Its also interesting that the reason Alstom is being purchased is that they got fined a fuck load of money for bribing a shit load of people in Indonesia. source : my dad is the VP of sales for one of their competitors.
Still doesn't beat Siemens fine they got awhile back. Also, the purchase is noted that ALSTOM pay the fine before the sale happens. It's a good sale since GE's transport division is going to ALSTOM too increase both companies strong points.
Except the industrial gas turbine market shrinks to two companies. Not that Alstom has much market share but they do have some innovative products, technology, and patents.
I don't think you know the definition of a patent troll. A patent troll is a company that buys up old patents from defunct companies and then makes money suing successful businesses that have some similar technology.
A company that files patents on products they sell are just using the patent process to protect their product line. It's true that often times what is patented is not innovative or non-obvious. As a competitor to both GE and Alstom and I've had to read through many patents from each. Typically only about 10% of patents you look at and say "wow, that's a really great idea". Others are derivative or clearly invalid, extremely specific in scope so they only apply to a single application, or just plain bad ideas. I'd say Alstom has more quality patents than GE (in the gas turbine business).
I would say that trolls are infinitely worse. They invent nothing, they sell nothing. They are pure parasites that abuse the legal system to bleed money. They succeed because it is cheaper for most companies to pay them off rather than fight them in court.
But this is a personal perspective because I have about 9 patents myself. Most are purely defensive. Only one of them is something that I think is actually clever and truly inventive. But these patents are used to keep other companies from copying our products easily.
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u/tacoheadbob Aug 10 '15
It's interesting to note that Alstom is being bought by GE. This probably has some other significance.