Have you ever heard of patent pools? Well, they’re pretty much what it says on the tin: a number of firms pooling all their patents that pertain to a particular technology. Many technologies – whether hardware or software – consist of multiple components, but the patents for each of these components could be held by a number of different firms. This is a bit of a problem, because if a company then wants to use that technology in one of its products, it has to negotiate separately with each of these firms to set licensing terms. And that’s rather cumbersome and time-consuming, and often means that hardly anyone ends up using the technology at all. Which is waste, hampers progress, and prevents inventors from actually making any licensing money. And that ain’t no good for no-one.
Therefore, what these firms then sometimes do is sit together and jointly agree to pool all their relevant patents, basically creating one organisation that becomes the central point for licensing the whole technology. Problem solved.
To read the original article: Patent Pools: Do They Kill Innovation? - Forbes
