for instance [4] [5]), or
* a redirect to patent infringement, with a note towards the other meanings in "patent infringement" (you'll probably prefer this second option, I guess).
If you accept the second option, I think everything you wrote could fit in the article patent infringement (one section could be called "patent pirate" for instance). It would even be better to have such a centralized, comprehensive article about all aspects of patent infringement, incl. defense against patent infringers, sometimes called "patent pirates". I don't think we should have an article specifically dedicated to "patent pirate" (which returns only 724 Google hits [6], compared to 124,000 hits for patent troll [7]). --Edcolins 19:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Ed, your points are all well taken. I particularly agree that we should avoid unnecessary replication of information or fragmentation of topics. Thus, were it not for the fact that a separate article is being devoted to the term “patent troll”, I would be happy to see the article on “patent pirate” reduced to a mere mention of an example of a pejorative term used to describe a patent infringer. But as you correctly point out, pejorative terms used to describe patent antagonists are receiving a lot of use these days. At the present moment, a great deal of hostility is being devoted to those that enforce their patents. Based solely on Google hits, one might erroneously conclude that this is the way it has always been. My goal in developing the patent pirate article is to show readers that public sentiment can also be equally hostile to those that willfully infringe patents. If you can see a better way to do this that balances the coverage given to pejorative terms in general, I would be happy to support it.--Nowa 01:04, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi folks. I've a couple of thoughts to drop in to this discussion. Is this a primarily US-centric term? I say this because (a) I haven't heard it on this side of the pond, & (b) the concept of wilful infringement doesn't have the same importance in Europe as in the US. I don't think this article sits very well on its own - it will be difficult to get enough context into it to explain the relevence without bloating it to a large article on a small subject. I have a couple of thoughts - merge it into patent infringement as a small mention, or what I think may be preferable (but involve more work) would be to create a new article, something like abuses relating to the patent system (but probably less POV that that title) and gather topics like submarine patent, patent troll, patent pirate etc into it - then some general context can be given. That feels like a good way of centralising material to avoid overlap and confusion. None of the articles are very big and so the article shouldn't be too long to work. Kcordina Talk 08:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Ed's proposed disambiguation scheme - concepts should generally be described under the most formal and technically correct designation available, with disambigs or redirects pointing less formal designations to that page. BD2412 T 19:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I have created the disambiguation page, with references to make clear that the expression may have different meanings, especially today. Nowa, I agree that back in 1880, the expression may be much clearer. Nowadays, it is not so clear anymore IMHO. The original subject-matter of the article has been moved to patent infringement and it requires cleanup there. --Edcolins 20:32, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Established meaning

Is there a clearly established meaning for "patent pirate"? It seems there isn't. The definition given in the introduction does not match the one given in the section "Neologism". --Edcolins 11:51, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

See the above discussion. --Edcolins 19:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)