311–318 of 318 posts
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…
Any engineer who has ever filed a software patent soon realizes that the entire patent system in America (at least with respect to software) is a scam. It seems to be designed to enrich lawyers and tax engineers. It's almost like all the kids in school who failed out of CS 101 went to law school and cooked up a scheme to tax their classmates who actually stuck it out and built something. Why the hell do we have a sys…
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…
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…
I happen to have practiced patent law at a large firm for 2 years with clients like Google, Apple, and Facebook.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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",…
Because of the terms of your insurance agreement that will clearly disavow coverage in this circumstance.
> 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.".
The thing you don't get is that insurance agreements are already legally binding agreements which is why coverage decisions are made with respect to the facts of the matter and the terms of the insurance agreement. As an insurer, if you do not cover something that the agreement requires you to cover, the insured will win win in court and get the coverage.
>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.
Insurers make the decision based upon the terms of the insurance agreement that they signed.
The fundamental problem here is not patent trolls... It is the patent system itself. We either need a constitutional amendment limiting patent time periods to 3 or 7 years or just simply dissolve the patent system itself. The free market needs to be truly free to actually function... Otherwise it's just a bunch of oligarchs using artificial monopolies to prevent competition and harm consumers.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In England, the losing side usually pays at least a large portion (if not all) of the costs of the winning side. 100% cost awards are rare, but generally the costs burden is placed on whoever loses. This seems to reduce frivolous lawsuits (depending on who is suing/being sued) but you can ask for a cost capping order to limit the amount you have to pay out if you lose, which partially helps address the issue of "they…
An important detail: it shouldn't be (and as far as I know isn't) the loser who pays but the party who behaved unreasonably. For example, if you damage someone's property, offer to pay £100, but they refuse your offer and instead sue you and win .... £100, then you won't be paying their legal costs. In fact, they may have to pay your costs because they were being unreasonable in bringing the case to court after you h…