https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170170984
If you cut through the lawyer-speak, claim #1 is basically about MITM-ing the vehicle's internal message bus. Hardly novel, even in 2007.
Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
41–50 of 318 posts
Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me that considerably more of today's ills would be solved by more collective action.
I strongly recommend that you read https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674537514 . It explains the economic reasons why it is hard to get collective action to happen. It also explains why any government organization organized for collective action in time is likely to undergo regulatory capture, meaning that the people you wanted to regulate are in control of the regulations and manipulate them for their…
Do you mind summarising the key points of the book?
Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
#43I always thought Hotz an interesting character. This paragraph adds to that impression: "What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. We will hire an amazing legal team, fight this, and while doing so invalidate his patents so they can’t be used against anyone else. Not because…
Hotz is a Hacker, in every sense of the word, all of us here should relate.
Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
The devil doesn't need an advocate. And at any rate, "illegal" is not the same as "immoral". Even if the troll's actions are within the law, in my opinion they're utterly immoral and scummy.
> The devil doesn't need an advocate. I like that statement. "I'll be the devil's advocate" is right up there with everyone stating they will defend hate speech "to the death" because of free speech. Why not take your time to say you disagree with someone instead?
There's a time and place for it, like "devil's advocate: what if we decide we don't trust this vendor's performance and want to delete our data after we've already started using them?" But when it's shorthand for "I'm going to be deliberately contrarian, and ...", then I tire of it.
Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
#45In every western country - except the US and England - the loser pays for the cost of the trial (all parties' lawyer fees + the court).
Just this reduces frivolous lawsuits. If you have a good case, sure, go ahead. If your case is weak, you run a real risk paying not only for your lawyers but the other side as well.
(Note that there are disadvantages to loser-pays as well. Image you legitimately want to sue corporation X because they did something atrocious. Big corporation X can now run up lawyer cost that you have to pay if you lose.)
Edit: Sorry I was wrong about England (which leaves the US only). Edit 2: In the US you can file for your lawyer fees to be returned, but that in itself is risk (I have some lawyer friends)
Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
#46To play devil's advocate, there is nothing about being a patent troll inherently illegal. Hotz feels the patent is invalid, but it might not be. Our system does not require you to ever build the object patented before extracting fees from it. This is in fact the way the US patent system works. One of the patents is here: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 Method, Apparatus and System for Retrof…
You can often use legal fees of going through a case you know you'll lose to crush the other person.
The process -- your "day in court" (years of fees and stress) -- is the punishment, turning your "win" into only a Pyrrhic victory.
Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
#47In every western country - except the US and England - the loser pays for the cost of the trial (all parties' lawyer fees + the court). Just this reduces frivolous lawsuits. If you have a good case, sure, go ahead. If your case is weak, you run a real risk paying not only for your lawyers but the other side as well. (Note that there are disadvantages to loser-pays as well. Image you legitimately want to sue corporati…
[deleted]
Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
#48I think Axel should be forced to adopt George’s company slogan recommendation if he loses.
Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
#49To play devil's advocate, there is nothing about being a patent troll inherently illegal. Hotz feels the patent is invalid, but it might not be. Our system does not require you to ever build the object patented before extracting fees from it. This is in fact the way the US patent system works. One of the patents is here: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 Method, Apparatus and System for Retrof…
The patent in the complaint doesn't even have anything to do with what we do as a company! It describes a system that calls 911 when it detects a crash (like onstar). Ignore the (very generic) title and read on in the actual patent. https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 We write open source ADAS software, and it doesn't have any functionality like that: https://github.com/commaai/openpilot But for…
The disclosures in the patent aren't what they are suing you over. Read the claims. Patents like this often have a lot of stuff shoved into the disclosure so that they can keep the patent application alive to write more patents based on the original disclosure. The claims appear to be written to read on devices like yours: My knowledge of your system is a bit dated, but I thought you had a device that you plugged into a port in the car instead of a manufacturer-installed thing. This is why this patent has a 2007 priority date, but a 2018 application date: they essentially wrote a ridiculously broad disclosure, and kept filing patents based on it.
Dataspeed did appear to have tried to invalidate this patent in 2019 (see the IPR documents linked there), and succeeded on all but claim 20. If your device does not have a relay which shuts off its electrical connection within the car, you're probably safe. You could try to invalidate it, but you should read the docs from the IPR to see what Dataspeed did and what you might need to do.
My gut-check guess is that claim 20 is probably not going to get invalidated unless you can find some weird after-market car part from before 2007 which does a safety shut-off of a car component.
Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit
#50In every western country - except the US and England - the loser pays for the cost of the trial (all parties' lawyer fees + the court). Just this reduces frivolous lawsuits. If you have a good case, sure, go ahead. If your case is weak, you run a real risk paying not only for your lawyers but the other side as well. (Note that there are disadvantages to loser-pays as well. Image you legitimately want to sue corporati…
No, in the UK, the loser will pay for court costs, in general. I had a bit of legal trouble a few years ago - the other side was trying to play "solicitor" to use the law as a way of extorting me (aka threatening to make criminal complaints over various (bullshit) things) so I had to hire someone to write a polite 'go fuck yourself' letter eventually. Solicitors are duty-bound to try and get things to settle out of court, so dealing with wanna-be solicitors is always a problem for them.
https://www.ashurst.com/en/news-and-insights/legal-updates/q...
What's unique about the UK is that unlike actually civilized countries (incl. the US), there is no legal requirement to negotiate in good faith. It is expected for you to do so, but if the other side figures out that you haven't and tries to take you to court over that, then the English court system will say "tough luck". Manipulating the other side to your advantage should be expected, they said. There have been High Court cases that have established this principle. so doing business with the English is always possibly problematic (e.g. Brexit and all the lies, the mentality behind all that etc). Anecdotally, I have heard from foreigners that doing business with English people is more of a headache than with ones from other countries. And I have lived here long enough to 'understand' the English better than most Americans...