A pair of Berkeley law professors are trying to stem the flood of patent lawsuits that have affected everyone from tech giants like Google to startups like Nest. Jason Schultz and Jennifer Urban have just launched the Defensive Patent License, an agreement meant to let companies use each other's patents without fear of lawsuits. Any group that used the license would agree to make all its patents available, royalty-free, to any other signatory. They'd also agree not to launch a patent suit against anyone else who had signed: a kind of mutual non-aggression pact. At the Usenix conference on cyberlaw, Schultz said that while patents are useful for encouraging innovation, the litigation around them has gone too far. "The idea is if you want...
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