Thread: Copyright Trolls, Not Just for Patents Anymore

Patent trolls sit on patents and do little with them. These trolls only come out of their caves to enter a court room with the aim of cashing in when they consider someone has infringed on their ‘property’. This attitude has now spread to copyright, with artists being sued for infringements on songs that are 20, even 30 years old.

Copyright is often seen as protection for artists and other creative individuals, but more realistically it tends to protect those with the deepest pockets. Even big name artists are now getting hit with copyright violations, and the oft-quoted “what about the artist” mantra is becoming less relevant through the prism of modern day music copyrights. Artists are being sued for using small audio samples in popular works, sometimes even decades after the infringing work was published.

Earlier this year, the Australian rock band Men at Work were ordered to hand over 5% of royalties for their most famous song ‘Down Under’ after a judge ruled that the flute riff in the song was based on 1934 composition ‘Kookaburra’.

Of course, the infringement was so great that no-one noticed until a TV music quiz show brought the idea into peoples heads – 28 years after the song was published. If it really was a large infringement, then it should really have been noticed 28 years and hundreds of thousands of copies earlier – or at the very least when it was performed at the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. But all that time, nobody noticed.

These belated lawsuits are happening more often nowadays, and not just down under. In the US, a company called ‘Drive in Music Company’ (DIM) has been adopting the same sorts of tactics over the last few months. The company sued a slew of people over a Super Bowl advert for Kia, with The Hollywood Reporter listing targets for that one advert alone as “Kia, CBS, the NFL, ad agency David & Goliath, Ninja Tune Records and various other parties”.

While that particular suit was filed in a timely fashion, the same outfit has now started on a case that has a strong resemblance to that built against Men at Work. DIM is now claiming infringement on a song that’s old enough to vote.

Cyprus Hill’s ‘How I Could Just Kill a Man’ was released in 1991 as part of a double single as well as their debut album. As with most of their albums, the band uses samples from a number of songs in their own tracks. One of these samples comes from the song ‘Come on In’ by Music Machine that was released in 1966, and that’s the subject of the lawsuit brought on by Drive in Music Company.

source Copyright Trolls, Not Just for Patents Anymore | TorrentFreak

I think there is a lot of confusion in the public on what patents are and how they work.

Patents simply stake a claim... all it is, is a paper trail so that the original author(s) can be compensated. There is nothing criminal about breaking one and the courts don't punish those who do break them; instead, they "logically deduce" what royalties the company would have paid if they respected the patent... and reward those royalties to the original author. In other words, if you make 1 million dollars breaking a patent, the court isn't going to jail you or fine you more than the profits. (One exception is when breaking a patent damages the reputation of the company/product, but that deals with trademarks, not patents).

The reason for this is simple. Our government wants to ensure original authors are compensated but don't want companies to be discouraged from making products, hiring employees, etc. Thus, ideally, patents simply steak a claim that help facilitate the courts in determining proper compensation; without patents, the courts would have a nightmare establishing the original author.

Practically, patents do discourage companies since the courts are incredibly expensive. Simply put, no company is going to report back to their shareholders that they are investing in a product... which may or may not turn a profit after patents are resolved. But realistically, we need some system that allows people to claim original authorship... but practically, it is impossible to screen out legitimate patents from frivolous ones.



Honestly, there is no simply solution. One thing that been proposed, which I read in the WSJ, would be creating patent-specific courts. In other words... a court for pharmaceuticals, a court for software, a court for music, etc. By having courts specialize.... you have a much more informed court that can quickly and efficiently determine the validity of any patent claim... thus reducing the cost and length of court trials.