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Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

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Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#141

Post by anonymouskimmer »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #130
huijzer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so convinced of your argument yet. You point out some cases in which granting a patent will lead to reduced innovation, which I agree is bad. But how about innovations which might never have happened without the patent system in place? I agree with you that patents a probably a net negative for innovation, but we need to come up with a stronger argument than monopolies are bad.

Can you provide some recent examples of where patents likely played a positive role in innovation?

Fifty years ago they paid for Xerox's PARC where WYSIWYG and GUI interfaces were first developed targeting a mass audience.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#142

Post by efitz »

mike_d wrote: post #136
nordsieck wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $500/year per patent, will ensure use it (if you think it is valuable) or lose it. Not really. Some patents are fantastically valuable to patent trolls. Some are not. A $500/year fee isn't going to deter a "company" of lawyers who are making millions soaking businesses with patents that should never have been granted. If you want a scheme that actually does what you want, you'd need something like: The owner of the…

> The owner of the patent chooses the fee that they pay per year. And anyone can pay that fee * the remaining years on the patent * some multiplier (probably in the 2-10 range) to prematurely end the patent. So basically ending patents? If you invent something fantastic, say a way for a self driving car to perfectly sense its surroundings, Ford could just come in and pay whatever amount to invalidate your patent and…

I don't think that the patent should be allowed to be ended early; the fee is paid to keep the patent protection in place.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#144

Post by jandrewrogers »

solomatov wrote: post #122
lukan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are research companies who only do research and get money by licencing their patents. I mean, I really would like to live in a world without patents, but currently those companies do provide value, but cannot exist, without guarding their IP. Yet they would cease to exist, with your proposal.

Could you give examples of such companies (I am really curious)?

I am aware of a few orgs that license interesting software R&D often with engineering support, sometimes with an equity component. Another variant is the R&D holding company that creates separate companies to commercially exploit the R&D in different parts of the public or private sector. Most such R&D orgs are very low-profile, they usually don't have an internet presence. Many use few or no patents these days, those economics don't make sense unless the business is largely owned by lawyers, which creates a different kind of company (much closer to patent trolls).

It is a bespoke kind of business, tailored to the specific technology and investment network of the people involved.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#145

Post by madsbuch »

pwg wrote: post #89
thelastgallon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents are property and we need taxes/fee on it. $500/year per patent, will ensure use it (if you think it is valuable) or lose it. This is no different from domain names, most people pay $10 - $100/year just to keep a domain name. Some domain names are used, most aren't. These taxes can fund free education or healthcare or defense.

> Patents are property and we need taxes/fee on it. $500/year per patent Those 'taxes' already exist (at least in the US system). They are called "maintenance fees". See https://www.fr.com/insights/ip-law-essentials/everything-abo... Failing to pay the fee causes the patent to expire, and be unable to be used to sue someone. So these troll firms must also be paying these fees to be able to sue based on the patent.

This is interesting. So Oracle holding around 52000 patents pays around 23.000.000 USD a year in maintenance?

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#146

Post by thfuran »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #100
thfuran wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The premise is flawed, the conclusion can only be wrong. That's the fallacy fallacy.

They went on to support their point. To ignore that is...the fallacy fallacy fallacy?

No, they went on to make specific claims essentially unrelated to that initial general claim.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#147

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

thelastgallon wrote: post #79
duped wrote: post #31

There needs to be a "use it or lose it" doctrine/law around technological IP. I get all the arguments around creating a market for the patent rights, but it just leads to these bottom feeders creating no value and increasing costs for the industry and consumers.

Patents are property and we need taxes/fee on it. $500/year per patent, will ensure use it (if you think it is valuable) or lose it. This is no different from domain names, most people pay $10 - $100/year just to keep a domain name. Some domain names are used, most aren't. These taxes can fund free education or healthcare or defense.

Domain names pay per year because there's an ongoing service attached. There's no such thing for patent (besides fee to file)

Why punish patent holders because of patent trolls or garbage patents ?

Make it unprofitable to be a troll, and they will go away. Trolls need to be tagged , like pirates. There should be rules to make hunting for trolls profitable. For that, you need a "bounty". Here's my take:

In any patent dispute[1], the loser will pay as punitive damages (this is the "bounty") to the winner, the lower of (i) the winner's legal costs, OR the loser's legal costs x 2, plus (ii) loser must disclose the ultimate name of the beneficial owners (or material, if public) of the loser. EINs not allowed. The "trolls" are thus, branded.

The next lawsuit ensues. During research, it is found that one of the parties is a known troll that has lost 1 prior case. Now the damages, should troll lose, are 2X of any settlement OR punitive amount.

Should troll lose again, an extra 2x (total, 4x) gets applied on the punitive damage[1] to the troll and so on. If troll wins, his x is halved.

This does 3 things:

1- Incentivize public to seek out weak patents, or trolls, for a payout.

2- Makes Trolling much harder at scale.

3- Ensures huge companies face risks if they throw their weight around. Bigco can afford $$ penalties vs small fish, but cannot afford to be tagged a 2-4x troll. It makes them an attractive target for bigger fish looking for the 2X or 4X reward challenge of Bigco patent portfolio.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#148

Post by Laaas »

ceejayoz wrote: post #56
jotaen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this still true, considering how the Supreme Court has decided a similar case against patent trolls[1][2] in the past? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_Fitness,_LLC_v._ICON_He... . [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2014/04/29/patent-...

As the second link notes, that helps only in "the most egregious cases of misconduct".

In the opinion it says that it merely has to be "exceptional", I would think Cloudflare has a good chance at winning their case.

They ought to do so, if only to discourage patent trolls.

Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140429231129/http://www.suprem...

Relevant part on page 10.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#149

Post by AnimalMuppet »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #130
huijzer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so convinced of your argument yet. You point out some cases in which granting a patent will lead to reduced innovation, which I agree is bad. But how about innovations which might never have happened without the patent system in place? I agree with you that patents a probably a net negative for innovation, but we need to come up with a stronger argument than monopolies are bad.

Can you provide some recent examples of where patents likely played a positive role in innovation?

Probably every pharmaceutical patent.

In software? Um... . (But you asked "where patents" and not "where software patents", so...)

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#150

Post by atoav »

thelastgallon wrote: post #79
duped wrote: post #31

There needs to be a "use it or lose it" doctrine/law around technological IP. I get all the arguments around creating a market for the patent rights, but it just leads to these bottom feeders creating no value and increasing costs for the industry and consumers.

Patents are property and we need taxes/fee on it. $500/year per patent, will ensure use it (if you think it is valuable) or lose it. This is no different from domain names, most people pay $10 - $100/year just to keep a domain name. Some domain names are used, most aren't. These taxes can fund free education or healthcare or defense.

Never used a fixed number for anything. Just tie it to a percentage of yearly revenue of the entity. This way you can ensure:

- small companies and private people can afford patents

- big corps do not get an advantage, in fact the bigger they get, the more expensive holding a patent becomes, ensuring they have to use those patents and not patent everything just because

- number of patents any single entity can hold is limited, unless they want to go in debt for holding patents

- there could still be a minimum yearly amount as proposed by you

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