Live data from Hacker News

Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

scribd.com

121–130 of 189 posts

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#121

11. Venue is proper in the Eastern District of Texas under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1391 and1400(b). PersonalWeb is a limited liability company incorporated in Smith County, Texaswith its principal place of business in Tyler, Texas. A substantial part of the events giving riseto the asserted claims occurred in this judicial district, Defendant transact business in this judicial district, and the patents were infringed in this ju…

Apparently the win rates in EDT aren't that great any more. Someone posted a link to this effect a few lawsuits ago. The reason why people still file there is because the judges all now have good working knowledge of patent law and that makes trials fairly efficient. Dunno if this is actually true, but.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#122
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice sentiment. I share it. It's also a waste of breath. > trolls, oligopolies and lawyers Every member of that group is well funded, highly connected, and very aggressive. They are ready to devote untold resources to crush your sentiment and should that fail, to redirect your reform efforts into a more palatable outcome. Every piece of legislation is a compromise between competing interests and their competing inter…

A far more successful strategy would be to chip away at the fringes Why would that be so? Wouldn't all the groups continually fix what you chip away and then some? Bit by bit, piece by piece. Add complexity until it collapses on its own. Do you have a more detailed description of how to break the patent system by adding more regulations to it, such that the special interests do not, or can not remove them to continue…

> Wouldn't all the groups continually fix what you chip away and then some?

Ah. Divide and conquer. Lawyers love rules/regulations/complexity because it usually means more $$$ for compliance efforts. You exploit a conflict of interest between the patent holder and their legal representation.

They will be fighting each other, while you weigh in for the most onerous changes.

> Do you have a more detailed description of how to break the patent system by adding more regulations to it

The problem with the patent system is that it works. You apply for a patent, you get a patent, you bash somebody's head in with the patent.

What you need is to insert many, many pain points along the way. Enough pain points and complexity that the system as whole, no longer functions.

The path to that is to find allies for each particular pain point. There will always be some group that will benefit through additional regulation. If that weren't the case, there would never be any regulations. All regulations are meant to make somebody's life better.

For example, the regulation for seatbelts in cars made seatbelt manufacturers happy. Etc, etc. Somebody always gets a cut, somebody always benefits.

So you systematically support and push regulation and promote the benefactors of said regulation. Your only challenge would be to come up with some beneficial reasoning for said regulation, to cover up the naked interest of the particular benefiting party.

Essentially, you just regulate it to death.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#123

11. Venue is proper in the Eastern District of Texas under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1391 and1400(b). PersonalWeb is a limited liability company incorporated in Smith County, Texaswith its principal place of business in Tyler, Texas. A substantial part of the events giving riseto the asserted claims occurred in this judicial district, Defendant transact business in this judicial district, and the patents were infringed in this ju…

Apparently the win rates in EDT aren't that great any more. Someone posted a link to this effect a few lawsuits ago. The reason why people still file there is because the judges all now have good working knowledge of patent law and that makes trials fairly efficient. Dunno if this is actually true, but.

It really doesn't matter what the "win rate" is when it costs 1.5 Million and takes 3 years to win. The trolls have their offices there and they appear before the same judges every day. I have no doubt this makes trials fairly efficient for them.

A little fear in a court that if they start hearing a bunch of bogus patent cases and generally being troll friendly might make half the internet become inaccessible from their jurisdiction might not be a bad thing. Yes, that's pretty unfair to a lot of people, but unfair seems to be the currency of trade these days.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#124

11. Venue is proper in the Eastern District of Texas under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1391 and1400(b). PersonalWeb is a limited liability company incorporated in Smith County, Texaswith its principal place of business in Tyler, Texas. A substantial part of the events giving riseto the asserted claims occurred in this judicial district, Defendant transact business in this judicial district, and the patents were infringed in this ju…

Would it actually be that simple? I can't imagine their lawyers would be lacking enough technically not to show the judge a phone or use a proxy.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#125
post #124

11. Venue is proper in the Eastern District of Texas under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1391 and1400(b). PersonalWeb is a limited liability company incorporated in Smith County, Texaswith its principal place of business in Tyler, Texas. A substantial part of the events giving riseto the asserted claims occurred in this judicial district, Defendant transact business in this judicial district, and the patents were infringed in this ju…

Would it actually be that simple? I can't imagine their lawyers would be lacking enough technically not to show the judge a phone or use a proxy.

Its not to keep from being sued there. Most of the people I asked that know these things agree that it would provide a thin defense in that regard. Its to send a message. If all of Tyler woke up one morning unable to watch Netflix, search on Google or order from Amazon, a few people might start to wonder WTF is going on.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#126

How many of these ridiculous lawsuits will it take before lawmakers realize how bad software patents are? This will waste a lot of time and money for something that shouldn't even exist.

the more "ridiculous" lawsuits there are, the higher the incentive for lawmakers to keep those laws (since working in the state legislature is probably not their only source of income and law students probably compose by far the largest group in washington and in state parliaments)

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#127
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents cover areas of technology where developing a solution that can be commercialized at scale is much, much more expensive than software. Without patents, how is a pharma company expected to pay the enormous cost of research, development, and FDA approval of new drugs? Let's not let obvious flaws in software IP protection condemn the concept of patents in general.

Without patents, how is a pharma company expected to pay the enormous cost of research, development, and FDA approval of new drugs? Well the obvious answer would be through some form of tax based scheme that then plows the money into research primarily based on clinical need, which funnily enough is how a hell of a lot of the drugs that are actually useful get developed currently. But expanding these kind of solution…

A lot of these arguments skip the obvious fact that the FDA could provide its own form of commercial exclusivity without needing patents at all.

You can't sell medication without FDA approval. Right now patents don't factor in to it, but if patents were eliminated the FDA could implement a similar scheme exclusively for medication.

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#129
They're not even trying to hide the fact that they're patent trolls:

"We are located in East Texas, and we are developing innovative technologies and products. We have a team who is responsible for some of the web’s most popular software and applications, and we own some really amazing patents."

Re: Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github

#130
post #31
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The titles of the patents: 5978791: Data Processing System Using Substantially Unique Identifiers to Identify Data Items, Whereby Data Items Have the Same Identifiers. 6415280: Identifying and Requesting Data in Network Using Identifiers Which Are Based On Contents of Data. 6928442: Enforcement and Policing of Licensed Content Using Content-based Identifiers. 7802310: Controlling Access to Data in a Data Processing S…

From having a read through the claims of - 6415280: Identifying and Requesting Data in Network Using Identifiers Which Are Based On Contents of Data. - It appears they have patented using hashes as identifiers for the data that is hashed. Which is a bit like patenting the use of a shovel for digging.

I would not be surprised if the patent office itself used this method for filing patent information in various DBs.
Post reply on HN