Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
blog.cloudflare.com
Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
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Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
#2> As explained later in this blog post, we plan to (i) contest the patent lawsuit vigorously, (ii) fund an award for a crowdsourced search for prior art that can be used to invalidate Blackbird patents, and (iii) ask the relevant bar associations to investigate what we consider to be violations of the rules of professional conduct by Blackbird and its attorneys.
Interesting. Seems to be more of a long term solution than just "We'll stand up for ourselves because we can"
Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
#3The "new breed" is described as:
"""Blackbird combines both a law firm and intellectual property rights holder into a single entity. In doing so, they remove legal fees from their cost structure and can bring lawsuits of potentially dubious merit without having to bear any meaningful cost. """
Prenda Law already patented that breed. Expect infringement suit shortly.
Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
#4About the claim that the patenterrorists here have offered a contingency to the previous patent holder in addition to $1, wouldn't it be much more plausible that they threatened said holder with a patent lawsuit which they would not bring if they paid their extortion fee, in the form of the rights to the patent?
Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
#5We need more companies to do this. Hopefully Cloudflare and Newegg will set an example for other companies . But, what we really need is proper reforms to the patent system .
Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
#6Woah, looks like this patent troll picked the wrong company to sue. Cloudflare is going after them _hard_:
> Step 1 — Cloudflare will fight this case in the courts
> Step 2 — Cloudflare will fund a crowdsourced effort to find evidence to invalidate Blackbird’s patents… all of them
> Step 3 — Cloudflare will investigate Blackbird’s operations to develop facts that support our arguments in the litigation and expose how patent trolls really operate
> Step 4 — File complaints against Blackbird attorneys by bar association disciplinary counsel in Massachusetts and Illinois
Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
#7Man, if I were a millionaire I'd gladly spend a good chunk of my money and time to fight back those trolls. (Maybe someday :)
In all seriousness, good move on fighting back and actually standing against those bullies. Naming the individuals and companies involved could maybe get you in legal trouble? Anyway, surely you've already discussed this internally and decided to name them. Honestly, I like it. It's probably the only way to stop patent trolls: Get their names dirty on the Internet, which never forgets.
I wonder if moves like this are known to people outside legal and tech. My guess is the public in general has no idea of these practices, which makes it harder to fight against because there is almost no reaction / backlash. (I'm not from the US, maybe people do know about them).
Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
#8About the claim that the patenterrorists here have offered a contingency to the previous patent holder in addition to $1, wouldn't it be much more plausible that they threatened said holder with a patent lawsuit which they would not bring if they paid their extortion fee, in the form of the rights to the patent?
Wouldn't that have to be disclosed as it otherwise would be real, punishable extortion?
(I'm not a lawyer in any way, so please advice)
Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
#9We need more companies to do this. Hopefully Cloudflare and Newegg will set an example for other companies . But, what we really need is proper reforms to the patent system .
Yes and yes! Mitigations like these are completely impossible to go through if you do not have a really good amount of money lying around (and that you'll never have it back), and even individuals (not only big corps) are subject to trolls. I remember a guy posting videos explaining how he was being sued for infringement because he downloaded something from the app store which was an infringement within his state (I don't remember exactly which one, but my guess is Texas).
Really hope these new tech companies can "disrupt" this kind of practice, but they do have to get together and agree on some sort of action. Newegg and cloudflare fighting back is great, but if facebook, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft & co join the cause, I'm sure trolls will have a good reason to, well, not troll.
Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
#10Woah, looks like this patent troll picked the wrong company to sue. Cloudflare is going after them _hard_: > Step 1 — Cloudflare will fight this case in the courts > Step 2 — Cloudflare will fund a crowdsourced effort to find evidence to invalidate Blackbird’s patents… all of them > Step 3 — Cloudflare will investigate Blackbird’s operations to develop facts that support our arguments in the litigation and expose how…
Step #4 is going right for the throat: their ability to practice law at all. That's a big "and fuck you too" on top of the other stuff which is only meant to shut down Blackbird's operations as a patent troll.
I have no sympathy for patent trolls any more than I do other extortionists - whether "technically it is legal" or not.