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Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

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Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#261

Post by wombatpm »

thathndude wrote: post #227
wombatpm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good point. I did not consider part timers. I was also thinking that former patent examiners could be brought on as well.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#264

Post by wombatpm »

btown wrote: post #238
8ytecoder wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think $10k/yr is fairly reasonable even for startups. However, a lot of these trolls go after small businesses, don’t they?

That's the key to it all - you have HR startups, insurance firms, cybersecurity firms etc. bundle the cost of patent troll insurance into their product, give them a commission, and have them sell it to small businesses - not just startups. Then you can keep the price much more affordable because you have an economy of scale!

Excellent idea! That makes the potential market huge.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#265

Post by ncr100 »

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…

Running the numbers is exactly what patent trolls do so yes it seems like a valid approach.

Reading down the Twitter feed from the troll in question shows a Tweet of a discovery by them and their lawyer that it's cheaper to deal with the court costs of trafficking 15 kg of cocaine than to legally assert a patent.

This of course can be read two ways like what a shame because it's a sin to use cocaine and not a sin to legally assert your intellectual property rights, however in context, it's so much more sinister scenario of shaking down legitimate businesses for illegitimate reasons.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#266

Post by aagha »

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…

I suspect a large company like Salesforce would fund a decent chunk of this and write it off as goodwill.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#268

Post by kurupt213 »

jacquesm wrote: post #189
zaarn wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the US, the constitutional right to a lawyer only extends to defendants in criminal trials. Civil action, even you are sued by the government, is your responsibility regardless of income

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#269

Post by prvit »

slimsag wrote: post #228
prvit wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "attem…

> 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.

It was absolutely massive. geohots jailbreak did not enable piracy.

It’s like the delta between selling kratom and heroin is not very large, both are drugs that will get you high.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#270

Post by NotYourLawyer »

dilyevsky wrote: post #85
frellus wrote: post #52

I frankly don't understand why a judge or jury would ever find for a company which has no revenue, other than through litigation settlements. I mean if they're not even selling a license or royalties for their patents, any cases should be dismissed. We can call it the "use it or lose it" rule for patents.

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

It’s not corrupt for a jury to follow what the law says—they swear an oath to do exactly that. And the law doesn’t have a carve-out saying you can only win if you have a product you’re making. (Although under current judge-made law, it is harder for a troll to get an injunction.)

If you don’t like the law, talk to Congress. Don’t blame the juries or the judges.

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