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Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

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Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#381
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Let's make a bet then, shall we? I'll wire you 2.6billion (the extra 0.1 for your trouble) in exchange for a cure for alzheimers deliverable 5 years from now against 5 billion if you can't deliver. Should be an easy 100million+ for you. Lmk once you have your side in escrow.

Do you actually believe that's how research works ? "You have X days/months/years to find a cure for a disease" ?

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow the winning ticket in popular discourse is to be a patent troll: at best, "sell my idea" to some big company (troll); at worst convince a court to give you a pile of money because someone "stole" your idea (in advance). It is a rare person who dreams of coming up with a good idea and then working hard for years to make it a reality.

How many patent trolls do you know? As compared to people that you know who would/could be an inventor on a patent? I'm a patent litigator and it's still the latter for me. This narrative is a bit histrionic.

Hmmmm, I mostly know people who worked for big companies who got BS patents for bragging rights and one from a small startup with one obvious idea but they wanted to try and protect themselves since the idea was essential to their core business. The former don't seem much different from trolls while the latter should not have been granted a patent since it was so obvious IMO.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#383

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

I recognize my position is far from airtight, but I'm honestly way, way less bothered by the fact that companies like Cloudflare have a large patent portfolio simply because they actually build useful stuff related to their patents. There is a robust debate to be had on the validity of obvious or generic software patents that only questionably constitute legitimate "invention", but that's almost entirely separate fro…

The real danger is if Cloudflare is threatened and on life support - does their culture maintain or what if it changes hands or fails completely and it's patent portfolio is acquired by litigious trolls.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm asking whether the laws which allow this are within scope of the US Constitution's clause on intellectual property rights. Which laws are those? I'm not sure why it wouldn't be in the scope of the constitutional grant of authority to congress. "by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" The use of exclusive here makes perfect sense wi…

> What would be the purpose of the clause if authors/inventors couldn't sell their work? Not that they can't sell their work, but that they can transfer their exclusive rights in such a manner that they themselves can no longer exercise those rights. And laws which allow this are obviously, by definition of the words at the time, not "securing" those rights to the authors and inventors. You can't secure something to…

>And laws which allow this are obviously, by definition of the words at the time, not "securing" those rights to the authors and inventors. You can't secure something to someone by allowing them to (both post-hoc and especially pre-hoc) permanently transfer those rights.

I don't follow that those words are the "laws" you are talking about. The security of the right is the intellectual property. The patent secures the space the invention covers. The copyright secures the space the novel expression covers. Your interpretation of "secure" is completely specious and has no basis in law.

Can you point to anything to support that understanding of "secure"? It seems like you are doing the opposite than what you claim to be. Rather than reading "secure" as they meant it at the time, you are reading a new definition of "secure" based upon how you feel IP should be resolved today.

This is all besides that if an owner can license, then transferring the IP itself is trivial, as one can grant a license that covers all aspects of the exclusive rights.

I find it a bit ridiculous that you write "ways around this" as if your argument has any actual basis in law. It doesn't, and it seems like you have no experience in licensing IP rights. While that's not necessary to have an opinion, it certainly has not left you with an understanding of how things work such that you could base a reasonable opinion off of that.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

For example -- in my opinion, it would be great if SpaceX were to file for and receive one or more patents for their new Raptor engine, but not for any of the software used to run it. The patent(s) ought to read like their internal documentation for building one. Perhaps the new law could require all internal documents supporting the manufacture of the item be disclosed, unredacted, along with the patent application. Maybe also include stipulations that would prevent disclosure online or to countries the USA doesn't share intelligence with.

They'd get a monopoly for 18 years, then anyone with enough money could build and sell a full-flow staged methane combustion engine -- something no one but SpaceX has yet achieved.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#387
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The idea would be for the patent office to get $I dollars funding from tax payers, from which they payouts are made when errors are made. If they flub it year after year they'd be forced into process improvements or a huge fight with Congress. Basically, as soon as control becomes separated from accountability, one organizationally hit into these problems. Another analogy: I'm sort of against housing brokers passing…

A further analogy: the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By that logic we need to bring back a telephone monopoly since Bell Labs brought us so much innovation paid for by rip-off calling fees.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#390
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?

Now THAT would be a use of my tax dollars I could actually get behind.

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