Seriously, when will all of this patent BS end? Notwithstanding all the Apple-Samsung nonsense lately, Gigaom.com is now reporting news of yet another troll hoping to capitalize on America’s nonsensical patent laws to extort millions of dollars from some of the country’s top tech companies.

The troll in question is Scott Moskowitz, owner of the rather dubious-looking Blue Spike LLC, who claims that several prominent companies (including Google, Facebook and a dozen or so others) are illegally using a patented digital water-marking technique of his that is supposed to prevent online piracy.

According to Gigaom:

“Blue Spike’s legal filings explain that Moskowitz is “a pioneer in this new field between cryptography and signal analysis” and say that the “signal abstracting” he invented is a novel way to detect unlicensed music, text and films on the internet.”

Some might say that this is fair enough – after all, Moskowitz did (apparently) invent the signal abstracting technique. But the fact is that all Moskowitz is actually doing is abusing the patent system.

A quick look at his company’s website confirms this view – Blue Spike does NOTHING but hold people to ransom. It doesn’t sell anything, it doesn’t have any clients, so what use is the technology to them, really? Blue Spike might hold the patents, but should this really give Moskowitz the right to demand payment from anyone that uses anti-piracy software, considering that he’s made no effort to market it himself?

A number of intelligent arguments have been made that say he shouldn’t, and indeed, these are the cornerstone of a new bill proposed to the Senate just last month.  The SHIELD act – Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes – basically argues that people like Moskowitz should forfeit their  so-called ”rights” to innovations if they don’t actually do anything with them:

“If a person or company files a patent lawsuit, and the court believes that the suit has weak credible patent usage, the person or company that filed the patent suit would have to pay for the legal costs of the defendant. So the SHEILD act would turn the once easy profit from patent licensing into a potential loss for the plaintiff if there is not justifiable damage being done.”

As Representative Peter DeFazio from Oregon, who sponsored the bill, points out:

“Patent trolls don’t create new technology and they don’t create American jobs. “They pad their pockets by buying patents on products they didn’t create and then suing the innovators who did the hard work and created the product.”

Moskowitz might have the legal ‘right’ to the patents he owns, but with hindsight, granting the patents in the first place was absurd. Forget the rest of the legal nonsense and whatever so-called experts might say – if he isn’t going to bring any products to the market, then he doesn’t deserve them.

From what I understand, patents are supposed to protect innovators, so that others cannot steal their ideas and make money from them, but seeing as Moskowitz is not actually making money from his idea, other than in a BS roundabout way, does he really have anything that deserves legal protection?

Put it another way, suppose for a moment that  Moskowitz didn’t demand people buy a license from him, yet he refused to let anyone use his idea – does this mean that for the rest of eternity, no one is allowed to use what is the industry standard anti-piracy system ever again? Probably not. Eventually, someone would challenge it and his patent would be revoked on the principle of ‘weak credible usage’.

But because he does demand that people buy a license from him, and because he threatens legal action against those who don’t comply, he gets backed by the full force of the law.

As I said, the situation is absurd.