Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#231

Post by coldpie » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 12:59 PM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #50

oskarth wrote: post #42

> So-called non-practicing entities — or holders of a patent for a process or product that they don’t plan to develop — often use them to sue companies that would sooner settle rather than pay what can add up to $1 million by the time a case reaches a courtroom. Why on earth aren't non-practicing entity patent lawsuits outlawed? Seems like a no-brainer, and I can't imagine these firms being big enough to have any ser…

> Why on earth aren't non-practicing entity patent lawsuits outlawed? The NPE category includes universities and researchers. Many inventions can't be brought to market without significant capital, and not all inventors are interested in commercializing their inventions themselves. Just because you're not personally going to build a billion dollar chip fabrication facility to implement the new silicon etching process…

> Just because you're not personally going to build a billion dollar chip fabrication facility to implement the new silicon etching process your research group patented shouldn't prevent you from licensing it to Intel and suing someone else that uses your invention without a license, IMO.

I completely disagree. You're now squatting on a useful technique and preventing someone else from using it even if they invented it in parallel without your help. That is extremely unethical.

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#232

Post by shagie » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 1:08 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #209

thaumasiotes wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright law apparently makes an explicit exception for translations. (i.e. translations are subject to copyright despite usually sharing literally no wording with the original.) It isn't clear to me whether that only covers works in a foreign language that claim to be translations of some other work, or whether it would apply to any foreign-language work that duplicates the plot of an earlier copyrighted work.

The thing to remember with copyright is it covers copying. If you read a book and rewrite it in another language you didn't copy it, you copied the ideas, perhaps, but copyright covers expression and not ideas.

Creating a translation of a work is a derivative work itself. This applies to porting software from C++ to Java as well as translating of Harry Potter to French.

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#233

Post by monochromatic » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 1:11 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #168

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71

I've used Latham & Watkins. Just made a call to let a partner there know what I think about his firm's alumna and how it colors my opinion of him and his firm. Encourage everyone to check with your firm's General Counsel about this. If you use Latham, or Kirkland or Weil, encourage your GC to reach out and make your views heard. It's despicable that these lawyers are harassing their firms' former and potential client…

Let’s say that a firm’s alumna of a firm you have used sue you for patent infringement. Is there some insider-style laws that may be violated?

It could potentially violate conflict rules. (The idea being that the lawyer might have been privy to your secret information while his old firm represented you.)

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#234

Post by Brockenstein » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 1:16 PM UTC

MatthewWilkes wrote: post #126

Hermel wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that if you rewrote Harry Potter from scratch with new names and wording (redoing the implementation) and published that, you would still get in trouble. So copyright is somewhat broader than you think.

Of course there are grey areas, and it's appropriate that they're decided by the courts. I'm sure nobody would argue that a lossy copy of a work protected by copyright can still infringe, even if the lossiness was deliberate and intended to differentiate it from the original to a minimal degree. Copyright of literary characters is one of the harder ones to define, and perhaps a system more like patents would be more…

Larry Cotter, yer a wizzzard Larry. You're going to Fogsnorts under the greatest principle ever, Bumblebore.

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#235

Post by corobo » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 1:39 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #56

oskarth wrote: post #42

> So-called non-practicing entities — or holders of a patent for a process or product that they don’t plan to develop — often use them to sue companies that would sooner settle rather than pay what can add up to $1 million by the time a case reaches a courtroom. Why on earth aren't non-practicing entity patent lawsuits outlawed? Seems like a no-brainer, and I can't imagine these firms being big enough to have any ser…

Wouldn't that basically eliminate groups like the MPEG? They don't create software or hardware, but they license the technology to everybody else. Should they be forced to compete with their licensees?

There should be a "sh*t or get off the pot" clause in patents, if you've not done anything with the patent in the 5 years since filing for it, it gets opened up to the public. In that case the MPEG group has done something (licensed it out to people doing something with it) so would be fine

If you have, standard patent rules

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#236

Post by josaka » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 2:12 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #220

jgrahamc wrote: post #44

More detail on what we are doing from three blog posts: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll https://blog.cloudflare.com/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-b... Project Jengo https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-jengo/ Patent Troll Battle Update: Doubling Down on Project Jengo https://blog.cloudflare.com/patent-troll-battle-update-doubl...

> [...] 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. Don't the lawyers have opportunity costs?

This argument by in the article is silly. One of the founders of Blackbird came from Kirkland. Kirkland's profit per partner is $4m per year in the last year. So the Blackbird lawyer is forgoing the opporunity to participate in this income to pursue this case (and may others). (Granted, income is not distributed equally in most firms, but to imply that the next best alternative for these lawyers is zero income doesn't help the article's credibility.)

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#237

Post by thaumasiotes » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 2:18 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #209

thaumasiotes wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright law apparently makes an explicit exception for translations. (i.e. translations are subject to copyright despite usually sharing literally no wording with the original.) It isn't clear to me whether that only covers works in a foreign language that claim to be translations of some other work, or whether it would apply to any foreign-language work that duplicates the plot of an earlier copyrighted work.

The thing to remember with copyright is it covers copying. If you read a book and rewrite it in another language you didn't copy it, you copied the ideas, perhaps, but copyright covers expression and not ideas.

Like I said, the copyright law makes an explicit exception for "translations". Copyright also covers translations, despite the fact that they share none of the "expression" of the original.

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#238

Post by awkward » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 2:32 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #220

jgrahamc wrote: post #44

More detail on what we are doing from three blog posts: Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll https://blog.cloudflare.com/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-b... Project Jengo https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-jengo/ Patent Troll Battle Update: Doubling Down on Project Jengo https://blog.cloudflare.com/patent-troll-battle-update-doubl...

> [...] 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. Don't the lawyers have opportunity costs?

Opportunity costs don't get written on a ledger. Raising the risk to starting a patent troll company might be strategic in stopping other lawyers from starting, but it won't win this case.

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#239

Post by drtillberg » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 2:59 PM UTC

This is a dysfunction in the patent and legal processes that cannot be fixed by even more dysfunctional tactics deployed against the NPE. The rules against champterty (buying a cause of action) have been relaxed considerably to the extent in many jurisdictions of being a dead letter, and the litigation financing industry seems to have a better sound bite.

At least half of the problem is the "American Rule" of rarely shifting legal fees, which if you dig a bit you will find is of recent vintage. Back in time, for example in Massachusetts, there actually is a law for shifting legal fees as costs as a matter of course; the catch is that the fee is very low (even at the time it was enacted) of about $2.50 per case, which partly reflects inflation and partly antagonism toward legal fees.

I wonder whether a compromise solution would be to require a deposit for costs of a percentage of the demand for recovery like 2.5% of $34mm, which post-suit you could figure how to divvy up. That would make the demand more meaningful, and provide a tangible incentive to the plaintiff to think a little harder about pricing low-probability lottery-ticket-type litigation.

Re: Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game

#240

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 3:46 PM UTC

lostboys67 wrote: post #205

notyourday wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a fundamental misunderstanding of reality in legal profession. It is somewhat akin to 18th and 19th century conflicts - two armies line up against each other and both sides shoot. Strangely even though the last man standing won the decorum mattered. That is until someone had a brilliant idea to shoot from the laying down position. Or from the bushes. Or without wearing uniforms.

In the Napoleonic wars Wellingtons order for troops to wait lying down on a reverse slope to avoid cannon fire was considered unsporting

Up until about the US civil war guns were inaccurate enough that you could stand in lines and shoot at each other with a chance to live. As such the old battle lines designed for swords were not a horrible strategy (not to be confused with good). By the US civil war rifles advanced to the point where you could shoot a target and have confidence that it would die.

Wars that happened around the US civil war were suddenly and unexpected deadly which caused all generals (who watch wars between insignificant countries which the US was at the time) to be horrified and come up with new tactics without regard for previous ideas of what was sporting.