Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

blog.cloudflare.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 426 posts

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#181

Post by mike_d »

cynix wrote: post #171
mike_d wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Not having a patent doesn’t _prevent_ you from bringing your invention to market, it just accelerates _someone_ bringing it to market, and that’s a net good for society if the invention is useful, no?

Patents are vital to bringing things to market. It lessens the risk associated with investors getting returns, which allows funding for development.

I get that people don't like patents because they sometimes get abused, but on the whole I think we wouldn't have a lot of the things we take for granted if they didn't exist.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#182

Post by nightpool »

gkiely wrote: post #162
DistractionRect wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably wouldn't have been cheaper. The settlement would likely look like a fixed fee for previous use + yearly fee for X years before renegotiation, renegotiated y times before the patent expired. It's likely that over the lifetime of the patent, the total cost would have been more than the cost to fight it, and as the a sibling pointed out, settling begets more suits + settlements. It adds up fast. This isn't C…

Why did none of the other companies listed in the article fight it, if this is the case?

Maybe Sable saw Cloudflare as a juicier target, since the other companies listed are all hardware manufactures and don't operate a large consumer business like Cloudflare (leading to very, very different usage numbers). Or maybe Cloudflare thought that they had a better chance at trial against hardware patents, since they don't make router hardware themselves.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#183

Post by benlivengood »

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.

We need a fair-valuation tax; patents taxed yearly on their declared value and mandatory sale of the patent to anyone willing to pay the declared value. Some kind of deferred tax schedule (maybe 5-10 years?) for R&D.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#184

Post by thechao »

atoav wrote: post #150
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.

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 i…

Tie it to the expected value of the IP? If you think your idea is worth $1 billion, pay $10 million (1%) every year.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#185

Post by croemer »

worewood wrote: post #106
fuhrtf wrote: post #34

Cloudflare is like Google early days. They could spend resources on things for the good of the all. In this case they’re spending millions when they could have settled for much cheaper. Thanks Cloudflare.

I think this is just basic game theory. If they settled the trolls would just keep coming. If they fight the patent extortion then trolls are going to think twice before suing them, for fear of losing .

Sure it might well be in Cloudflare's self-interest, but it's still good they're doing it this way. If it was very obviously the best thing to do, other companies would do likewise. The fact that Cloudflare's approach appears novel suggests it's not just simple self-interest.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#186

Post by thomastjeffery »

thfuran wrote: post #154
thomastjeffery wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To continue your point, here is my proposal to replace intellectual property: Pay the inventor for their work , not the result of that work. This has several advantages: 1. Inventors get paid to fail. Failure is a critical step in the process of invention. 2. Inventors get paid immediately. How can an inventor be expected to have time to invent something if their only means of income happens after the work of inventi…

You're proposing that the state pay a good wage to anyone who chooses to be a full time inventor, regardless of the results? Does that include paying for whatever facilities might be required?

Who said anything about the state?

All of these things are already paid for. Either that continues to happen, or invention just stops happening altogether. Obviously there is profit to be made from new ideas, so there should be plenty of incentive to invest in inventors.

Inventors could also collaborate and unionize. Many already do.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#187

Post by joshuaissac »

yashap wrote: post #175

Nice to see Cloudflare fighting the good fight, but patent trolls aren’t the only issue with software patents. A major issue that people talk about way less is well funded/large companies getting bullshit patents, and using them to sue their small startup competitors into the ground. It doesn’t even matter if they win - when a company with billions in the bank sues a company with millions in the bank, the small compa…

I think this is the main problem, rather than companies owning patents they do not implement, and suing the ones that do without a licence.

There are so many bogus patents being granted. Prior art search done by patent clerks, from what I have read, can just be searching existing patents. So if something was invented long ago but never patented, then that might not even be caught in a search, even if there are many web pages or academic papers that describe that prior art. And like you said, they may not be able to realise that the invention is actually obvious, because they are not subject matter experts.

There is another problem where the patent is valid but the defendant's product does not violate it. It is often too expensive for the victim to litigate it in court. Depending on the jurisdiction, the plaintiff may not even have to tell you exactly which patents they are alleging that you have violated, until they sue you. So you cannot even check whether their claim is reasonable.

It needs to be easier and cheaper to challenge bad patents and false claims of infringement.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#188

Post by bawolff »

nordsieck wrote: post #95
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.

> $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…

> Some patents are fantastically valuable to patent trolls. Some are not. A $500/year fee

Part of the problem is having a huge number of BS patents driving up the cost of going through all of them to figure out what's what.

Its not the only problem with patents, but i think a "property tax" solution would solve some of the issues. I'd like it to be incrementing each year - like first year $0/year, and increasing each year so the longer you keep things out of the public domain the more you need to be able to self-jystify its value.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#189

Post by empath-nirvana »

creeble wrote: post #143

No mention of Cloudflare’s own large portfolio of software patents. Wonder when they’ll start enforcing their patent on CNAME flattening, for example: https://patents.justia.com/patent/11159479 Edit; clarity

It's a defensive patent portfolio. They use it to counter sue if a competitor sues them.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#190

Post by karaterobot »

perlgeek wrote: post #140
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.

Another valuation/taxation scheme I've read about is: you can value your patent however you want, and it's taxed based on that value. The kicker is: the values are public, and if anybody wants to buy it for something higher than the assigned value (or maybe some fixed percentage above the assigned value), you HAVE to sell. Of course, the buyer is then taxed at the higher value.

That seems like a terrible idea! If you underestimate the value of your invention, some big company can own it for $n+$.01. Or if you have invented something valuable but it takes years to get to market with it, you can go bankrupt in the mean time, or have your ownership eaten away by investors who suddenly have a ton of extra leverage over you.
Post reply on HN