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

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

#151

Post by [deleted] »

TomVDB wrote: post #79
monocasa wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much of the expenditure goes anywhere useful? And remember that they're incentivized to report 15% of their revenue being spent on R&D for tax reasons. That $100B is just for drugs that later got FDA approval, not the NIH grant budget.

If you’re going to make that argument, you also have to consider the opposite possibility: I’ve worked on (non-medical) projects with public funding in the past. One can only hope that my experience wasn’t representative for the amount waste of public money in the medical world.

[deleted]

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

#152

Post by matsemann »

lostdog wrote: post #138
RobertRoberts wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally heard a good argument in support of "patent trolls" from a friend who has a few patents. It was something like this: "The little guys can't fight legal battles with large corporations. So either you work with lawyers that are labeled patent trolls or you lose your patent by default by lack of defending it. Or you can go broke fighting in court." It was the first time I had considered the possibility that th…

How is this argument remotely good? These lawyers, and more importantly, these shell companies, are being labeled as patent trolls because they're filing nonsense patents and then spraying nonsense lawsuits around to try to capture random prey. They're not the vanguard of "protecting the little guy." The idea that making it easy for bad patents to be defended is somehow good is ridiculous. It ignores the possibility…

Of course the argument doesn't seem any good if you completely misunderstand it..

Let's say you're a small player with a legitimate patent. A huge entity is infringing. In order to make any money of your invention, you have to fight. But that can be very costly and risky. Instead, you sell your patent to someone specialized in this, a "patent troll". You get some money, they use their expertise to fight the big player.

Like selling someone's debt to a collector so at least you get some money.

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

#153

Post by varjag »

mashpoe wrote: post #143
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.

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 compe…

In practice you'll have a head start of maybe a year before a grifter in China replicates your three years of R&D and floods the market. And a copied product will always be cheaper as they don't have to amortise development costs.

That's how technology worked before the patent systems, and the outcome was manufacturer secrecy - which generally sucked more than the patent system.

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

#154

Post by diegoperini »

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…

I believe most of the time 1 and 3 applies to the same company (if it is big enough) simultaneously because companies want to be one move ahead of their competitors.

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

#155

Post by AmericanChopper »

mashpoe wrote: post #143
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.

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 compe…

Just because the patent system has some problems doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any value. These troll patents might contain a high number of ideas you might just casually come up with, but the actually valuable ones tend to be comprised of innovative ideas that usually require significant R&D investment to come up with. Without patents there’s very little incentive to invest in coming up with those ideas. A lot of the time the people who come up with the patent have no intention or capability to bring products to market, so unless you want 100% of research to be completely controlled by commercial interests, you probably want to have patents.

You’re also ignoring what the patent is actually awarded for. The temporary monopoly is awarded in return for publicly disclosing your invention. Without patents you’d expect almost all commercial innovation to center around ideas that can be kept a trade secret, and to have a lot more budget devoted to protecting trade secrets. It would essentially be the exact opposite of what I expect you’d want to happen.

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

#156

Post by strenholme »

Now, one thing buried near the end of the article and something which I have seem very little discussion here about: The patents in question are from 1995. So why are the patents valid until 2027 and 2030, since patents, these days, are only valid for 20 years after filing.

These particular patents are a kind of submarine patent based on a particular abuse of the patent system: Someone files a patent, which means they get a monopoly on an idea. But they delay the granting of the patent. This way, they can wait until the idea they came up with is being used in some form by large companies before the patent gets granted, then they have 17 years when they can sue anyone and everyone who implements their idea from 1995.

Now, as it turns out, in 1995 the patent office changed their practice to stop this very particular type of abuse: Patents, starting in mid-1995, are valid for 20 years from date they were filed, not 17 years after the patent was granted.

However, this particular company, back in 1995, filed a large number of patents right just before that practice was changed, then delayed the patents in the Google lawsuit being granted until 2010 or 2013, allowing them to have a monopoly on a 1981 or 1995 idea from 2010 until 2027, or 2013 until 2030.

What needs to be done, in this particular case, is have congress pass a law saying that, for any and all patents filed in 1995 or sooner, every single one of those patents are now expired (or better yet, retroactively expire them in 2015, i.e. 20 years after 1995).

Barring an act of congress, maybe when this case is appealed, higher courts will give us a precedent which invalidates those old 1995 patents still being enforced here in 2021.

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

#157

Post by lostdog »

matsemann wrote: post #152
lostdog wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this argument remotely good? These lawyers, and more importantly, these shell companies, are being labeled as patent trolls because they're filing nonsense patents and then spraying nonsense lawsuits around to try to capture random prey. They're not the vanguard of "protecting the little guy." The idea that making it easy for bad patents to be defended is somehow good is ridiculous. It ignores the possibility…

Of course the argument doesn't seem any good if you completely misunderstand it.. Let's say you're a small player with a legitimate patent. A huge entity is infringing. In order to make any money of your invention, you have to fight. But that can be very costly and risky. Instead, you sell your patent to someone specialized in this, a "patent troll". You get some money, they use their expertise to fight the big playe…

Ok, I see, you're just saying the NPE is justified, and not the rest of the patent troll system.

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

#158

Post by lelanthran »

mnadkvlb wrote: post #107
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…

You dont have to publish them, keep them secret !! go sell your work as a secret if your work is so important, why do you have to publish it and then litigate anyone else who comes up with a similar techniques.

> You dont have to publish them, keep them secret !! go sell your work as a secret if your work is so important, why do you have to publish it and then litigate anyone else who comes up with a similar techniques.

Because if you simply keep it secret then the people who patented it after they independently came up with it can sue YOU!

The lesser evil is to put it into the public domain; then no one can patent it and no one can sue you either.

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

#159

Post by gambiting »

hutzlibu wrote: post #135
gambiting wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the jury system that seems to be one of the craziest things about the US system. Luckily other countries don't have it, or only have it for the most serious of crimes(murder trials). Like....who ever thought that having 12 random people decide if you're guilty or not is a good idea?

"Like....who ever thought that having 12 random people decide if you're guilty or not is a good idea?" Probably people, who experienced their share of professional, but corrupt judges, who live worlds apart from the common people they judge over. If a verdict is supposed to represent the peoples will - doesn't it make sense to involve actual common people?

>>If a verdict is supposed to represent the peoples will - doesn't it make sense to involve actual common people?

No, because the law should be followed to the letter and "common people" are not qualified to pass judgement. Jury trials in the US just seem to be about how 12 people feel about someone, not whether law was actually broken or not. Every time I hear a case where there was no hard evidence against somebody, but the prosecutor made an impassioned case to the jury and they decide that the person is guilty I'm like.....what even is this. Why have a justice system if you're going to have this circus at the end.

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

#160

Post by ai_ja_nai »

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.

Uhm, I used to think that patents are a monopoly on a certain implementation of an idea, not the idea itself. If you own a patent of a video codec, that doesn't make you automatically owner of all codecs of the world. Am I wrong?
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