NB: Yahoo Mail is still an excellent source of widely-accepted disposable anonymous email addresses. If not the only one left.
Yahoo Crosses The Line
131–140 of 236 posts
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#132This guy doesn't even mention the claims of the patents in suit, so why should I trust his opinion about their merits? If you don't know how to read a patent, you're absolutely not qualified to make pronouncements like this: > 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. Also, even the articl…
Far more valuable than this contrarian response would be an analysis of the claims on their merits, since you allude to a knowledge of the subject. Care to share?
I haven't read the patents myself either, and I'm not willing to put in the time to pore over 10 patents just for the sake of curiosity and karma on HN. It just irritates me when I see such ignorant rage.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#133What about Amazon then?
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#134This guy doesn't even mention the claims of the patents in suit, so why should I trust his opinion about their merits? If you don't know how to read a patent, you're absolutely not qualified to make pronouncements like this: > 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. Also, even the articl…
Can we bring Hitler into the conversation?
No one needs to be "educated" in the intricate and fascinating political and economic power dynamics of the Third Reich to have a valid opinion about Hitler. All they need to know is that Hitler killed the Jews and was evil.
Similarly, no one posting here needs to know anything about the technical details of patentology, a subject in which I suspect you're quite expert, to know that the patent system is evil and needs to be eradicated from the earth - like Hitler.
Does that make you a bad person? Fact is, a lot of good people worked for Hitler. But at a certain point, they all had to reevaluate their career choices. I can only hope you'll do the same.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM which hold a huge number of software patents and aren't exactly keen on seeing that system go away, either. But yes, big pharma relies almost exclusively on patents to recoup R&D costs.
R&D costs actually make up a pretty small portion of the pie. It's unclear what if anything patents are doing to recoup those since they're all just copying each other with designer drugs that are just slightly different enough to not violate someone else's patent. The pharma industry is probably a better example than the software industry for why patents suck. http://www.dklevine.com/papers/imbookfinal09.pdf
It doesn't matter if it's a better example for why patents suck. They are spending more than we are lobbying congress to keep the current patent regime in place.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM which hold a huge number of software patents and aren't exactly keen on seeing that system go away, either. But yes, big pharma relies almost exclusively on patents to recoup R&D costs.
R&D costs actually make up a pretty small portion of the pie. It's unclear what if anything patents are doing to recoup those since they're all just copying each other with designer drugs that are just slightly different enough to not violate someone else's patent. The pharma industry is probably a better example than the software industry for why patents suck. http://www.dklevine.com/papers/imbookfinal09.pdf
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Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#137The OP wouldn't seem quite so hypocritical if VCs didn't put immense pressure on startups to generate patents. Don't tell me those patents are supposed to be purely defensive, either. They were supposed to stake out a bit of technical turf, just like Yahoo's doing. I'm not saying it's right, but I don't think much of demanding patent generation on one hand and then complaining about their use on the other. If you wan…
Union Square Ventures, of which Fred Wilson ("the OP") is a partner, is an investor in my startup (Stack Exchange). They never put pressure on us to generate patents. They have been consistently anti-patent for quite some time. They have complained frequently that a third of their portfolio is under attack from patent trolls. They have organized fundraisers and meetings which I have attended with Senator Chuck Schume…
I got tired of this and other VC games after my tenth startup a couple of years ago, so I guess it is possible that attitudes have changed. Even if Fred is one of the good guys, though, I'd still bet that he's in a small minority. That's the real point, which of course has been missed by most of the responses. Pick a random startup and go look for patent applications. Most of them clearly are pursuing that strategy, and most of those are likely to be doing so at the behest of their investors. This has been going on for many years, so why is it suddenly evil when Yahoo! does the totally inevitable? Is there seriously any reason to believe that Etsy or Twilio - USV companies for which I've already found applications - wouldn't? This kind of thing won't stop until people like Fred refuse to invest in companies that are pursuing patents without a binding commitment to use them only in defense, and for all their strong words they don't seem to be doing that.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#138Fred Being Fred aside... Yahoo! could be aiming to be acquired by Facebook or Google. Assuming the patents involved are tenable, this looks rather like a viable reverse-acquisition strategy.
You're kidding, right? It's kind of hard to tell with all these trolls nowadays.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#139The OP wouldn't seem quite so hypocritical if VCs didn't put immense pressure on startups to generate patents. Don't tell me those patents are supposed to be purely defensive, either. They were supposed to stake out a bit of technical turf, just like Yahoo's doing. I'm not saying it's right, but I don't think much of demanding patent generation on one hand and then complaining about their use on the other. If you wan…
"Dima is Russian. Some Russians are crooks. Therefore Dima is a crook." This bad logic is what you are applying here.
Firstly, an analogy to people is going to cause a lot of emotional load for no reason, so this is flawed from the word go.
More to the point, these patents are objectively BS. Go look at the claims. There is not a single, novel claim among the whole lot, and you could probably pay a college kid an hour's wage to find prior art on every single one of them.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But yes, big pharma relies almost exclusively on patents to recoup R&D costs. What? I was under the impression that they rely mostly on advertising to recoup costs, their advertising budgets are generally much larger than their R&D budgets.
Coincidentally, I just posted a huge rant against, "It's just marketing" in another thread, but I'll respond to this much less rantier. Big pharma uses patents to protect their monopoly on a drug for seven(?) years after its introduced. Once that window is up, generics come in and take a huge chunk of sales. Pharma uses marketing and advertising to push their new drugs to try to sell as many during the patent window…
These days big pharma has outsourced all their early stage development to startups, purchasing compounds in the late stages through acquisition. They do pay for research, but it's not going to look that way on their balance sheet.
Their primary function, as you say, is shifting far towards the marketing end.