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

#141

Post by hutzlibu » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:59 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #123

The issue I have with much of the patent trolling bashing is, that it somehow makes a distinction between practicing companies who make something and non practicing entities. I think this is a huge veil the industry pulled over people's eyes. Why is it OK for huge companies like apple, IBM, Google... to use the patent system to keep out any competitors or newcomers, but it is not ok for smaller inventors to sell thei…

"Either the patent system is about encouraging and rewarding innovation and then it should apply to anyone equally, or it is not and we should abolish it"

I am very firmly in the second camp, too. But it still leaves the question: how do inventors get money?

In the long run, I hope for more consciousness on a broader base - so people and organisation just directly support inventors with money, they think are worth supporting. Than we could skip all this waste of time and energy.

And as far as I know, this is happening already today. Donated cancer research for example. Also lots (if not most) of academic research is state funded and when you define the state not as a stealing feudal opressive system, but as the self-organisation of people - you can say, that people are choosing today to give lots of their money into research.

But for common tech? On a broader scale as of today? I am sceptical on how to make that transition.

I guess people could do try to get crowdfunding campaigns for their new revolutionizing research - but the common inventor is not a PR and social media expert - and you need to be, if you want to have common peoples attention.

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

#142

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:02 AM UTC

hurril wrote: post #132

cycomanic wrote: post #123

The issue I have with much of the patent trolling bashing is, that it somehow makes a distinction between practicing companies who make something and non practicing entities. I think this is a huge veil the industry pulled over people's eyes. Why is it OK for huge companies like apple, IBM, Google... to use the patent system to keep out any competitors or newcomers, but it is not ok for smaller inventors to sell thei…

This is a false dichotomy if I ever saw one. The fight is not between the ones that legitimately use patents and those that've merely bought (or created) them to make money off of the IP itself. There are, in fact, four alternatives here and not two: 1. Producing company, legitimate patents; 2. Producing company, illegitimate patents; 3. Non-producing company, legitimate patents; 4. Non-producing company, illegitimat…

There are several problems with your argument.

1. How do you distinguish legitimate and illegitimate patents. I guess you have to agree on some arbiter, like courts of law. So that's how we are in the current situation

2. Notwithstanding the issue around deciding between them, most larger patent holders have a huge portfolio of "clearly" legitimate and illegitimate patents, and they are using both (you don't need to sue to use the patent, just threats are enough)

3. If you ever spoken to a patent lawyer, the whole process is about making the patent as broad as possible without disclosing how to actually do it (at least if you are using the technology yourself). So one might argue it's about making the patent as illegitimate as possible, because then the patents are actually useful (otherwise they are just to easily worked around) .

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

#143

Post by mashpoe » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:02 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #136

cycomanic wrote: post #123

The issue I have with much of the patent trolling bashing is, that it somehow makes a distinction between practicing companies who make something and non practicing entities. I think this is a huge veil the industry pulled over people's eyes. Why is it OK for huge companies like apple, IBM, Google... to use the patent system to keep out any competitors or newcomers, but it is not ok for smaller inventors to sell thei…

Patents are a monopoly on an idea. And ideas shouldn't be owned by anyone. One shouldn't be forced to share their ideas, but the concept of coming up with something, and then going to your community and saying: "Hey everyone, I thought of this and wrote it down, none of you wrote it down before so now it's my idea for the next 30 years" Is just ridiculous.

People like to say that without patents there will be no incentive to advance technology, but if you're the one to come up with an idea then you already have a huge head start. If you don't make use of that head start, then you don't deserve it, and this applies to patents as well.

Monopolies are bad, and competition is good. Everyone is already incentivized to come up with and implement ideas faster than their competitors. Giving one person a monopoly just restricts others from creating competing products and only gives the user a worse and more expensive product.

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

#144

Post by TuringNYC » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:02 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?

Start adding a "Patent troll advance recovery fee" line item to your bills (even if it is just a break-out of the total cost), even for minor items and SaaS transactions so people see the impact to their own wallet.

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

#145

Post by vesinisa » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:03 AM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #139

cycomanic wrote: post #123

The issue I have with much of the patent trolling bashing is, that it somehow makes a distinction between practicing companies who make something and non practicing entities. I think this is a huge veil the industry pulled over people's eyes. Why is it OK for huge companies like apple, IBM, Google... to use the patent system to keep out any competitors or newcomers, but it is not ok for smaller inventors to sell thei…

> In fact bogus patents help established companies even more, because the trolls at least have to defend those patents in court at times, a small new player who is threatened by a large established one over some bogus patent can't afford to defend themselves. At one point when Microsoft was still in the phone business, I recall an article pointing out that Microsoft made more money off android in a single year (unspe…

I think you might be referring to the patents from Nokia. These are licensed on FRAND terms. Nokia was one of the original inventors of GSM and owns a considerable patent portfolio especially on the network tech.

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

#146

Post by nikanj » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:07 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?

Create a startup, have a multi-billion dollar exit, then use some hundreds of millions for lobbying

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

#147

Post by mkl » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:18 AM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #140

vasco wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents are a monopoly on an idea. And ideas shouldn't be owned by anyone. One shouldn't be forced to share their ideas, but the concept of coming up with something, and then going to your community and saying: "Hey everyone, I thought of this and wrote it down, none of you wrote it down before so now it's my idea for the next 30 years" Is just ridiculous.

But "so now it's my idea" just means "now only I can produce this thing commercially, unless I give you permission". The alternative is "only I can produce this thing commercially, and you have no idea how I made it anyway".

Companies like this don't produce anything commercially, didn't actually invent anything, and their patents are so vague and general that no one is any more informed about how to make anything.

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

#148

Post by andi999 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:28 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #124

JamesBarney wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still need patents. Healthcare is an obvious example, if we eliminated patents we'd have 0 new drugs pass FDA approval over the next decade. But software is very different from medical patents.

Actually, there is pretty strong evidence that patents are counterproductive for pharmaceuticals. Before the harmonization of IP laws, pharmaceuticals had different eligibility for patenting in the US, Europe and Switzerland. The US had the strongest, Europe somewhat weaker and in Switzerland it was inelligible. The Swiss companies invested the most money into R&D and were generally the most successful. The US ones w…

Did the Swiss companies choose not to patent medication in other countries? It could just be that the market in Switzerland was small enough so that there was a gentleman's agreement not to copy the pharmaceutical.

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

#149

Post by andi999 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:30 AM UTC

anticensor wrote: post #111

breck wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I worked for a few years in big tech, and it was crystal clear that patents and copyrights were awful in tech. But I believed the lie that maybe in medicine, they were needed. I spent a few years in medical research and realized that ohhhh shit, even worse in this industry. The whole thing is a big lie. End copyrights. End patents. The ideal length is zero. There is no case to be made to support them. W…

Not zero, but 3½ years for patents and 21 years (7+3½ per extension) for copyright is enough.

There is no extension (and even filing system) for copyright. Do you want to introduce that?

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

#150

Post by varjag » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 8:30 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #136

cycomanic wrote: post #123

The issue I have with much of the patent trolling bashing is, that it somehow makes a distinction between practicing companies who make something and non practicing entities. I think this is a huge veil the industry pulled over people's eyes. Why is it OK for huge companies like apple, IBM, Google... to use the patent system to keep out any competitors or newcomers, but it is not ok for smaller inventors to sell thei…

Patents are a monopoly on an idea. And ideas shouldn't be owned by anyone. One shouldn't be forced to share their ideas, but the concept of coming up with something, and then going to your community and saying: "Hey everyone, I thought of this and wrote it down, none of you wrote it down before so now it's my idea for the next 30 years" Is just ridiculous.

People on here are generally exposed to ridiculous side of patenting, with high publicity marginal cases that make headlines. A lot of patents are way beyond an idea written on a napkin and are the outcomes of significant R&D expenses.