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Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

#21

Post by topher200 »

jawns wrote: post #11

Cloudflare says that it is willing to spend up to $50,000 to award people who dig up prior art that invalidates Blackbird's patents ($20,000 for prior art related to the lawsuit and $30,000 for prior art related to Blackbird's other patents). BUT (and it's a big but, Sir Mix-a-Lot) ... > These opportunities remain open as long as Blackbird's case against Cloudflare is still active. So, what will likely happen is that…

It's true that Cloudflare left themselves that loophole, but the general tone of the rest of the post seems to suggest that they're going for the throat. I wouldn't expect them to back out on paying the $50k even if the immediate withdrawal of the suit would allow them to.

I get the feeling that they won't be getting sued by patent trolls again for a long time, they know that, and they'll be grinding this one into the ground as far as possible.

Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

#22

Post by snarf21 »

tpatke wrote: post #13

1. Everyone who gets sued by a patent troll is going to complain about the validity of the patent. Even when the patent is, in fact, completely valid. 2. Patent troll + Law firm is not a "dangerous new breed". This has been happening for a long while now. 3. It seems strange to complain about the being sued for patent infringement while owning '150' patents. Do you agree with patents or not? If you agree, then being…

I don't understand why we can't just make patents non transferable. If you company gets bought, your patents go away. Small companies still have protection but trolls disappear. You still do have the IBM approach to "patent all the things" but that can also be addressed by forcing patents to have to be actively deployed in a public way or they expire after a year or something.

Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

#23

Post by cornchips »

Living up to their names: Verlander, Freeman, Kaufmann ... Who's next, Dickstein, Feingold and Kuntslinger ?

Verlander: denotes 'the dweller by or on the pasture land'. Similar formations are 'Verdell', dweller in the valley, and 'Verbrugge', dweller at the bridge [1]

[1] http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Verlander

Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

#24

Post by stcredzero »

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.

If there is a place where government regulation can do some good, this might be it. The combination of these two kinds of company represents a moral hazard. There is a precedent for this kind of regulation, which mandates the separation of certain kinds of companies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_investment_and_r...

EDIT:

increasingly in the world of software or tech patents, the trolls rely on the broadest possible interpretation of vague or generalized patents to sow as much uncertainty as possible.

I've run across people involved with patent law here and on reddit, and they seem to get triggered by laypeople ridiculing the vague and abstruse nature of patents. (Really, go and read some! Try searches for video on the Internet!) I find that also weird, in the same way that a lot of legal stuff is weird.

And about 70% of all patent infringement claims are filed by patent trolls, a share that has more than doubled in recent years. It is estimated that litigation initiated by patent trolls in U.S. courts cost companies as much as $30 billion in direct costs, a number that has increased more than four-fold over the last ten years.

Interesting statistic. If the preponderance of patent claims run counter to the original intent of the mechanism, then something is clearly wrong.

Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

#25

Post by placebo »

billyvg wrote: post #18
tpatke wrote: post #13

1. Everyone who gets sued by a patent troll is going to complain about the validity of the patent. Even when the patent is, in fact, completely valid. 2. Patent troll + Law firm is not a "dangerous new breed". This has been happening for a long while now. 3. It seems strange to complain about the being sued for patent infringement while owning '150' patents. Do you agree with patents or not? If you agree, then being…

1. That is another issue, the USPTO issuing patents that shouldn't be issued. 3. They don't seem to be against patents, just against non-practicing entities. Did you even read the article?

I hate patent trolls with a passion, but these non-practicing entities are are just another negative by-product of what has devolved to be a negative system. Patents originally existed to protect inventors. Today, like in other legal systems, they have very little to do with justice and a lot to do with "whoever has the gold makes the rules". As such, while I definitely side with CloudFlare, it does seem like a complaint of "not fair, they are manipulating the rotten system better than us"

Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

#26

Post by lordnacho »

topher200 wrote: post #21
jawns wrote: post #11

Cloudflare says that it is willing to spend up to $50,000 to award people who dig up prior art that invalidates Blackbird's patents ($20,000 for prior art related to the lawsuit and $30,000 for prior art related to Blackbird's other patents). BUT (and it's a big but, Sir Mix-a-Lot) ... > These opportunities remain open as long as Blackbird's case against Cloudflare is still active. So, what will likely happen is that…

It's true that Cloudflare left themselves that loophole, but the general tone of the rest of the post seems to suggest that they're going for the throat. I wouldn't expect them to back out on paying the $50k even if the immediate withdrawal of the suit would allow them to. I get the feeling that they won't be getting sued by patent trolls again for a long time, they know that, and they'll be grinding this one into th…

Cloudflare has a lot of goodwill in my book. I'm sure they will come back and explain this was a miswording, and that they are happy to help even after this particular case is resolved.

Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

#27

Post by lordnacho »

If patents help society, then patent trolling is not always a destructive process. In fact it's how things ought to work, if you accept the premise (which I don't). And if it's sometimes a good thing, actually it's not illegitimate to hold in an otherwise unproductive company. It's just like owning a bar of gold: does nothing for anyone, but it's an asset for the owner.

Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

#28

Post by AnthonyMouse »

> Of course, the patent troll system attempts to shield Mr. Kaufmann and his companies’ operations from the lawsuit by having Blackbird become the owner of the patent — even if Mr. Kaufmann maintains an interest in the litigation.

Can't Cloudflare still have their lawyers go look at the original patentees for possible infringement and file a suit against them?

Re: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll

#30

Post by jogjayr »

jawns wrote: post #11

Cloudflare says that it is willing to spend up to $50,000 to award people who dig up prior art that invalidates Blackbird's patents ($20,000 for prior art related to the lawsuit and $30,000 for prior art related to Blackbird's other patents). BUT (and it's a big but, Sir Mix-a-Lot) ... > These opportunities remain open as long as Blackbird's case against Cloudflare is still active. So, what will likely happen is that…

For smaller companies and orgs, or individual software developers, I wonder if it now makes sense to pay into some sort of common "patent troll insurance pool" (I'm sure someone's suggested this already). If any member of the pool gets sued, the pool puts out patent invalidation bounties on the troll's entire portfolio and (for an additional premium) covers part of the legal defense in case there's a trial.

a) it can be structured like a credit union or something and owned by its members (reduces incentives for it to grow beyond what's necessary)

b) make it retroactive i.e. you don't have to already be a member to get protection. you can choose to buy in after you've been sent a letter

c) a protection pool of sufficient size and resources might do enough to invalidate so many patents that trolling simply becomes unprofitable. EDIT: Especially if suing a pool member poses an existential threat to the troll in the form of invalidating their entire portfolio. As Cloudflare have shown, you only need one party to stand up for themselves and contest the patents. In that case, premiums go down long-term

This is obviously different from patent pooling and cross-licensing agreements companies use to defend themselves against other practicing entities.

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