I don't really understand why this guy would feel like he needed to use a lot of his own time and $6000 to try and help Uber. In the article it says that he felt like it was a larger competitor attacking a larger competitor, but its not like Uber is some small plucky startup. With revenue in the billions, its not like they couldn't even afford millions in legal fees easily. Or is it that its not helping Uber, but fighting against what he feels are predatory practices from Alphabet?
A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
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Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
#12> He then wrote a $6,000 personal check for the reexamination fee... “It’s definitely not a drop in the bucket for me,” he says. > Swildens tells me from his home in Los Altos Hills, near Mountain View. I can't help but feel that he's not being totally genuine here
> Swildens ended up selling Speedera at a discount to Akamai for $130 million You’re not the only one.
Total funding on Speedera was $51M. So assume a liquidation preference takes at least $51M off the top. He was an engineer and not a founder or an exec. So yeah, I’ll take him at his word. He probably didn’t clear anywhere near a $1M.
Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
#13I smell more bullshit here than when I drive past my local farms on fertilizing day.
Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
#14Reminds me of the Hulk Hogan situation
Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
#15> He then wrote a $6,000 personal check for the reexamination fee... “It’s definitely not a drop in the bucket for me,” he says. > Swildens tells me from his home in Los Altos Hills, near Mountain View. I can't help but feel that he's not being totally genuine here
> Swildens ended up selling Speedera at a discount to Akamai for $130 million You’re not the only one.
Well if he'd sold below valuation (and in the middle of a lawsuit to his prosecutors no less!) it would be plausible that he didn't make out well. But I don't see how one can live in Los Altos Hills without having a lot of wealth.
EDIT: The comment below points out that Speedera took $51M in funding
Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Swildens ended up selling Speedera at a discount to Akamai for $130 million You’re not the only one.
Total funding on Speedera was $51M. So assume a liquidation preference takes at least $51M off the top. He was an engineer and not a founder or an exec. So yeah, I’ll take him at his word. He probably didn’t clear anywhere near a $1M. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/speedera-networks
The article states he was a co-founder and the crunchbase page has two other cofounders
Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
#17I don't really understand why this guy would feel like he needed to use a lot of his own time and $6000 to try and help Uber. In the article it says that he felt like it was a larger competitor attacking a larger competitor, but its not like Uber is some small plucky startup. With revenue in the billions, its not like they couldn't even afford millions in legal fees easily. Or is it that its not helping Uber, but fig…
Yeah, I just assume there is more to the story. It's fun to speculate what it might be.
Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Total funding on Speedera was $51M. So assume a liquidation preference takes at least $51M off the top. He was an engineer and not a founder or an exec. So yeah, I’ll take him at his word. He probably didn’t clear anywhere near a $1M. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/speedera-networks
The article states he was a co-founder and the crunchbase page has two other cofounders
Typical engineer not getting enough credit and probably not enough stock. Sounds like the real deal as an engineer though.
http://www.d.umn.edu/external-affairs/homepage/12/swildens.h...
Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
#19Nice. Lawyers love ex parte and amicus curveballs. Wasn’t there some kind of prior art project set up to coordinate a large part of work like this? I seem to recall a big splash about crowdsourcing citations of prior art a few years ago, and now I’m wondering how this process and that are related. Was someone filing to challenge patents once enough people claimed prior art through that system or something? Seems stra…
It is cheap/free to do it when it is first filed (pre-issuance submission), it's only more expensive after it is granted.
Does the cheap/free pre-issuance submission really matter when you have to spend thousands of dollars on a reexamination fee whether or not the patent gets invalidated or modified in the end?
I get that this is to help cover the USPTO's reexamination costs. But whatever the reason, it's still really expensive to call bullshit. And as the grandparent comment laments, this is a real shame given the low quality of many patents that are granted.
In this case a third party did the job the USPTO should have done when the patent was first filed by actually reading the patents citations and finding that the new patent wasn't a novel innovation on the cited patent.
Wouldn't it be nice if the USPTO paid the third party his $6000 back if they determine that he's right the patent should have never been granted in the first place?
Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
#20Is auto playing embedded video is becoming the new norm?
I opened the link on iPad and the video on the page auto plays but on mute. Anyone else having this problem?