Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

blog.comma.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 318 posts

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#221

Post by Waterluvian »

wombatpm wrote: post #110
ummonk wrote: 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…

This is a great idea but it needs to be executed by lawyers, not tech people. Please not another tech startup of lawyers.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#222

Post by dicknuckle »

ENGNR wrote: post #218
bigDinosaur wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's true, it needs to be a social enterprise that ultimately makes itself redundant. What if a % of all revenue went into a warchest that built over time, and if it ever achieves the goal (of eliminating themselves) it got paid out to current shareholders

Nah, this all makes WAY too much sense. It will somehow get regulated to shit when millionaires somehow convince lawmakers this is somehow illegal.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#223

Post by denton-scratch »

mirzap wrote: post #166

I always admired George, his simplicity and vision. But after this I respect him even more: 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 becau…

It's possible that the "lose $1M before I give him $10k" schtick is bluster. If you're facing a fight with someone, then convincing them that you're crazy, and that you're prepared to risk everything to beat them, might make them run away.

Incidentally, can you invalidate a patent, so the troll can't use it any more, if the troll declines to defend the patent? Can they just walk away, and then assert it against some other mark?

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#224

Post by __s »

martopix wrote: post #204
mirzap wrote: post #166

I always admired George, his simplicity and vision. But after this I respect him even more: 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 becau…

> This only can come from a strong character. You need to be able to afford it.

They aren't saying all strong characters would do this, but that those who would do this have strong character

Plenty of troll settlements happen where the sued party could've afforded fighting it

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#225

Post by BLO716 »

This goes both ways, because patents are important. However, after talking to George many times as I watched his company grow with the SF proof of funzies in autonomous driving and DefCon pokes - the guy will not [quit] when he's squarely on the war path.

Get 'em, GH.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#226

Post by prvit »

jjoonathan wrote: post #92
artdigital wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't he settle with Sony with the promise to never hack any other sony products in the future? (source wikipedia)

Yeah, and not a week later anonymous hacker(s) took down the Play Station network for 23 days. Either he did it himself and got away with it, which is impressive, or he inspired someone else to do it and get away with it, which is also impressive.

“anonymous hackers”? Publicly unidentified hackers you mean?

That hack almost certainly had nothing to do with the jailbreaking scene. Sony pulled down their infrastructure to investigate an extensive compromise.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#227

Post by thathndude »

wombatpm wrote: post #110
ummonk wrote: 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…

Lawyer here. I love this idea. I think you make this work even better with a lot of part-time lawyers forming an army. In a world of remote work, I think it would be an appealing proposition. 100k for 10 hours a week of part time work.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#228

Post by slimsag »

prvit wrote: post #174
slimsag wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know? Gary Bowser (canadian citizen) was deported to the US due to lawsuit and sentenced to 40 months in prison recently. "Conspiracy to Circumvent Technological Measures and to Traffic in Circumvention Devices", and "Trafficking in Circumvention Devices" were two charges

You could of course look at the facts of the case and understand why. He was, in fact, selling circumvention devices for the explicit purpose of enabling piracy.

Hey, in general it's better to assume good faith. It's snide to just assume I haven't looked at the facts or attempted to understand anything.

According to Ars Technica the DOJ indictment stated:

* There was a screenshot of the SX OS menu with commercial games in it.

* A public changelog for SX OS publicly trumpeted the feature of "launching your Retro Game ROMs for emulators directly from gDrive,"

* They were "attempt[ing] to cloak its illegal activity with a purported desire to support homebrew enthusiasts who wanted to design their own games."

* the product description for the team's SX devices notes that you can "play all your favorite game backups straight off of the microSD card (or external USB storage!)"

So, yeah, I agree they were selling circumvention devices with at least some level of piracy intent (and that was used to send him to prison after all.) But I think you can also agree the delta between what they were doing and what geohotz did with the PS3 is not very large.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#229

Post by pclmulqdq »

KerrAvon wrote: post #132
sbf501 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've filed multiple (hardware) patents in previous companies. Which part, exactly, is a scam? I think the only reasonable criticisms of the patent system is a lack of intelligent lawyers in the areas of discipline that often fail finding similar claims in other filings, and that patents only benefit large companies, not DIY garage makers like the rest of the world thinks. I also think your shitting on lawyers is typi…

The poster did specify _software_ patents.

Most of which are invalid due to Alice any way. The Supreme Court agrees with him.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#230

Post by ndr »

ummonk wrote: 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.

Ask Patents might be the osint version of that. People will do a lot of things for internet points.

One example: https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/3566/scaling-bas...

Post reply on HN