There is a huge difference between setting up a business to say, mow lawns, and setting up a business to file lawsuits.
Especially when the possible costs are basically known (you have no customers except yourself, and you control your own costs), you are deliberately underfunding. Maybe that's not even so bad.
Doing so specifically to avoid the intent of an act of congress, is, well, a bad idea.
Courts make factual distinctions between cases all the time when deciding whether to pierce the corporate veil, and i can't see why they wouldn't do so here.
Note that limited liability corporations are fairly new. The world got along just fine when shareholders were responsible for the actions of companies. It made the shareholders more careful in investing.
How is setting up a separate corporation for each patent different from setting upa separate corporation for each, say, office building? How much money is necessary to keep a corporation set up for these purposes from being underfunded? Do we really want to set that precident? Do we really want to require money to access the legal system? Keep in mind the business model is not to sue other companies. The business model is to create license revenue from the patent. Lawsuits are merely a way to settle disputes.
Yes, we really want to set that precedent.
We already require money to access the legal system in certain cases.
You act as if this is a slippery slope where if we differentiate here we've given up the ball game.
If that's what you think, well, that ball game was given up long ago.
We already have different pleading requirements for different types of lawsuits, etc. This is all done to serve various end policy goals.
The business model you give is not the end goal of patents. It's not clear why supporting it should be a policy goal, and as of right now, it isn't.
The end goal is to encourage innovation as well as R&D, not to create license revenue. These are separate things.
Especially when the possible costs are basically known (you have no customers except yourself, and you control your own costs), you are deliberately underfunding. Maybe that's not even so bad. Doing so specifically to avoid the intent of an act of congress, is, well, a bad idea.
Courts make factual distinctions between cases all the time when deciding whether to pierce the corporate veil, and i can't see why they wouldn't do so here.
Note that limited liability corporations are fairly new. The world got along just fine when shareholders were responsible for the actions of companies. It made the shareholders more careful in investing.