The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#91

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

rasz wrote: post #76

Apple is very reluctant to put all of their heart in patent battles, to the point you start wondering if maybe internal patent attorneys are calling the shots and like the status quo a little too much. They pretty much intentionally lost S3TC patent case opting not to push for patent invalidation https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/itc-judge-rules-tha... The thing about s3tc is _its Apple own technology_, just r…

> S3 directly lifted Apple patented QuickTime Road Pizza technique of encoding 4 colors using 2 values (same math, same values, same purpose, no prior art acknowledgment), to ~10 years later sue and win.

This seems like the type of thing that an amicus brief could point out regardless of Apple's strategy in the case. Did that not happen?

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#92

Post by macintux » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #68

cmeacham98 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress should just invalidate all submarine patents, full stop. When the 13th amendment was passed slave owners didn't get to "grandfather in" their existing slaves. Extreme example, but the point is sometimes old laws are so harmful to society we should not allow people to continue abusing them.

You might want to look up the etymology of "grandfather clause", friend.

TIL, thanks. It's regrettable we're still fighting that war.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#93

Post by birdyrooster » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #38

birdyrooster wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents were made for a time before ubiquitous multinational corporations. If there are multiple sources of truth and markets for what is protected invention, then it greatly dilutes the power of that patent. This ends up hamstringing the countries most dependent on patenting to encourage innovation because we are still beholden to foreign interest who file their patents with the USPO or sell to an American troll. Th…

I believe you'll find that ubiquitous multinational corporations do indeed outdate the patent, by a couple hundred years.

Ubiquitous as in many? or just a few colonizing the world?

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#94

Post by rasz » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:21 AM UTC

onetimemanytime wrote: post #86

rasz wrote: post #76

Apple is very reluctant to put all of their heart in patent battles, to the point you start wondering if maybe internal patent attorneys are calling the shots and like the status quo a little too much. They pretty much intentionally lost S3TC patent case opting not to push for patent invalidation https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/itc-judge-rules-tha... The thing about s3tc is _its Apple own technology_, just r…

>> They pretty much intentionally lost S3TC patent case opting not to push for patent invalidation Do you have any inside knowledge or just guessing the strategy of the lawyers in the courtroom?

They didnt even try to file a case with USPTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Their iPhone "strategy" was avoiding the matter altogether, stripping S3TC assets and support from the software (still in the SoC).

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#95

Post by breck » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #9

Every so often a patent troll story comes up on HN, and people like me bitch about how broken the system is and get group therapy from shouting into the wind on a web forum. What can we actually do . How do we start fixing this problem?

Big lies are labels spread widely without backing datasets. One thing everyone can do is start spreading a big truth (a label not widely shared but that fits a plethora of data far better): copyrights and patents are the opposite of property rights. One better description for IP is #imaginaryproperty. People who support them should be shamed. Because of IP bad medicine is encouraged, bad news is encouraged, bad inequity is encouraged, bad education is encouraged.

Equitable progress (and progress in general), is a fraction of what it could be.

Changing this one rule and shifting our energies from endlessly regurgitating old ideas to gardening great new ones will lead to a golden era of progress in area like healthcare, education, and equity.

#EndIp. #LiberateIdeas. Start sharing big truths and fight big lies. The people will pick up on it.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#96

Post by viraptor » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #87

I’ll give a contrary view point to most “patent trolls”. I’m an inventor (100+ Issued patents), I develop POCs and concepts well beyond my ability to productionize. That’s not to say I couldnt create a product, just that I don’t have the resources. However, I do have the resources to develop novel techniques. Does that mean I didn’t invent the process- no, I did invent a new process. I just didn’t build them into a p…

> I 100% guarantee they did a patent search and knew of this patent prior to releasing their product

No, you don't. You guess that and it's good for your business if you assume that companies do the search and that searching is feasible.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#97

Post by opportune » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:23 AM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #87

I’ll give a contrary view point to most “patent trolls”. I’m an inventor (100+ Issued patents), I develop POCs and concepts well beyond my ability to productionize. That’s not to say I couldnt create a product, just that I don’t have the resources. However, I do have the resources to develop novel techniques. Does that mean I didn’t invent the process- no, I did invent a new process. I just didn’t build them into a p…

Are you actually inventing things or just filing a bunch of patents?

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#98

Post by breck » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:28 AM UTC

dev_tty01 wrote: post #70

ekianjo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. New drugs existed before patents were a thing.

Really? Name some. The patent system started in 1790. The FDA didn't exist, thus no expensive trials and safety validation. Medicine was just a bunch of trial and error with no controls.

Penicillin and ether were not covered by patents. Pretty sure those were two of the greatest of all time.

On the patent side you have such modern marvels as OxyContin, which has arguably caused more loss of life than COVID-19.

Patented drugs are generally awful. The idea that it costs $1B to make a game changing drug is a lie. It costs $1T. The US taxpayer pays 99.9%, and the big pharma company spends a billion to generate some shitty subpar derivative that they can then get monopoly protection on and create an artificial racket supported by false marketing.

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#99

Post by rswail » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:29 AM UTC

birdyrooster wrote: post #35

conanbatt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or dont do patents at all.

Patents were made for a time before ubiquitous multinational corporations. If there are multiple sources of truth and markets for what is protected invention, then it greatly dilutes the power of that patent. This ends up hamstringing the countries most dependent on patenting to encourage innovation because we are still beholden to foreign interest who file their patents with the USPO or sell to an American troll. Th…

All developing nations ignore international copyright, trademark, and patent IP rights. The US did it back in the late 19th century, other nations in the early 20th, Asian nations in the late 20th century. What is happening now is nothing new.

China is now starting to enforce IP rights because as they move up the industry maturity scale, the rights become more important.

IP rights only become relevant to developed nations, where manufacturing and other primary/secondary industries become less important than service industries.

There is no "global turning against protected invention".

There is "developing vs developed nations ongoing opposing interests".

Re: The patent troll that won a $308M jury trial against Apple

#100

Post by DecoPerson » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:30 AM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #87

I’ll give a contrary view point to most “patent trolls”. I’m an inventor (100+ Issued patents), I develop POCs and concepts well beyond my ability to productionize. That’s not to say I couldnt create a product, just that I don’t have the resources. However, I do have the resources to develop novel techniques. Does that mean I didn’t invent the process- no, I did invent a new process. I just didn’t build them into a p…

Every software company in the world violates dozens to thousands of patents. If we all properly “played by the rules,” we’d be paralyzed by patents. No software could exist without a patent licensing team (internal or external), the overheads of which would make many ventures not worthwhile to pursue. Often you’d need to pay twice or more for the same concept, because most patents are vague and overlap with others. The combined patent licensing fees & terms would be crippling.

Software businesses (and others) currently exist at the mercy of patent-rights holders. As soon as they grow fat enough, the ROI on suing them makes it worthwhile. The case of PMC vs YouTube is a representative example.

The US patent system, as it is now, does not make the world a better place. It stifles innovation, where it should be fostering it.

Copyright, on the other hand, is much harder to violate. A software company can do business with much less fear of unknowingly breaching copyright. The copyright discussion is sufficiently different and unrelated to the patent discussion that raising it as an argument seems a little whataboutery.