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New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

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Re: New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

#11

Post by kam »

herniatedeel wrote: post #9
amelius wrote: post #5

We should have notarized LLM models for this. Timestamp your LLMs, put them in a notarized database. Then, if you en up in a patent lawsuit, just fire up the relevant LLM, and ask it in simple terms to reproduce troll's claims.

For what purpose? If it's for prior art, the prior at must have been publicly available, so a private LLM wouldn't work. Perhaps I'm missing your point, though.

I think the idea is that if an LLM trained prior to the patent date can reproduce the invention, then either the idea is obvious or there was prior art in the training set; either way the patent is invalid.

Re: New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

#13

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

reverendsteveii wrote: post #12

Why do we keep moving toward a system where being ahead is the most viable way to get ahead?

Power accumulates the same way rivers flow into the ocean

If there is no continuous effort to tax rich people and split up political power, democracy will fall back into feudalism

Re: New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

#14

Post by niwtsol »

We dealt with some patent trolls back in the 2010-2020 era, for those who have not experienced it, it is absurd. In our case, the patent "troll" was an LLC w/ ~5 members - 2 lawyers, 1 person who owned the original patent, and some spouses. The only "asset" of the LLC was the patent. I think it was around scrollbars or some CSS overflow thing - they sent us a demand/cease-desist letter saying they will sue for $1M and asked for a call. Classic Lawyer call "well, we can make this all go away for $25k." We ended up fighting it a bit because of "principles" by our founder. - in discovery there was something like 1,000 of these exact demand letters they had sent.

The kicker? If you fight back, it costs a ton in legal fees, and even if you win, you can’t recover those fees — because the LLC’s only asset is the patent itself.

Just insane to me we would take a step back like this.

Re: New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

#15

Post by elevatedastalt »

niwtsol wrote: post #14

We dealt with some patent trolls back in the 2010-2020 era, for those who have not experienced it, it is absurd. In our case, the patent "troll" was an LLC w/ ~5 members - 2 lawyers, 1 person who owned the original patent, and some spouses. The only "asset" of the LLC was the patent. I think it was around scrollbars or some CSS overflow thing - they sent us a demand/cease-desist letter saying they will sue for $1M an…

Doesn't it cost a lot in legal fee to the troll too? How are they able to finance it given that they are basically a sham company?

Re: New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

#16

Post by elevatedastalt »

amelius wrote: post #5

We should have notarized LLM models for this. Timestamp your LLMs, put them in a notarized database. Then, if you en up in a patent lawsuit, just fire up the relevant LLM, and ask it in simple terms to reproduce troll's claims.

Should it be put on the Blockchain too?

Re: New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

#17

Post by Someone1234 »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #15
niwtsol wrote: post #14

We dealt with some patent trolls back in the 2010-2020 era, for those who have not experienced it, it is absurd. In our case, the patent "troll" was an LLC w/ ~5 members - 2 lawyers, 1 person who owned the original patent, and some spouses. The only "asset" of the LLC was the patent. I think it was around scrollbars or some CSS overflow thing - they sent us a demand/cease-desist letter saying they will sue for $1M an…

Doesn't it cost a lot in legal fee to the troll too? How are they able to finance it given that they are basically a sham company?

The troll is lawyers, so it only costs their own time.

Re: New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

#18

Post by ziddoap »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #15
niwtsol wrote: post #14

We dealt with some patent trolls back in the 2010-2020 era, for those who have not experienced it, it is absurd. In our case, the patent "troll" was an LLC w/ ~5 members - 2 lawyers, 1 person who owned the original patent, and some spouses. The only "asset" of the LLC was the patent. I think it was around scrollbars or some CSS overflow thing - they sent us a demand/cease-desist letter saying they will sue for $1M an…

Doesn't it cost a lot in legal fee to the troll too? How are they able to finance it given that they are basically a sham company?

It's like spam.

Send out 1,000s of dubious demand letters which don't cost much. Some percent of those will settle with minimal effort on the troll's side. Profit.

Drop the ones that look expensive and hope they don't counter sue.

Re: New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

#19

Post by btrettel »

kam wrote: post #11
herniatedeel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what purpose? If it's for prior art, the prior at must have been publicly available, so a private LLM wouldn't work. Perhaps I'm missing your point, though.

I think the idea is that if an LLM trained prior to the patent date can reproduce the invention, then either the idea is obvious or there was prior art in the training set; either way the patent is invalid.

I had similar thoughts before. It's worth thinking about what attorneys will do in response to rejections based on LLMs reproducing ideas. I'm a former patent examiner, and attorneys frequently argue that the examiners showed "hindsight bias" when rejecting claims. The LLM needs to produce the idea without being led too much towards it.

Something like clean-room reverse engineering could be applied. First ask a LLM to describe the problem in a way that avoids disclosing the solution, then ask an independent LLM how that problem could be solved. If LLMs can reliably produce the idea in response to the problem description, that is, after running a LLM 100 times over half show the idea (the fraction here is made up for illustration), the idea's obvious.

Re: New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder

#20

Post by [deleted] »

herniatedeel wrote: post #10
ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote: post #8

> Congress Created IPR to Protect the Public—Not Just Patent Owners For this administration, this is a problem to be solved. Big business are the masters now and we need to make it easier for them to step on small business by any means.

Big business isn't really monolithic when it comes to patents. Some large tech companies love patents (MSFT, e.g.), while others (Google, e.g.) seem to abhor them. Also, the troll problem is a problem for big business, not a benefit to big business.

[deleted]
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