How To Kill Patent Trolls • Hacker News Board

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#31

Post by onemoreact » Thu, Mar 01, 2012, 11:31 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #26

nu23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the problem is you need to pay a significant amount of money to file a claim. Interestingly, some have advocated the same method for preventing spam in email by requiring you to pay a very small amount every time you send one.

Yes, that's one of the oldest and most useless proposals that gets brought up by at least 5 people in every single discussion of email spam...

Which just happened to work well for the closest thing email has to a replacement. Text Messages. Think about this for a second, just about anyone can send you a text at any time using your public phone number yet it's not a problem.

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#32

Post by eurleif » Thu, Mar 01, 2012, 11:42 PM UTC

ktizo wrote: post #15

wisty wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something like a million pending patents backing up the system. I think their attitude is "screw it, just approve everything, and let the courts sort it out". If you call for a re-examination, they might think twice, because they'll look bad if the courts suggest they screwed up.

Could you automate a patent troll using a variation on the SCIgen software and effectively ddos the entire patent office with nonsensical gibberish? Am I bad for thinking of such things? ;)

I think you might actually be able to make some money with a program that searched expired computer-related patents for ideas which could be repatented for mobile devices instead of computers in general.

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#33

Post by maqr » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 3:55 AM UTC

I've always wondered why there isn't a crowdsourcing entity that pays out rewards for finding infringement (patent, copyright, whatever).

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#34

Post by brazzy » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 10:23 AM UTC

onemoreact wrote: post #31

brazzy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's one of the oldest and most useless proposals that gets brought up by at least 5 people in every single discussion of email spam...

Which just happened to work well for the closest thing email has to a replacement. Text Messages. Think about this for a second, just about anyone can send you a text at any time using your public phone number yet it's not a problem.

Not a problem? Google for "text message spam".

Now think a second about the useful things emails are used for which text messages generally can't be: notifications for new releases of OSS projects or replies to a blog comment, mailing lists for OSS developers or hobbies...

Re: How To Kill Patent Trolls

#35

Post by jinhwang » Fri, Mar 02, 2012, 4:20 PM UTC

Does anyone have any past experience with this? How much did it cost you?

I'm creating an app that deals with real-time information and geo-location... It seems that patent trolls will be lurking everywhere.

As a young startup, we don't have the money to go out there and make an attempt at protecting ourselves.