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Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

blog.comma.ai

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Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#301

Post by TylerE »

wombatpm wrote: post #296
TylerE wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's seem to make a startup LESS attractive companies, no? One bad case and the whole thing runs out of money. This is the kind of service you'd want provided by somebody "too big to fail".

True, but the goal is to fight patent trolls or non practicing entities. Not take on legitimate cases of patent infringement against Oracle or Intel or Apple

Winning an straightforward case in the American justice system can be quite expensive, especially when the plantiff goes judge shopping (which they all do, it's part of what makes a patent troll a patent troll).

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#302

Post by netsharc »

freejazz wrote: post #288
pitaj wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like it's impossible to decide what counts and what doesn't. Insurance companies reject claims all the time.

And you think the insureds don't argue about it? let alone litigate it? have you ever dealt with insurance coverage for a litigation?

Spontaneously, my idea to protect against such a ligitation would be, put it in the contract that if the insurance rules that the client has no valid case, the client can take it up to a committee, for example the pool of all clients. And have it in the insurance contract that the decision of the committee is final. Obviously/hopefully it'd be in the interest of the other clients that their insurance payments won't being spent on the wrong type of cases.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#303

Post by freejazz »

netsharc wrote: post #302
freejazz wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you think the insureds don't argue about it? let alone litigate it? have you ever dealt with insurance coverage for a litigation?

Spontaneously, my idea to protect against such a ligitation would be, put it in the contract that if the insurance rules that the client has no valid case, the client can take it up to a committee, for example the pool of all clients. And have it in the insurance contract that the decision of the committee is final. Obviously/hopefully it'd be in the interest of the other clients that their insurance payments won't b…

If I'm purchasing litigation insurance, I'm not going to want a provision where the denial of my coverage is determined by a pool of individuals who have an interest in not granting the coverage. Insurance agreements are legally binding contracts and that's why they get litigated over. Your scheme essentially waives an insured's right to a breach of contract claim over non-coverage.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#304

Post by gbronner »

ncr100 wrote: post #265
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…

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…

Exactly. The costs of discovery are high and assymetric. A decent lawyer can legally cause a defendant to run up a monster bill long before this gets anywhere near a trial. It is legal extortion.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#305

Post by axelsvensson »

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…

Contact me if you're serious about this, I have some input.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#306

Post by matiasfernandez »

Dalewyn wrote: post #158
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.

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…

Is that why Nintendo has a significant number of obvious patents despite prior art? For example, recently they patented "time manipulation of objects in game".

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#307

Post by JoeAltmaier »

sebastien_b wrote: post #24

In addition to taking on and crushing patent trolls, someone needs to also go after the USPTO for causing these people/companies financial hardship by granting these bogus patents in the first place.

I think patents are usually granted if filed in the correct format. The expectation is, challenges are where weak patents are discovered. The patent office hasn't got enough lawyers to examine every application.

Also, trolls rarely are the ones creating these patents. They just buy up some basket of idle patents, then spend their morning looking for any company announcing anything that has a couple words in common with something in their 'portfolio'. They send a boilerplate royalty request or whatever. Rinse and repeat.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#308

Post by cratermoon »

ummonk wrote: post #299
cratermoon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don’t want to give up the possibility of using strategic patent suits themselves This is a highly under-appreciated aspect of the patent world. Companies that buy and own lots of patents do so defensively. Big companies even enter into patent cross-licensing agreements with each other, where they basically say "I know you probably infringe on my patents and I probably infringe on yours, but we'll make a deal and in…

Yeah, but if such an insurance scheme can protect smaller member companies and prevent patent trolls from targeting them, I'd say that's mission accomplished. Let the patent trolls go after the companies that will pay them off, but make sure they're strongly deterred from going after the little guys.

The current patent regime does nothing to deter going after the little guys. Or even, really, the big guys. Newegg was essentially gutted by the same patent troll that Intuit beat, as the article notes. Also, Intuit's victory didn't invalidate the patent, they just were found to be not infringing.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#309

Post by sometimeshuman »

7373737373 wrote: post #255
sometimeshuman wrote: post #78

"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." This stance is admirable but comma.ai is partly owned by investors. Isn't he obliged to find the lowest cost solution to this ? Or is George Hotz planning to spend his personal money on the lawsuit ?

Are you implying submitting to these greedy fucks is low cost?

Fucks ? It's one fuck, singular, over the past 6 years. There is this idea that an army of trolls are standing in attack formation and will swarm if he gives in this one time. But that claim seems silly.

geohot is rich and if he chooses to use those riches to end a stressful event and start sleeping well again, I wouldn't judge him one bit. Personally I'd rather be in the hospital that be in court.

Re: Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

#310

Post by netsharc »

freejazz wrote: post #303
netsharc wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spontaneously, my idea to protect against such a ligitation would be, put it in the contract that if the insurance rules that the client has no valid case, the client can take it up to a committee, for example the pool of all clients. And have it in the insurance contract that the decision of the committee is final. Obviously/hopefully it'd be in the interest of the other clients that their insurance payments won't b…

If I'm purchasing litigation insurance, I'm not going to want a provision where the denial of my coverage is determined by a pool of individuals who have an interest in not granting the coverage. Insurance agreements are legally binding contracts and that's why they get litigated over. Your scheme essentially waives an insured's right to a breach of contract claim over non-coverage.

(Shrugs emoji) Well okay, sooooorry I can't convince you to buy this fictitious insurance to protect your fictitious self against fictitious patent lawsuits...

Insurance schemes pool the insureds' moneys together in case something bad happens to one of the insureds, of course it'd be in all the insureds' best interest that the money is used properly, if the company says "We won't fight this particular patent troll", it's also in the pool's interest to tell the company "Wait, we think this is a valid case, and you have to fight it!", because otherwise, when a similar patent troll shows up trolling one of them, the insurance company will also ignore it, leaving them exposed.

> Insurance agreements are legally binding contracts and that's why they get litigated over. Your scheme essentially waives an insured's right to a breach of contract claim over non-coverage.

If I drink and crash my car, my insurance won't pay me. I can sue them and the judge will tell me to fuck off. In a poor analogy of my fictitious example, I can ask the pool of other drivers to judge whether the insurance should pay or not, and if they say no, sure I can also go to the judge, and she'll say "Sorry, the contract says the pool's decision is final.".

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