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

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

#271

Post by pbhjpbhj »

shagie wrote: post #232
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-writing a story and translation are different things entirely.

If I describe at an abstracted level the working of a C++ program to you and you implement it in Java then you have not copied the work, nor even created a derivative, ergo clean-room implementation being a thing.

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

#272

Post by vivekd »

notyourday wrote: post #269
frandroid wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers are blocked from some fancy restaurants and they drop their animal rights client? If you were looking at hiring these lawyers, would that inspire confidence in you?

Lawyers that decide that they want to represent scum that harasses other people in restaurants should not be surprised when they are not going to be serviced in those restaurants. To me it sounds like the exact thing that should be happening. I want every lawyer to ask himself or herself "is this cause worth it?". That is how we would know if the lawyers actually believe in their client or if they are there just to m…

It seems fickle as hell to withdraw on a client's case just because you can't eat at your favorite high end restaurant anymore. Still considering the way I've seen a lot of lawyers behave, it doesn't surprise me.

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

#273

Post by PhasmaFelis »

arkh wrote: post #197
mendelk wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to an Oracle lawyer a few months ago, and told him their lawsuit just makes Oracle look bad. The lawyer was dismissive, and tried to explain how it's silly how people take lawsuits personally, and talked about how layers _understand_ that lawsuits aren't personal, and that they are still friends outside the court. I'm sure a lawyer can "understand" how lawsuits aren't actually something personal at all, but…

> “The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under…

I love all the Quellcrist Falconer quotes from that book. IIRC, it was a Quellcrist Falconer line in someone's sig that got me to pick it up.

"When they ask how I died, tell them: still angry."

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

#274

Post by TheCoelacanth »

notyourday wrote: post #257
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of 18th and 19th century infantry tactics to say that they fought that way out of a sense of decorum and that no one had the idea of using concealment or cover. They fought in massed formations because it actually was the most effective way of fighting with the technology of the time. Infantry troops that strayed too far from their formations were extremely vulnerable to attack by…

Oh rubbish. See Napoleon's excursion into Russia. See Suvorov's crossing of the Alps.

Not seeing how either of those instances disprove my point.

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

#275

Post by Bartweiss »

bdowling wrote: post #268
Bartweiss wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, law firms commonly do some amount of pro bono work as a public service and reputation builder. I'd be interested to see a firm or two donate legal support to smaller companies fighting trolls - it'd be a show of good faith and might immediately knock out low-powered trolls. Newegg has showed what happens when these cases actually get fought, and that's something a firm could offer to build popularity and suppor…

Helping a for-profit company avoid paying licensing fees hardly qualifies as pro bono work.

How about if they just did the legal work to file for USPTO reexamination to invalidate the patents?

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

#276

Post by pitaj »

coldpie wrote: post #231
dangrossman wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah but that's a general argument against patents, not against NPE patents being enforceable.

I agree btw

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

#277

Post by notyourday »

vivekd wrote: post #272
notyourday wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers that decide that they want to represent scum that harasses other people in restaurants should not be surprised when they are not going to be serviced in those restaurants. To me it sounds like the exact thing that should be happening. I want every lawyer to ask himself or herself "is this cause worth it?". That is how we would know if the lawyers actually believe in their client or if they are there just to m…

It seems fickle as hell to withdraw on a client's case just because you can't eat at your favorite high end restaurant anymore. Still considering the way I've seen a lot of lawyers behave, it doesn't surprise me.

Why? If one works helping people who want to destroy someone's business or livelihood, one should not be surprised if that someone goes out of his way to make one's life and your business life miserable.

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

#278

Post by frandroid »

notyourday wrote: post #269
frandroid wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers are blocked from some fancy restaurants and they drop their animal rights client? If you were looking at hiring these lawyers, would that inspire confidence in you?

Lawyers that decide that they want to represent scum that harasses other people in restaurants should not be surprised when they are not going to be serviced in those restaurants. To me it sounds like the exact thing that should be happening. I want every lawyer to ask himself or herself "is this cause worth it?". That is how we would know if the lawyers actually believe in their client or if they are there just to m…

> "is this cause worth it?"

How would murderers and rapists get a lawyer then? You misunderstand what the profession of lawyer is about.

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

#279

Post by ABCLAW »

coldpie wrote: post #231
dangrossman wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why would it be squatting if you're open to licensing your technology at a reasonable cost to whatever manufacturer is willing to implement your state-of-the-art technology?

Why should the manufacturer have the incentive to fund parallel invention efforts to avoid paying such licensing fees? What if the upfront capital availability for such R&D funds created differential overhead profiles across industries, such that massive up-front R&D costs were now required in order to keep an acceptable op-ex profile?

This is a bit more nuanced than 'you aren't using your patent, you're clearly a vampire'.

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

#280

Post by tracker1 »

Kliment wrote: post #210
mobilefriendly wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? Cloudflare are a practicing entity, presumably with legitimate patents. They aren't necessarily at war with software patents as a concept, just the obvious abuse.

There is no such thing as a legitimate patent.

As much as I am against software patents in general, that isn't entirely true... I would say that most patents aren't, or shouldn't be legitimate, not that none of them are.
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