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Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

blog.comma.ai

181–190 of 318 posts

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#181
Patents really do not seem like worthwhile things to enshrine in law these days... Companies like Tesla can release all their latents with no fear because duplicating a production line exactly is basically impossible. And the Chinese basically ignore foreign patents anyway.

They should just be abolished as a concept.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a simple reason for this - corruption. That’s why most of this suits are filed in a specific court in texas

Are you implying that Texas is corrupt?

He's referring to the Eastern District of Texas which is infamous for patent trolls. A small number of judges find in favor of patent trolls far more often than the rest of the nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_f...

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#183
post #90

There needs to be an anti-patent-troll membership organization. You pay a fee relative to some metric and the organization acts as insurance against parent trolls by fully defending any patent lawsuits that are obviously unjustified. And to keep costs low, membership in this organization would be public to deter patent trolls from even trying to sue a member in the first place.

The Japanese video game industry does this in an ad-hoc way. Smaller game studios ask bigger companies, like Nintendo, to register some patents in their stead so the bigger companies can keep them safe with their elite team of lawyers. The bigger companies like Nintendo in turn gatekeep the patents from trolls and abusers, letting the industry at-large use the patents for a greater good while suing anyone who doesn't…

Doesn't OIN work in pretty much the same fashion?

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#184
post #90

There needs to be an anti-patent-troll membership organization. You pay a fee relative to some metric and the organization acts as insurance against parent trolls by fully defending any patent lawsuits that are obviously unjustified. And to keep costs low, membership in this organization would be public to deter patent trolls from even trying to sue a member in the first place.

Run the numbers: Assuming you need a legal staff of 20 with avg cost 500k per. So that’s 10 million per year. Double it for rent, SGA, etc. we’re at 20 million per year. Offer a protection package at 10k per year, you need 2000 paying customers. Since all the lawyers are on staff, you can have them invalidating patents when not defending case. If you structure it like a mutual insurance company, you could return a po…

I like it, although you left out the part where your other business arm researches potential troll lawsuits before they happen and goes after companies who don't pay you protection money. /s

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#186
post #90

There needs to be an anti-patent-troll membership organization. You pay a fee relative to some metric and the organization acts as insurance against parent trolls by fully defending any patent lawsuits that are obviously unjustified. And to keep costs low, membership in this organization would be public to deter patent trolls from even trying to sue a member in the first place.

This company was trying to do something like that: https://www.rpxcorp.com/

Intellectual Ventures started out that way but quickly went on offense.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Intellectual Ventures started out as a defense against patent trolls, but after gathering enough of a patent portfolio, they started playing offense in a way that looks like patent trolling.

The important thing to know is that they did so because the economics of defensive aggregation were insufficient to return capital to the investors.

Which makes it even more disgusting. IV is what wrecked the reputation of a lot of people for me.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#188
post #90

There needs to be an anti-patent-troll membership organization. You pay a fee relative to some metric and the organization acts as insurance against parent trolls by fully defending any patent lawsuits that are obviously unjustified. And to keep costs low, membership in this organization would be public to deter patent trolls from even trying to sue a member in the first place.

I was sent this the other day. Haven’t had a chance to dig deeper. Free for companies under $10M in revenue? (If I remember). https://lotnet.com/sem/

I'm probably misunderstanding (not a law guy) but that seems like a strange mechanism - members of that group transfer legit patents to the patent troll, on the condition that the troll doesn't sue them. This seems to be arming the troll with the tools to attack outside groups - making it somebody else's problem is not the same as eliminating the problem.

I'd rather see the Cloudflare approach, beat the barbarians back from the gates then destroy the troll's IP inventory with examples of prior art.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#189
post #173

In 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…

It should be noted that atleast in Germany, you can't just run up the lawyer bills. There are standard rates and you only pay "necessary costs". That means one lawyer. At standard rate. And only for what they did in the court room. That means what you pay the other side in legal costs is usually less than what you paid your lawyer. Though you pay other fees too and in total IIRC it usually amounts to about 150-200% o…

Correct. I sued a party in Germany, won the case, got awarded 10K in legal costs (which actually was quite high, but it was a complete travesty) and another 25K in damages as well as annulment of whatever the suit was about.

Then the party I sued absconded to the US (he already had a house there and his family was already living there) and simply never returned.

The real legal bill was 50K. But at least the annulment stood and that was the main thrust of the suit.

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