Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
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Re: Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
#2One patent troll has to pay another patent troll.. Good.
Re: Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
#3Ugh, disgusting. Think of how much damage that troll will now be able to wreak.
With that kind of money it can buy all sorts of other patents and start the whole progress over again.
Re: Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
#4One patent troll has to pay another patent troll.. Good.
That is what I think. It's not a huge problem for Apple. It seems like to stay competitive in this market you have to play the troll's game and Apple has shown many times that it knows the game very well. In the end, it probably balances out. I'd like to see numbers on this.
The real issue is small players getting buried under legal fees.
Re: Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
#5One patent troll has to pay another patent troll.. Good.
Perhaps apple ABUSES patents (that's a different discussion I do not want to get into), but I prefer to reserve the term "patent troll" for those individuals or organizations that do not actually perform invention nor manufacture, sales and marketing of actual products.
Re: Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
#6I don't understand. If "all four of VirnetX’s patents have been found invalid by the patent office" as Apple claims, why hasn't the case been dismissed?
Re: Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
#7One patent troll has to pay another patent troll.. Good.
That is what I think. It's not a huge problem for Apple. It seems like to stay competitive in this market you have to play the troll's game and Apple has shown many times that it knows the game very well. In the end, it probably balances out. I'd like to see numbers on this. The real issue is small players getting buried under legal fees.
Hopefully if the big boys get burned by trolls, they will finally decide to do something about the current patent system.
Re: Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
#8Interestingly, the four patents in question cover ways of initiating a secure connection via DNS - nothing about video transcoding or low latency communication, which was my first guess.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
Re: Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
#9Ugh, disgusting. Think of how much damage that troll will now be able to wreak. With that kind of money it can buy all sorts of other patents and start the whole progress over again.
What we really need are patent co-ops.
The problem as I see it is: patents exist to allow innovators to get paid for their inventions (setting aside the USPTO not being able to do its job correctly due to under-funding and granting bad patents), patents therefore have a monetary value, however that monetary value in fact scales with the monetary resources of the company it's held by (i.e. small companies cannot legally afford to enforce patent claims against behemoths that decide to fight), therefore there is a market incentive to create patent trolls (which increase the value of all patents by pooling them and amortizing prosecution cost/risk over a larger number of patents).
It would seem like if you instead pooled patents in a co-op arrangement, retaining ownership by their original creators, but pooling them with others for efficiency / risk purposes and to obtain the necessary scale for optimal enforcement. Then work out some amiable proceed-sharing method on the backend.
Win/win, and reducing the incentive for patent troll companies by providing an alternative. (Caveat: bad patents still need to be fixed at the USPTO source via additional funding / subject matter expert examiner requirements)
Is something like this at all feasible legally? Or does something prevent the batching together of patents from various actual owners under a single legal proceeding?
Re: Apple Ordered to Pay $625M to Patent Troll in FaceTime Lawsuit
#10Ugh, disgusting. Think of how much damage that troll will now be able to wreak. With that kind of money it can buy all sorts of other patents and start the whole progress over again.
What we really need are patent co-ops. The problem as I see it is: patents exist to allow innovators to get paid for their inventions (setting aside the USPTO not being able to do its job correctly due to under-funding and granting bad patents), patents therefore have a monetary value, however that monetary value in fact scales with the monetary resources of the company it's held by (i.e. small companies cannot legal…
The problem is defecting becomes valuable. If I have a great patent, then selling to a troll let's me 'cash out' without needing actual customers.