Last summer, we wrote about an incredibly poorly thought out lawsuit, by a company named Luvdarts, developers of MMS content, suing the mobile operators, because MMS can be forwarded from a recipient to another person. The company claimed that the big mobile operators were no different than file sharing networks, like Limewire or Gnutella, because each forwarding of content was infringement. As we pointed out at the time, this made no sense. It was a silly argument that was really being put forth by a guy named Max Davis, who has an equally silly plan to add compulsory licensing to MMS content, and this lawsuit was an incredibly weak attempt to push the mobile operators into negotiating. Instead, as we predicted, it's been dismissed by the courts for failure to state a claim. The dismissal was with prejudice, meaning that the court doesn't want to see them again on this. The press release linked above is kind of amusing, because it has the folks behind the lawsuit claiming that they're happy about this result and planning to appeal. Guys, you just got laughed out of court, because this lawsuit makes no sense. Appealing isn't going to fix that.

I've been seeing a few folks take the news that a bunch of big telco firms looking to get into the LTE (Long Term Evolution) market have agreed to form a patent pool. Some are even suggesting that this is exactly how the patent system should work. That's wishful thinking at best. LTE is the next generation of wireless technology that many telcos around the world are adopting as their choice for "4G" technology -- and it will be important. However, don't think that just because some companies have agreed to pool patents that it's a good thing. There have been plenty of patent pools in the past, and you can bet that one of two things is likely to happen. First, some other company (or a few other companies, and almost definitely some individual patent holders) will spring up at some point with yet another patent, claiming that LTE technology infringes on that patent and all these firms owe a ton of money. And, given how so many patent holders don't believe in apportioning damages, they'll even claim to want more than all the money being spread around in the pool itself.

But, much more to the point, the fact that so many patents need to be "pooled" just to offer this technology should be a pretty clear warning sign that the patent system isn't working as intended. Basically, what you have here is a patent thicket. Many of the patents in question are overlapping patents that never should have been issued. However, given all the uncertainty around patent litigation (and how the courts will be treating patent issues), most of these firms realize it's better to agree to split the pie rather than sue. That's still not a good result, because it only encourages more companies to suddenly push for these sorts of marginal and totally unnecessary patents just to get included in future patent pools -- even if their "invention" really adds nothing to the technology. Furthermore, this patent pool will automatically increase the price of all LTE technology, making sure that adoption is slowed down. So, yes, it's better to see a patent pool created than to see everyone just jump to lawsuits, but the history of patent pools is littered with additional lawsuits and companies having to pay for patents that they shouldn't be paying for. This is hardly a "good" solution -- it just encourages the bad system to get worse.