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Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

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Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#321

Post by Calavar »

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…

> company B should get MAJOR financial rewards from BOTH company A and the patent office, on the order of 10x+ what they spent on their defence

By "the patent office" you mean taxpayers, right? Because we're the ones who foot the bill for any judgement against the government. I can't see any situation where individual patent clerks would be held accountable. First, it goes against established case law regarding civil cases against federal employees [1, 2]. Second, if you amend the law so that patent clerks are an exception and can be held individually liable for potentially tens of millions of dollars, only absolute idiots would agree to take that job.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/jm/civil-resource-manual-33-immunity...

[2] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/personal...

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#322

Post by dataflow »

Calavar wrote: post #321
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…

> company B should get MAJOR financial rewards from BOTH company A and the patent office, on the order of 10x+ what they spent on their defence By "the patent office" you mean taxpayers, right? Because we're the ones who foot the bill for any judgement against the government. I can't see any situation where individual patent clerks would be held accountable. First, it goes against established case law regarding civil…

> By "the patent office" you mean taxpayers, right? Because we're the ones who foot the bill for any judgement against the government.

I think they meant the patent office should cover that from fees, not from taxpayers.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#325

Post by mopenstein »

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.

Patents and copyrights are dangled like winning lottery tickets in front of the average citizen. Maybe you can invent something or write a book and sell it for millions! Which does happen... about as often as people win the lottery.

More often a patent or copyright is one of thousands a giant company procures. But all the intellectual property profiteers need is that 1 in 300,000,000 chance dangling in front of a voter and they'll never agree to do away with IP, in fact, the opposite will happen. They'll actively fight to keep them in place.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#326

Post by greyface- »

hot_gril wrote: post #308
greyface- wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That might reduce the effectiveness of this strategy.

How would a commitment to not use their patent portfolio offensively prevent them from effectively using it defensively?

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#327

Post by zomgbbq »

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…

Sounds like a problem AI could solve filtering patent applications before they make it to a person.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#328

Post by [deleted] »

lukan wrote: post #80
floating-io wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, then I'm not sure where you got that idea. Patent holders are not required to license their patents last time I checked. You are simply required to acquire a license prior to using patented technology. If they don't want to license it, you're SOL. (edit: if you were speculating on what should be , and not what is , then my bad... :)

"Patent holders are not required to license their patents last time I checked." That is apparently right and I learned it wrong (but it does seems wrong to me). edit: after reading the siblings answer, I apparently wrongly overgeneralized the way it works with patents in standards

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#329

Post by cellis »

Solvency wrote: post #97
s_dev wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is just fancy math being executed. Math can't or at least shouldn't be patentable e.g. imagine the absurdity that would ensue if you could patent a number not that that hasn't happened (HD DVD encryption). I'm aware every piece of IP or Copyright can be represented with a really big number (a mp4 file is really just a big number) but it's not the number that's the patentable aspect.

Hardware is just fancy physics. Medicine is just fancy chemistry.

Words are just fancy phonemes.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#330

Post by jandrewrogers »

nottorp wrote: post #320
ahofmann wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Eh, I'm hyperbolizing of course. But I remember seeing statements here and there that at least half the "cost" of a new drug is marketing. Commercials, paying for 'conferences' for doctors etc. Not going to search for citations, I'm sure you have something ready to prove me wrong and show how 95% of the cost is blood, sweat and tears.

The marketing is critical because they have a limited window of time within which to recoup most of the development costs. If adoption ramps up too slowly, the company will not make enough money to offset the investment. Marketing improves time to revenue for a product where exclusivity will be short-lived. If they didn't spend on marketing, the R&D wouldn't exist, so it is kind of weird to act like this is a waste of money.

It is like saying solar panels are bad for the climate because manufacturing them requires CO2 production.

It shouldn't need to be said that no one would do marketing if it didn't more than pay for itself and offset the costs of the thing being marketed.

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