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

#161

Post by Kliment » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:06 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?

Don't work with/for companies that use patents. Don't consent to companies using your work to file patents. If they do anyway, publish prior art where possible.

Write down and publish as many things as possible to enable prior art searches. If an important case affects a field you've been working on for decades, actively help victims find prior art.

Consistently vote against IP maximalists wherever you have an opportunity. Don't have relationships with IP maximalists.

Remind the general public about how bad and stupid patents are when you have the opportunity.

Don't buy products that advertise using "patented technology" or "patent pending". If you have no choice, buy used.

If you are in control of a company's patent strategy, file lots of provisional patents then abandon them, so they show up in the database when patent examiners search for prior art.

Financially support victims of patent attacks and help them get as many patents invalidated as possible.

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

#162

Post by Sebb767 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

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?

In some way, yes. The other side of this is, unfortunately, that these people are sometimes pretty inexperienced and easy to influence. I like to watch some true crime stories and quite often the people don't seem to have an "innocent until proven guilty"-approach, but rather a "if they're on trial, they're probably guilty"-approach. And then there's the famous Texas court for patent trolls.

That's not to say that judges can't make bad decisions (we have a similarly infamous court in Hamburg here in Germany), but it seems that having a jury does not necessarily make for better outcomes.

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

#163

Post by koonsolo » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:12 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.

> "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"

In this case you are right, it stiffles progress instead of helping it.

But what about the case where "Hey, it took us 20 manyears of research to discover this, and when we release it, it's up for grabs for anyone"

In that case, you want to have a patent system so the research can have a ROI.

But the latter case never happens in software, and so I'm very happy Europe doesn't have any software patents.

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

#164

Post by bananaface » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:13 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…

I would argue if you're not bringing your idea to market, that's not innovation. It's the opposite, you're blocking innovation.

Patents stop other people from creating useful stuff. I think it's reasonable that you should have to fill the gap in order to retain the right to stop them. Although enforcing that is difficult.

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

#165

Post by depressedpanda » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:18 AM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #155

mashpoe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The key word here is 'invention'. In practice we have lawyers specialized in crafting as vague and broad patents as possible, so that bogus infringements can be litigated in court.

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

#166

Post by ant6n » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:20 AM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #163

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.

> "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" In this case you are right, it stiffles progress instead of helping it. But what about the case where "Hey, it took us 20 manyears of research to discover this, and when we release it, it's up for grabs for anyone" In that case, you want to have a patent system so the research can have a R…

Didn’t mpeg work with patents and licenses?

... I guess it’s not really necessary to have patents in order to sell licenses, and I guess in most cases for software, patents are used as a moat for a business rather than getting a direct ROI on research.

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

#167

Post by AmericanChopper » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:33 AM UTC

depressedpanda wrote: post #165

AmericanChopper wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The key word here is 'invention'. In practice we have lawyers specialized in crafting as vague and broad patents as possible, so that bogus infringements can be litigated in court.

There’s lots of problems with our current system. However the list of problems doesn’t include the existence of the system itself.

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

#168

Post by notahacker » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:38 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?

Collective action isn't going to help with trolls with the resources (and case) to go up against Apple, but should kill off a lot of the frivolous "it's cheaper to license than fight" patent licensing demands. If a troll knows a license demand issued to a particular company will meet with the entire industry pooling resources to invalidate the patent they're trying to individually claim royalties for, it suddenly becomes an unprofitable business model (or at least, very unprofitable to demand licenses from companies participating in the scheme). Fundable since "patent insurance" is already a thing companies budget for, and probably doesn't require any legal changes to work.

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

#169

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:46 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#170

Post by Abishek_Muthian » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 9:48 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.

Not to mention the poorly qualified or downright unethical Intellectual Property(IP) industry which makes the uninformed spend thousands of dollars in the patent process without proper prior art search, only for the patent authority to later dismiss the application i.e. if the the patent authority is competent or else award the patent which ends up with a troll.

If you are not from an industry where IP is unfortunately the foundation for doing business e.g. Pharma, Bio Tech; You are better off not pursuing IP at all, at least if you cannot afford the best IP attorney in your jurisdiction and assuming you have a competent patent authority.