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Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?

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Re: Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?

#121

Post by wyager »

whimsicalism wrote: post #49
wyager wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vindication is very expensive While true, this is unfortunate, because it means that patent trolls continue to get away with this behavior. I think society today is insufficiently aggressive and vengeful. The social utility of vengefulness is precisely that it allows for n-tit-for-tat strategies to punish social defectors like patent trolls.

> I think society today is insufficiently aggressive and vengeful. Sure, the society with one of the largest per capita prison populations in the world is insufficiently vengeful.

The government is not the same thing as society. The government is more than willing to burn money pursuing people who break its rules, to pretty significant effect, but individuals and private companies presently lack the requisite sense of pride/aggression/honor/whatever.

One obvious source of this problem is that n-tit-for-tat behavior in humans is moderated by testosterone levels, which have been declining precipitously. 100 years ago you had personal vendettas between CEOs driving corporate policy, which is unironically good for society because it encourages real non-kayfabeized competition and the punishment of antisocial corporate behavior.

Re: Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?

#122

Post by corytheboyd »

kkielhofner wrote: post #61
dmabram wrote: post #33

I've been through similar situations. The "find a lawyer" comments are less than helpful, since you probably don't know where to begin and most lawyers will happily take your money without necessarily having an expedient path to resolution for a small one-person company. So here's what you do: Write to each of your competitors, explain the situation and ask for a referral to their lawyers. You'd be surprised how many…

I generally appreciate the altruism of this advice but there's a huge risk in that the competitors likely won't set aside the spirit of competition, whatever they've spent/done to deal with this, etc to help out a competitor. I, personally, would not risk this approach.

It’s weird to me how people try to frame competitors as the enemy in the software industry. These are people just like you, probably going through the exact same problems you are at your company. Also, most companies (FAANG is not most companies) settle into a niche anyway, which leaves room in the market for competitors. Vilifying competition just makes no sense, and it’s honestly a little creepy to me.

I’m probably wrong, whatever, let me know I guess. I’m not running a company, I’ve just observed the SF companies I worked at for years. Opinions my own.

Re: Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?

#123

Post by jacobkg »

foobarbazetc wrote: post #88
syedkarim wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had any luck with this approach. In some cases, the good-lawyer-you-know will respect the intellect of a lawyer from another firm that has a specialty in IP law. And then the referral will get passed down to an associate partner who is just overseeing the work of junior lawyers. In that scenario, the referral from the good-lawyer-you-know had no real value. The other scenario is that the good-lawyer-you-kno…

Lawyers, like any other profession, are 95% incompetent. Finding the 5% that are competent is harder than it looks. And the hourly rate and/or physical location of said lawyer bares no correlation to competence level. And once you find that person they usually get scooped up and become GC for some VC funded startup or whatever because word travels.

In my experience physicians are not 95% incompetent. Is there something inherently different about law from medicine? Or is more like how 95% of physicians couldn’t help you with a specific problem because it’s outside their specialty?

Re: Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?

#126

Post by Rantenki »

duxup wrote: post #64
dmabram wrote: post #33

I've been through similar situations. The "find a lawyer" comments are less than helpful, since you probably don't know where to begin and most lawyers will happily take your money without necessarily having an expedient path to resolution for a small one-person company. So here's what you do: Write to each of your competitors, explain the situation and ask for a referral to their lawyers. You'd be surprised how many…

I understand how 'find a lawyer' is less than helpful but isn't your advice just 'find a lawyer ... that your competitors suggest'. Competitors who by default do not have your best interests in mind. Is there any real difference / likelihood of a good outcome there? Ultimately I see little difference in the potential of "most lawyers will happily take your money without necessarily having an expedient path to resolut…

In this case, your competitors DO have your best interests in mind. They have to understand that they are next on the list of troll targets, since they are offering a product that likely uses similar technologies.

Re: Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?

#127

Post by dt3ft »

Why are we calling these "patent trolls"? They use the system we all built (or the one we tolerate) and pursue profits as per the "rules of the game". Instead of fighting this one case at a time, shouldn't we be organizing and pushing for the "rules of the game" to be changed and get this over with once and for all?

By the way, I strongly believe that software patents should not exist.

Re: Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?

#128

Post by throwaway2037 »

jabo wrote: post #83
dmabram wrote: post #33

I've been through similar situations. The "find a lawyer" comments are less than helpful, since you probably don't know where to begin and most lawyers will happily take your money without necessarily having an expedient path to resolution for a small one-person company. So here's what you do: Write to each of your competitors, explain the situation and ask for a referral to their lawyers. You'd be surprised how many…

Don’t law firms avoid taking on competing companies as clients to avoid any form of conflict of interest?

Yes, this is a key difference between the US "law firm" system and the UK barrister "chambers" system. The first is focused on profits (and survival). The second seeks to reduce the inherent commercial conflict of interest during difficult cases.

Re: Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?

#129

Post by dathinab »

Hm this is basically on the level of patenting pulling your wallet out of your green pocket to pay for a coffee at a street food shop.

Or cutting wood with a knife to then use it to build a chair.

I.e. while you need the result of the first part to do the second part, how you do the first part and how you do the second part are completely unrelated.

Honestly given the large degree of economical damage such patent trolling does it's sad to see that laws hasn't been updated to involve serve penalties for anyone trying to abuse the patent system (if it's clear that it's an abuse like in this case).

Like if it's such a obvious case like this:

1) Hold the suing person responsible for all financial costs of the defender, and a penalty and personal consequences for lawyer suing.

2) Make it a crime a create "deceptive" patents. Which are not clear in what they patent or clearly (for a person with knowledge of the topic) patent trivial or obvious things which should never bee palatable.

3) Make the patent office earn more money from catching clearly bad patents then from passing them through.

Through only if it's "clear" abuse, whatever that means.

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