Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#41

Post by swang »

saagarjha wrote: post #9
frenchie14 wrote: post #8

> 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.

It was actually more like $168 million since when the deal was closed in June 2005, Akamai's stock was around $14/share.

$14/share * 12 million shares ~= $168 million

https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2005-press/aka...

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/AKAM/historical?...

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#42

Post by asabjorn »

golfer wrote: post #38
ajross wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking the same thing. I mean... this whole article just smells off. It's a press hit about one patent claiming that somehow this invalidates the Waymo case in a dispute that is fundamentally about trade secrets anyway. I mean, he found prior art on a LIDAR patent. Good. But... why do we care?

Wired fell for this guy's story. This feels incredibly fishy. A random guy feels sorry for Uber, the lovable plucky underdog of all companies... and invests lots of time and $6K to invalidate patents? It just doesn't compute. There must be a tie between this guy and someone at Uber. Or it's VC backers.

Why would it benefit Uber or its backers to hire him unofficially instead of hiring experts directly?

It seems like he was able to make a solid case for invalidating the patent, and hiring experts to investigate patent claims is pretty standard in patent lawsuits. It makes me wonder why Uber didn't hire such experts, or if they did and this guy beat them to the punch.

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#43

Post by asabjorn »

frenchie14 wrote: post #8

> 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

What his total wealth is seems a bit irrelevant. Do you think that he is not genuine about paying for this himself? If so, what do you base that on?

The rest of the story seems to support his story that he did this on his own, especially because from the way the journalist describe the court proceedings it seems like Uber didn't capitalize on his work at the right time when they could have if they were aware of it.

Also, this article was published yesterday which is multiple court proceedings after his work was submitted to the USPTO and what was supposed to be court date. If this is a PR effort I would have expected it to be done a bit earlier.

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#44

Post by frenchie14 »

asabjorn wrote: post #43
frenchie14 wrote: post #8

> 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

What his total wealth is seems a bit irrelevant. Do you think that he is not genuine about paying for this himself? If so, what do you base that on? The rest of the story seems to support his story that he did this on his own, especially because from the way the journalist describe the court proceedings it seems like Uber didn't capitalize on his work at the right time when they could have if they were aware of it. A…

I'm specifically talking about his statement that "It’s definitely not a drop in the bucket for me" seems disingenuous when he appears to have a large amount of wealth. I'm not disputing that he paid for the fee himself.

It's almost like he's trying to make himself seem more relatable by saying the fee was a bigger deal for him than it actually was. To me, it comes off like he's trying to hide something

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#45

Post by asabjorn »

frenchie14 wrote: post #44
asabjorn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What his total wealth is seems a bit irrelevant. Do you think that he is not genuine about paying for this himself? If so, what do you base that on? The rest of the story seems to support his story that he did this on his own, especially because from the way the journalist describe the court proceedings it seems like Uber didn't capitalize on his work at the right time when they could have if they were aware of it. A…

I'm specifically talking about his statement that "It’s definitely not a drop in the bucket for me" seems disingenuous when he appears to have a large amount of wealth. I'm not disputing that he paid for the fee himself. It's almost like he's trying to make himself seem more relatable by saying the fee was a bigger deal for him than it actually was. To me, it comes off like he's trying to hide something

I would imagine spending $6k is a consideration even for a millionaire. Spending the time to research and write a 101-page challenge to the patent seems like quite a considerable investment for anyone, dwarfing the $6k even for a middle class person.

Why do you think $6k is not a consideration given his liquid capital? What do you expect his liquid wealth to be and what do you base that on?

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#46

Post by asabjorn »

saagarjha wrote: post #9
frenchie14 wrote: post #8

> 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.

I think we are getting stuck on his smallest investment. Even for a middle class person spending the time to research and write a 101-page challenge of the patent far outweighs investing $6k.

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#47

Post by Buge »

asabjorn wrote: post #42
golfer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wired fell for this guy's story. This feels incredibly fishy. A random guy feels sorry for Uber, the lovable plucky underdog of all companies... and invests lots of time and $6K to invalidate patents? It just doesn't compute. There must be a tie between this guy and someone at Uber. Or it's VC backers.

Why would it benefit Uber or its backers to hire him unofficially instead of hiring experts directly? It seems like he was able to make a solid case for invalidating the patent, and hiring experts to investigate patent claims is pretty standard in patent lawsuits. It makes me wonder why Uber didn't hire such experts, or if they did and this guy beat them to the punch.

Yeah, it makes Uber look kind of incompetent, like they didn't do their research (Google too). If he was hired by Uber to do the research, only Google would look incompetent.

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#48

Post by Buge »

matt4077 wrote: post #35

Waymo has already dismissed the patent claims in its initial lawsuit, after getting serious pushback on it from the judge over the last year. See, for example Footnote 2 on page 2 of http://www.almcms.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/1/Wa... : Defendants also moved for summary judgment of noninfringement of Waymo’s United States Patent No. 9,368,936, but Waymo’s dismissal of its patent claim moots that part of t…

Yes, that's what the article says. The article says Waymo dismissed their last patent claims after they heard that this guy was contesting them.

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#49

Post by rhino369 »

asabjorn wrote: post #42
golfer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wired fell for this guy's story. This feels incredibly fishy. A random guy feels sorry for Uber, the lovable plucky underdog of all companies... and invests lots of time and $6K to invalidate patents? It just doesn't compute. There must be a tie between this guy and someone at Uber. Or it's VC backers.

Why would it benefit Uber or its backers to hire him unofficially instead of hiring experts directly? It seems like he was able to make a solid case for invalidating the patent, and hiring experts to investigate patent claims is pretty standard in patent lawsuits. It makes me wonder why Uber didn't hire such experts, or if they did and this guy beat them to the punch.

You don’t have to invalidate the patents at the USPTO. You can argue invalidity in court. Uber almost certainly looked for prior art.

And in most cases uber wouldn’t use ex parte re-examine. They’d do an inter partes review, which would them to stay in the proceeding and argue for invalidity.

Re: A Spectator Who Threw a Wrench in the Waymo/Uber Lawsuit

#50

Post by Ileca »

thisisit wrote: post #20

Is 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?

media.autoplay.enabled = false on Firefox made my days so much brighter. Even on youtube, not having channels autoplaying some default video was a fresh breeze. You don't have to be on the lookout anymore each time you feel some sound or video might jump at your ears.

Talking about wired, it is SO GOOD to read "We're sorry, something went wrong." when their videos fail to deliver their crap to you!

Post reply on HN