Newegg vs. Patent Trolls: When We Win, You Win • Hacker News Board

Re: Newegg vs. Patent Trolls: When We Win, You Win

#151

Post by throwawaykf05 » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 8:35 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #108

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you think patents hinder progress of science and the useful arts? How many cases do you know of that people were unable to advance the arts because of a patent? People talk about patent trolls suing startups and main street shops: How many of them actually do anything technically innovative? Hinder commercialization of some old technology? Sure, patents can do that. Stifle progress? Not so much. T…

You're looking at the wrong data. Progress is easily impeded without actual lawsuits. The RSA patent held back crypto progress for decades. I don't know if there were any lawsuits. Likewise for the GIF patent. Still today patents on JPEG2000 are preventing its adoption. H.264 patents slowed progress on web technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Controversies The "dark matter of millions of active…

I extend the same challenge to CamperBob2 above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977378

Give concrete examples instead of vague generalizations. I just have an example of how the GIF patent actually provoked progress as it was used to sure people who were using it without remuneration to the creators.

Image compression experts say JPEG2000 is simply not used because it's just not enough of an improvement to make it worth the hassle. Patent issues are secondary. And note that patents did not prevent it from bruin developed in the first place.

H.264 patents did not slow down development of new technology, it just slowed adoption of existing technology (h.264) in a different existing environment (browsers) Would you really qualify using the same technology in a browser as a significant technical innovation?

So coming back to my challenge: Now that the RSA patent has expired in 2000, 15 years ago, what novel developments can you point to that you can say was blocked by the patent?

Re: Newegg vs. Patent Trolls: When We Win, You Win

#152

Post by jchomali » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 9:59 AM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #35

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one of the main reasons that patent trolling is so successful is that the cost of settling is smaller even than the cost of winning a suit. Is the underlying reason for this strategy the low costs of settlement, or the extremely high costs of lawsuits? What if the value of a patent really is only a few thousand dollars? Note that this very tactic is used by big companies to avoid licensing valid and useful patents…

The legal system is not equally available to all entities. That it is the center of how we enforce our rights and hold others to their duties is a major problem. Even if we could fix it in the case of patents, we still have major issues within other civil and criminal courts. I do not know the solution or even have any half baked ideas on it, but I do think the first step to any solution is for us, as a society, to r…

Definitely because of costs

Re: Newegg vs. Patent Trolls: When We Win, You Win

#153

Post by mcherm » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 10:15 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #143

eigenvector wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem with the adversarial system is that if one party has bad lawyers, you can end up with bad case law as a result of them failing to properly argue their case.

You could end up with one party intentionally losing a case in order to establish precedent that they expect to profit from in the future, because they expect they'll usually be on the other side of similar cases.

Really? Have you ever heard of a case where this occurred?

Re: Newegg vs. Patent Trolls: When We Win, You Win

#154

Post by mcv » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 1:11 PM UTC

mcherm wrote: post #153

mcv wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could end up with one party intentionally losing a case in order to establish precedent that they expect to profit from in the future, because they expect they'll usually be on the other side of similar cases.

Really? Have you ever heard of a case where this occurred?

Not sure, but I seem to recall a case where Microsoft was on the other side of a suit from where you'd expect them to be, and people were afraid they'd lose intentionally. No idea what it was about or how it ended, though.