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Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

blog.cloudflare.com

201–210 of 426 posts

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#201
> the jury went further and found that Sable’s old and broadly-written patent claim was invalid and never should have been granted in the first place–meaning they can no longer assert the claim against anyone else

Perhaps people/institutions that grant overly broad patents should be held responsible in a scenario like this?

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#202
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.

So if I invent something but don’t have the capital to manufacture it myself, I shouldn’t be able to make money from licensing it to companies?

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#203
post #202
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.

So if I invent something but don’t have the capital to manufacture it myself, I shouldn’t be able to make money from licensing it to companies?

Wouldn't that be a "use it" situation?

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#204

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.

Edit: Removed a bone-headed hypothetical.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#205
post #181
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let me add a personal anecdote: my uncle has developed a better sprinkler head. Think of bearded inventor tinkering in his garage for a decade. This was late 80s /early 90s so not much CAD was involved.

This is where the patent system shines. Because he got a patent he could shop around, sell it to a company which made a tidy profit on it. He didn't need to raise capital to establish a factory and all that to bring it to market and the company buying it seriously got ahead without spending an inordinate amount of money and time inventing the thing.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe when you file the patent, you have to submit an anticipated value statement and you are taxed some % / year on that anticipated value. If somebody violates the patent, you can sue them for up to the amount you anticipated, but not more. In the future you can amend the value claim, but you can only adjust it down.

So someone inventing something for say mobile phones in the 80s that is still used would have estimated their patentent to not be so useful because the number of mobile phones wasnt that high. And if Apple violated their patent they would just pay pennies because of that? It is extremly hard to estimate the worth of a tech 30 years into the future invented today. Take a tech invented today and tell me what the market…

Yeah, that’s roughly how it would work, except 30 years feels way too long.

If other people are better than you at seeing what some technology could be used for it, then maybe we should lower the barriers for those people. The whole point of the patent system should be to provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just abolish the patent system entirely. at minimum, for software

compare and contrast to industry practices today https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-patents.en.html

fantastic article

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They control the license according to the terms of a license. But once a patent is sold the author of it no longer has any right to it. Authors and inventors are mentioned with the same language in the clause. Since it has always been true that authors can basically only profit from their writings by selling copies or originals of their works (without selling the right to the copyrighted material itself) then some fo…

Authors can license all of their rights away. They can sell their copyrights - I don't see your point...

I'm asking whether the laws which allow this are within scope of the US Constitution's clause on intellectual property rights.

There are plenty of laws which have been ruled unconstitutional. But it takes someone making the complaint to a court for this to happen. Otherwise the legislature does whatever it wants.

Currently a majority of the US Supreme court thinks that the status quo at the time of the writing of the US Constitution or its amendments has bearing as to the meaning of those texts. Thus I mentioned back then authors sold copies of their works while retaining all other rights as indicating that "licensing" is within this clause. Whether or not total sales of the rights to the work is within the purview of the clause is another question that I'm curious about.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#209
post #150

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…

That just means patent trolls would split their patent portfolios into hundreds of holding companies. Also people would start filing bigger and bigger patents, stuffing more and more claims into a single patent.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

Pharmaceutical parents seems like an odd choice. Aren't most of those inventions driven by government funding at universities?
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