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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

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

kbutler wrote: post #3

The "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.

Prenda Law were copyright trolls, not patent trolls.

(Also, Prenda Law were actively inducing the infringement that thhey were prosecuting, and inventing shell companies as fake clients to conceal their own interest in the litigation.)

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

#32

Post by dragonwriter »

snarf21 wrote: post #22
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.

> I don't understand why we can't just make patents non transferable.

Because inventors want to invent things, not prosecute patents, and making patents transferrable allows them to make money from inventions without having to accept any of the headache of patent defense, which is a distraction even when (as you will practically need to) you hire counsel to do the actual legal work.

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

#33

Post by knodi123 »

jogjayr wrote: post #30
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…

> 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

So why would anyone buy in before they get a letter, or maintain their membership once they're no longer in court?

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

#34

Post by gregmac »

lordnacho wrote: post #27

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.

But it's not like gold. Gold is physical - it requires that you do something to obtain it somehow, and it's (generally) clear who rightfully possess that particular piece of gold at any given time.

Patents are ideas. Two (or more) people can independently come up with exactly the same idea, sometimes in very different contexts. The patent system rewards the person who files a patent for it first, and in fact, for the patent troll, it's particularly lucrative when other people execute successfully (which generally means they've actually contributed something of value to society).

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

#35

Post by fhood »

jogjayr wrote: post #30
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…

This might be a pretty great idea for a new insurance company. Could already exist though.

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

#36

Post by iplaw »

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…

I am guessing that, even if Blackbird motions to dismiss this lawsuit, Cloudflare will nonetheless file IPRs against each of Blackbird's 37 or 38 patents for which sufficient prior art is discovered.

This appears to be more than a strategic move for this particular case on the part of Cloudflare. Cloudflare is hoping to build a reputation as 1) aggressive, 2) vindictive, and 3) successful. Believe me, other NPEs will take note and will think twice (or thrice) about suing Cloudflare out of fear of multiple defensive IPRs aimed at not only the patents in suit, but all patents utilized by the NPE in past and current litigation and licensing efforts.

The NPEs, generally, have very low risk tolerance when it comes to actions which may invalidate their money-makers. Thus, Cloudflare is hoping to get blacklisted. Just look at how successful Newegg and Rackspace have been with this strategy.

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

#37

Post by jogjayr »

knodi123 wrote: post #33
jogjayr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 So why would anyone buy in before they get a letter, or maintain their membership once they're no longer in court?

> So why would anyone buy in before they get a letter,

Plenty of people have already gotten a letter; if they all pooled their resources they'd have a decent defense fund already.

> , or maintain their membership once they're no longer in court?

This one, I agree, is harder. Best I can propose is a minimum 5 year membership once you've been sued. Or tweak it some other way so that membership is slightly cheaper, or about as much as, settling.

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

#38

Post by lordnacho »

gregmac wrote: post #34
lordnacho wrote: post #27

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.

But it's not like gold. Gold is physical - it requires that you do something to obtain it somehow, and it's (generally) clear who rightfully possess that particular piece of gold at any given time. Patents are ideas. Two (or more) people can independently come up with exactly the same idea, sometimes in very different contexts. The patent system rewards the person who files a patent for it first, and in fact, for the…

Well, yes. I did mention that I don't believe in the premise.

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

#39

Post by 542458 »

jogjayr wrote: post #30
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…

What you're (more or less) describing is a combination of defensive patent infringement insurance and a patent pool. Both are things that exist, but patent infringement insurance is crazy expensive, and patent pools are hard for small companies to enter into.

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

#40

Post by toast0 »

stcredzero wrote: post #24

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…

Without addressing the validity of patents or the appropriateness of NPE suits, which is being covered elsehwere in the thread...

Are "legal fees" that much more expensive than the cost of actually doing the legal work required?

A lot of companies have in-house lawyers, what's the difference between a NPE with in-house laywers to file patent suits, and a law firm that acquires patents to file patent suits? Or even, the difference between that and an NPE hiring an outside law firm which charges a very low margin (possibly with a contingency fee as well)?

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