171–180 of 321 posts
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HN never fails to amazes me this is one of the best community where people from all backgrounds can take part in discussion And I wish all the best
Looking forward to the day a patent troll comments on a discussion
I assume the patent troll approach would be that they're returning value to their investors, while following the law as it stands.
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Pretty sure it's still considered rude.
I have never met a single person in my life who didn't ghost multiple people especially in business and dating. Like I receive 10 messages from LinkedIn everyday from recruiters trying to hire me when I'm not on the job market and trying to focus on my job and hobbies. What am I supposed to do? It's clearly rude to ghost friends, acquaintances, business partners etc. But if someone reached out to you with the intenti…
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Looking forward to the day a patent troll comments on a discussion
People take enough cheap shots at adtech folks, when they offer their perspective. I assume the patent troll approach would be that they're returning value to their investors, while following the law as it stands.
You need a lawyer, but a lot of lawyers do this sort of thing pro bono for small companies. The EFF has a list of attorneys who can help. Interview at least 5 of them - ask for references, ask about past successes in this space, and ask about your case at a high level (give the one-minute overview of the case and ask about their plan).
The good news is that most software patents are invalid (thanks to the Alice decision* in 2014), and will be struck down in a process called inter partes review, which is a cheap way to challenge the validity of a patent through the USPTO. When you interview attorneys, you might want to ask prospective candidates about the validity of this patent and if they see this as a viable strategy.
Another dynamic at play here is that in many patent proceedings, the loser pays attorneys fees. You may not end up paying a dime, even without a pro-bono lawyer. Trolls like threatening lawsuits to pressure you into a settlement, but there's a lot at risk for them if they actually sue you for infringement.
*The full opinion on the Alice case is here, and is very interesting: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-298_7lh8.pdf
EDIT: Also, if your lawyer suggests that you might be able to invalidate this patent, you may be able to band together with some of your competitors to share the cost of invalidating it.
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You'd think it should be a law against racketeering (something like RICO). Some tried to use that against patent trolls, but it didn't work.
As long as the patent is valid there is nothing racketeering about it.
They had another meeting to go over it with IBM to show results. Not impressed IBM said fine you don’t violate those. We have a hundred thousand more patents.
Are you buying a license for these, or should we go find more that you “violate”
Company purchased a license.
This was 20 years ago.
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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 the case of a patent troll, the competitors are probably also on the future target list. It's in their interest to help fight this troll.
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…
Also, just to add to that: a lot of the “good” lawyers will just ghost a one man operation or small business. Dealing with this kind of thing is a nightmare. You have to find someone who does EFF type stuff.
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Looking forward to the day a patent troll comments on a discussion
People take enough cheap shots at adtech folks, when they offer their perspective. I assume the patent troll approach would be that they're returning value to their investors, while following the law as it stands.
Would it be possible to create a corporate structure around a patent to disincentivize trolling? Like if you set up a limited liability company that owns the code that's allegedly infringing on the patent, that then licenses out the offending code to you. But you structure the actual company as something you're buying a infringing service for a nominal fee under an SLA. If that shell company has no assets, and you pu…
Do that then sue all the patent trolls for infringing on the patent for being a patent troll...
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> 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. I don't think vengefulness is the right thing to look at. I imagine large corporations with armies of lawyers might be glad to invest in winning enough lawsuits that other patent trolls are scared off. Small companies don't have the resources to do that. Both the large companies and the small companies are making decisions on the basis of profit. Veng…
I know - I’m saying it should be. Vengeance is a critical social regulator in human societies, but it has been damped to the point of total dysfunction.
The biological instinct for vengeance solves a social coordination problem - namely, the stability of altruistic punishment, where you make a sacrifice (such as spending resources fighting someone who wronged you rather than capitulating and moving on) to protect other people.
Modern liberal capitalism has done too good a job of suppressing higher-order social optimization instincts like vengeance, while leaving first-order selfish optimization instincts like profit-seeking in place. I don’t think this is necessarily an inherent problem in capitalism, but the current implementation won’t let you do things like this in most cases. If you go after a patent troll instead of settling, your shareholders will sue you.