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

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

#261

Post by hellbannedguy » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:40 PM UTC

kian wrote: post #152

bitwize wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To "ghost" someone is to avoid them without a response. The term probably came from personal relationships (e.g., a woman you were dating starts "ghosting" you). It was previously considered rude but is now appropriate to avoid potentially toxic personal or professional relationships.

Pretty sure it's still considered rude.

It's a word we need to stop using. Along with "Flexing".

I had this one English teacher who squashed any interest in writing after I took his class. He was known as Red because that's what color our papers were when he was finished grading them.

He did say a few thing that felt right. One was just don't use cliches. The other was don't use slang.

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

#262

Post by admissionsguy » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #132

foobarbazetc wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you saying that carpenters, electricians, pumblers, builders, cobblers, taxi drivers, nurses, and public school teachers are 95% incompetant? If so, please kindly provide anecdata. This is a positively ridiculous acusation.

I think if we relax the statement a bit, to something like

"95% of all workers perform at the bare minimum required not to get fired or sued."

- it becomes quite defensible. To someone used to high performance, that does look like incompetence.

Also, it is much harder to fake it in typical trades than in "professions".

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

#263

Post by DethNinja » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:44 PM UTC

pnw wrote: post #164

I've been through this multiple times. Plenty of good advice here about getting lawyers and getting your industry together to fight the suit in a joint action. Having said and tried all that personally, I've usually got my lawyer to negotiate it down to a smaller sum of a few thousand dollars and paid it. It simply wasn't worth paying orders of magnitude more than that for a legal process in which the outcome was uns…

If don't mind, could you tell how much revenue your company was generating while it was sued?

I assumed they wouldn't touch companies less than 100k revenue but if they do, I think I might want to get some patent troll insurance.

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

#264

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:44 PM UTC

N00bN00b wrote: post #217

denton-scratch wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring some recruiter you've never heard of isn't 'ghosting'. 'Ghosting' is when someone you know, and have a reasonable expectation will take your calls, suddenly stops taking them, without explanation. It's a discourteous and lazy way of dumping a romantic interest.

>It's a discourteous and lazy way of dumping a romantic interest. Language isn't fixed, the meaning of words, especially "new" words (and ghosting is a new verb) changes over time. That was the original meaning, but it's now applied to all relationships. >Ghosting is by no means limited to long-term romantic relationships. Informal dating relationships, friendships, even work relationships may end with a form of ghos…

I was unclear (in the interest of brevity:-)

For clarity, I didn't mean that ghosting was only to do with dumping partners. I suppose I was suggesting that that's the canonical example.

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

#265

Post by elcomet » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

silexia wrote: post #178

ethbr0 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope the entire patent system is simply dissolved. Patents are an artificial restriction on free trade that prevents competition and put profits in the pockets of the greedy undeserving.

But don't you believe it encourages innovation ? That's the main argument in favor of patents

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

#266

Post by kennywinker » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

hellbannedguy wrote: post #261

kian wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure it's still considered rude.

It's a word we need to stop using. Along with "Flexing". I had this one English teacher who squashed any interest in writing after I took his class. He was known as Red because that's what color our papers were when he was finished grading them. He did say a few thing that felt right. One was just don't use cliches. The other was don't use slang.

Shakespeare would probably have some strong, formerly slang, words to say about your English teacher's take on using slang. Today's synonyms are yesterdays slang, and arguing against embracing the fluidity of language is just saying dead old white guys have a monopoly on inventing words.

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

#267

Post by gpm » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

hvis wrote: post #249

gpm wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a look around this thread should make it clear that even if patents are legitimate, many patent trolls are not. They are frequently going after entities that are not actually infringing, or threatening people with obviously invalid patents, because the legal system makes it cheaper to pay the troll than go to court, even if you will win. (But you probably have a point that if patents are legitimate than an oth…

> But you probably have a point that if patents are legitimate than an otherwise ethical patent troll would also be legitimate I'm not sure it's possible to be an "ethical" patent troll. It is a structure explicitly chosen to minimize any collateral in case their patents are thrown out in court, claims are invalidated, and they have to pay to for the counterpart's expenses (and which point the company is simply disso…

Step 1 for being an ethical patent troll would be having enough assets that you aren't just a judgement proof vehicle for lawsuits, but there's no reason that isn't possible. A diverse portfolio of legitimate patents, a healthy bank account, and voila.

There are a variety of reasons why forming a "real company" that produces products might not be practical. For example you might be in a field where the startup costs for a competitive company is in the billions (silicon manufacturing), or that is a natural monopoly already monopolized by one or two big companies (operating systems). Your competitors also have patents on things that you would need to be competitive and for whatever reason you aren't willing to license them.

Or really you might just not be well suited to running a company, bad at managing people or whatever, and if patents are legitimate it seems like they are legitimate regardless of whether or not you want to start a company.

(PS. I'm generally against patents, and strongly against software patents, but that's neither here nor there on whether or not patent trolls are legitimate under the assumption that patents are)

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

#268

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 11:06 PM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #226

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to the day a patent troll comments on a discussion

Largest "patent troll" in history was brainchild of and founded by former Microsoft CTO. The person who coined the term "patent troll" helped him start the company. He came from Intel. The saddest part of the idea of "trolling" as a "business" is that it has spread into other areas, outside IT. "Patent trolling" is easy to spot when the patents are software patents as so many software patent are low quality. However,…

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

#269

Post by DrNuke » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 11:22 PM UTC

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #155

mraza007 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, they come in different shapes and tunes: without talking hackers or espionage, you also have “investors” kindly asking for details of your software. In fact, in many fields (and mine, materials informatics), you can file a patent for the end product of your software (novel alloys, in my case) while keeping your code entirely private. How could they troll you then? Patents make their own industry as well.

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

#270

Post by Tpsoc » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

lovecg wrote: post #99

Tpsoc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or depending on the industry, your competitors might be happy to see one less competitor.

They’re a one person company, and I assume their competitors are not exactly Google and Facebook either. Surely there’s enough market share at that level to allow for some compassion and basic human decency? Not everyone has to be ruthless 100% of the time

I would hope so as well.