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Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

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Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#301

Post by rakoo »

adrr wrote: post #196
rvnx wrote: post #3

At the end of the day, this is a deep legislation issue, patents should not exist at all. They are supposed to promote innovation, in practice, it's more about protecting guys who sitting and waiting for passive cash. Once we give exclusive rights to all AI stuff to Nvidia, is the world going to be a better place ? What would be with ChatGPT if Google actually had enforced (or enforces) patents on Transformers. Is th…

So you spend billions($2.5 billion being average) inventing a new drug and anyone should be allowed to copy and sell it? That would foster innovation and not kill pharmaceutical market?

We need a pharmaceutical library, not a pharmaceutical market. Research doesn't cost $2.5 billion, lobbying does.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#302

Post by TimTheTinker »

zackmorris wrote: post #177
rvnx wrote: post #3

At the end of the day, this is a deep legislation issue, patents should not exist at all. They are supposed to promote innovation, in practice, it's more about protecting guys who sitting and waiting for passive cash. Once we give exclusive rights to all AI stuff to Nvidia, is the world going to be a better place ? What would be with ChatGPT if Google actually had enforced (or enforces) patents on Transformers. Is th…

I second the abolishment of patents. The reasons people are for/against patents are political. A rightist view would be that patents allow first-to-the-finish-line inventors to reap financial awards that lead to success and freedom. A leftist view would be that the opportunity cost of patents is an increased cost (analogous to a tax) on everyone else in the form of licensing fees and barred entry to markets as improv…

> A rightist view would be that patents allow first-to-the-finish-line inventors to reap financial awards that lead to success and freedom. A leftist view would be that the opportunity cost of patents is an increased cost

Patents as originally formulated were to incentivize public disclosure of new techniques for building things. Portland cement is a great example: the company could have kept the formula secret and profited significantly, but instead a patent was filed, they got a short monopoly, and for over a century we have enjoyed the benefits of a publicly known formula. Pure ideas (like math and physics) were considered non-patentable.

If we can reform patents to disallow patenting software (and all other pure "ideas" with no physical realization), I think that will continue to help encourage public disclosure of helpful techniques (like Portland cement) without all the stupid baggage of software patents.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#303

Post by ahofmann »

nottorp wrote: post #297
adrr wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you spend billions($2.5 billion being average) inventing a new drug and anyone should be allowed to copy and sell it? That would foster innovation and not kill pharmaceutical market?

2.3 billion of that being marketing expenses?

This is a very unhelpful pseudo question, that adds nothing to the conversation but can easily derail it. Do you have at least a source for that "claim"?

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#304

Post by greyface- »

empath-nirvana wrote: post #189
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.

Have they made any commitments, binding or non-binding, to this effect?

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#305

Post by palata »

mike_hock wrote: post #290
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…

Simple solution: Abolish patents. All the rhetoric about incentivizing innovation is bullshit. They stifle innovation, and they stifle competition. They're designed to protect slow, inefficient established corporations. That's all they ever did and that's all they'll ever do.

I think it's a bit more nuanced than that, because in some industries patents may make sense.

I would say "Simple solution: abolish patents on software".

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#306

Post by theshackleford »

jeltz wrote: post #238
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Domain names pay per year because there's an ongoing service attached. There's no such thing for patent (besides fee to file) I work for a registrar and know people working at registries so I know that is not the case. The reason they charge more than like 1-2 dollars per year is to make it expensive to hoard domains.

Sadly though, not expensive enough to actually prevent anyone other than the very low end of consumers from hoarding domains.

I worked for a registrar for a decade+ and worked with a lot of hoarders. Very early on in my career I actually dobbed one in to our local registry authority (because I was naive, and he was CLEARLY breaching the requirements for our ccTLD and so I thought 'Well this is wrong and I should report it') and is how I discovered nobody actually cares about hoarding and just wants to maximise revenue. (Well duh I suppose.)

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#307

Post by hcrean »

grishka wrote: post #248
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.

Would work even better if patents were non-transferable and only assignable to actual people, not companies or other entities.

What if Bob and Alice and Charlie all had a hand in developing invention X... suddenly we would find ourselves just redefining companies.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#308

Post by hot_gril »

greyface- wrote: post #304
empath-nirvana wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Have they made any commitments, binding or non-binding, to this effect?

That might reduce the effectiveness of this strategy.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#309

Post by phendrenad2 »

kentonv wrote: post #159
kemayo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The myth of patents is that some inventor working in their garage comes up with a genius invention, patents it, and then can leverage that patent-granted period of exclusivity into a thriving business. Hard work and smarts translating directly into rewards! This is, of course, a myth. It's not impossible for that to happen, theoretically, but the way the patent system actually works these days is that large companies…

It's not a myth! My uncle is such a garage inventor, and has made a comfortable living for himself by licensing a number of different inventions. One of the things he invented was the Zipit drain cleaner. It's a long piece of plastic with barbs on it. You shove it down your drain, pull it back out, and it pulls out a gigantic disgusting hairball that you had no idea was down there! It's really quite remarkable, it wo…

I think you just confirmed that even the exception leads to another myth.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#310

Post by mschuster91 »

rakoo wrote: post #301
adrr wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you spend billions($2.5 billion being average) inventing a new drug and anyone should be allowed to copy and sell it? That would foster innovation and not kill pharmaceutical market?

We need a pharmaceutical library, not a pharmaceutical market. Research doesn't cost $2.5 billion, lobbying does.

> Research doesn't cost $2.5 billion, lobbying does.

It... actually does. The utter majority of pharmaceutical cost are the clinical trials, and the cost of "failed" compounds has to be absorbed by the few that eventually pass.

It used to be the case that the development part would be done by universities and government grants, but universities these days prefer to hoard their inheritances instead of spending it, and governments lack the ideas and auditing capability, so everything has gotten privatized and with it, control transferred from democratically elected institutions to quarterly-focused boards accountable only to shareholders not society.

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