61–70 of 236 posts
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It's quite possible that Fred's actions do make him a hypocrite here, but can you show that they do, rather than waving your hand at him and calling him a VC?
His blog title is "A VC" plus right at the top of the page it says "Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures" so yeah, I think I was on pretty firm ground there.
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There is no doubt that Fred Wilson is a VC. You haven't shown that he pushes startups to apply for frivolous patents, though.
Not only that but Fred would have to push for enforcing the frivolous patents for OPs criticism to be justified.
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It's quite possible that Fred's actions do make him a hypocrite here, but can you show that they do, rather than waving your hand at him and calling him a VC?
Fred's official standpoint is here (the slug already says it): http://www.usv.com/2010/02/software-patents-are-the-problem-... Of course it is not clear if he lives up to that stance in all cases ( http://www.usv.com/investments/ ) , but I read CPlatypus' statement more as pointing out the structural problem.
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[citation needed]
for starters, in the comment section of the original post and besides, the onus of citation should be on you with your crazy broad assumption that Fred has placed 'immense pressure' on startups to generate patents.
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I think his point was that these "Specific" patents were bogus patents in the first place... "None of them represent unique and new ideas at the time of the filing. I supect they all can be thrown out over prior art if Facebook takes the time and effort to do that." I do think that pre- IPO this is a pretty dirty play. You might have a point if you can show a case where Fred Wilson or VC's sues other companies right…
That's a fair point, but I don't think it gets very far. He also goes on to say, "I don't think there's a unique idea out there in the web space and hasn't been for well over a decade." That's a pretty common attitude. Have you ever seen anyone say "yeah, that software patent is truly novel"? Ever? I haven't, so he's not really making a distinction between these specific patents and others. Without such a distinction…
To answer your question about novel software patents, yes, I've seen people say the RSA patent was novel. However, novelty is only one of three requirements for patentability. RSA is essentially a mathematical algorithm patent. It's not statutory material for a patent, any more than Benson's patent was.
Further, whether patent system needs "reform in this country" is relevant to the fact that one part believes other part infringe. If Yahoo!, Facebook or anyone else feels someone infringe and ended up saying "oh they system is broken lets wait until its fixed", then they may as well wait another 75 years.
I say good things can come up from this, especially if Yahoo! loses. Facebook is claiming that what they are being sued over was "nothing new" at that time. Cool! Have them win. Next time someone build highly successful social website with human connections done based on request/approve/reject, and Facebook will try to shut them down based on infringe of one of their hundreds of patents, you can say: "oh, none of this was new at the time of Facebook: MySpace, Fridndster, etc. Here, I am using Facebook own rules - they win, I need to win too".
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We can (and should!) demand that they not do the expected Then you are demanding that the board neglect its fiduciary responsibilities and go to jail.
The almost-myth of the fiduciary responsibilty of company executives to be irresponsible. I wrote elsewhere [1]: > A point about the morality of companies angle: the so-called "fiduciary duty" of companies that is an overriding duty to maximise shareholder returns within the constraints of the law above all other ends is a legal obligation in only a few countries. In most countries, including most states in the US, e…
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This is why I use my own domain for my primary email address. If Google decides to pull some kind of crap on me, I can always ditch them without having to write that silly "My new email is" message to all my contacts.
I use a personal email domain on gmail[1] as well. But for a different reason: It allows a "catch all" email, so I register on every site as @vekslers.org and have my account act as a catch all sink. This allows me to both filter out spamming sources and trace back who leaked my email address to 3rd party sources. This approach is a pivot on the name+tag@domain.com email tagging which most js form validations devs ar…
Do you get a lot of spam to addresses like admin@domain ?
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I use a personal email domain on gmail[1] as well. But for a different reason: It allows a "catch all" email, so I register on every site as @vekslers.org and have my account act as a catch all sink. This allows me to both filter out spamming sources and trace back who leaked my email address to 3rd party sources. This approach is a pivot on the name+tag@domain.com email tagging which most js form validations devs ar…
This sounds like a good setup (and workaround the name+tag issue). Can regular Gmail handle a catch all or is this a paid feature?