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Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

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Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#421
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This creates a clear and obvious arbitrage opportunity that finance people on Wall Street will exploit almost instantly.

Ok? It results in them paying taxes while they hold it, to the value they ascribe to it. If they say it's higher than the original buyer, we get more in tax revenue Or have I misunderstood your point?

You’ve misunderstood my point. This is formulaic finance math. In normal finance markets, there is a natural equilibrium where markets fully value the risk of mis-pricing the asset as part of the asset value. In the scenario outlined, only one party in the market is taking that risk, which means any financially savvy third-party can basically make free money off assets owned by others almost risk-free under a wide range of scenarios. Instant profit while producing no value. It would create an entire parasitic finance industry dedicated to exploiting it. You won’t generate much tax revenue if you destroy elementary mechanics of the economy along the way.

It may not be intuitive how the math works but this would be exploited so hard it would cause serious social and political issues. I don’t have a dog in this fight, I am just savvy enough to the math to see how bad an idea this is. Which is probably why no government has seriously attempted it even though it is an old idea.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So most new medicine isn't useful? Or it would sell itself.

You are literally going to use “build it and they will come” as an argument on this site? The empirical evidence that you are wrong is overwhelming, it takes an enormous amount of effort to connect customers with a product no matter how perfectly suited the product is to meet their needs. Startups spend more time on this question than almost any other.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#423
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>These taxes can fund free education or healthcare or defense. is it is always a bad idea to ear mark a tax for a specific purpose. Especially if you desire to use the tax as a punitive measure to reduce that which you deem bad for society, if it works now you need to come up with the money for the thing you funded elsewhere because all government programs are permanent Look at smoking, all kind of things were funde…

> Using the tax code to punish or reward behavior is always bad Isn't that pretty much the entire purpose of the tax code and why it's so complicated? It's one of the tools the government has to shape behavior. Actual tax revenue doesn't really matter since a permanent deficit and ever-growing debt is apparently fine.

While you are correct given the government debt levels and printing of money, on principle taxation should only be used to raise money for public purposes. Not to incentivize or punish behavior.

Allowing the government to use taxation for purposes other than public finance has been and will continue to be an avenue for abuse, and authoritarian control ultimately leading to tyranny

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#424
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Cloudflare starts trying to sue or shake down folks with their patents, this will be a very valid point. Until then it's a little silly; everybody holds patents for (at least) defensive reasons.

But that’s generally where the trolls get their patents from - what were once large companies (like, in Cloudflare’s recent case, Caspian Networks). My point (if any) is that while we pat Cloudflare on the back for “taking down a troll”, they are complicit (as are many companies these days) in assisting the creation of future trolls who will mine their own, more general, perhaps “obvious to someone familiar with the…

Sure, but what's the solution (if you're Cloudflare)? You can patent CNAME flattening, only use it defensively, and maybe you eventually go bankrupt and someone scoops it up (not great). Or you can NOT patent it...and some troll probably will, and can now use it offensively.

The solution is patent reform on this kind of obvious bullshit, but that's not something Cloudflare can solve.

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#425
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok? It results in them paying taxes while they hold it, to the value they ascribe to it. If they say it's higher than the original buyer, we get more in tax revenue Or have I misunderstood your point?

You’ve misunderstood my point. This is formulaic finance math. In normal finance markets, there is a natural equilibrium where markets fully value the risk of mis-pricing the asset as part of the asset value. In the scenario outlined, only one party in the market is taking that risk, which means any financially savvy third-party can basically make free money off assets owned by others almost risk-free under a wide ra…

Could you outline a single example or at least provide a reference to understand this more? I'm not at all getting what exactly these third parties would do. How is it different from just putting up items for sale with a price?

Re: Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial

#426
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" ?

BioNTech and Moderna have entered the chat.

That's pretty much precisely what happened in the COVID-19 vaccine race.

Though to be fair, basic research into mRNA vaccines dates to 1989, clinical trials to 2001, though quite obviously not for COVID-19 vaccines themselves.

The Covid vaccines were actually formulated within days of widespread public awareness of the disease. What took months were clinical trials (begun April 2020, Phase III by November of the same year), and emergency use authorisation by December 2020, and ramping up production and distribution, the first less than 12 months after the WHO had first announced the disease, the second (widespread availability) within 18 months.

Different conditions and treatments are of course widely divergent. Vaccines against viruses are reasonably well understood and simple in principle (trigger an immune-system response without triggering the disease), though even here some viruses can prove difficult to vaccinate against (rhinoviruses, forms of viral hepatitis, HIV). Pharmaceutical treatments against cardivascular, neurological, oncological, psychological, and other conditions are quite different. And in the case of infectious bacterial pathogens, I've been hearing and reading about the lack of effective novel antibiotic agents for nearly 50 years. In the case of some ancient scourges (totally drug-resistant tuberculosis is at or near the top of my list) this is truly terrifying.

The other challenge is that what the pharmaceutical industry focuses on --- chronic conditions facing wealthy populations with high-payout insurance --- often fails to match the true personal and public health concerns of humans at large. Much of the pharmaceutical industry's concentration is on relabeling or recertifying existing drugs, either to a new condition or with mildly tweaked formulations or delivery which serve to extend patent protection. Neither greatly advances the pharmaceutical formulary, and many at-risk populations go unserved.

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