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Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

rackspace.com

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Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#11

Post by robomartin »

I've posted this a few times on HN. The solution to this problem is, in my humble opinion, very simple. Rather than presenting a divided community to trolls, we have to present a united front. This would come in the form of a legal support organization that would be 100% dedicated to fighting trolls on behalf of it's members.

Call it insurance, if you will. Member companies would pay a monthly or yearly membership fee. In exchange for this the organization would evaluate any and all patent lawsuits and consider them for representation. It's stated mission would be to defend members from trolls.

How?

Well, for starters, imagine a legal organization with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank. How many trolls would dare risk going up against them?

Second, I am not a lawyer, but I imagine that there would be a way for this organization to also create a cross-licensing ecosystem for member companies. Maybe this is ridiculous. I don't know. Imagine that every patent of every member company becomes an automatic IP license --only for the purpose of patent defense-- for all members. This means that for my annual fee I could have a virtual shield consisting of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of patents protecting me.

How much is that worth? Any company doing anything at all that is not trivial should easily be able to afford a $10K per year fee. larger companies could do a lot more. Smaller ones less. It is not hard to imagine raising tens of millions of dollars per year and even reaching a hundred million. With careful management this organization could easily amass a billion dollars in the bank over a number of years.

This would effectively destroy the troll business without legislation and it would probably do wonders towards decimating bullshit software patents (or bullshit patents in general).

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#12

Post by kika »

wheels wrote: post #5

I was curious where Rackspace stands with their own portfolio, and it seems they have actually avoided patents, which surprised me somewhat for a large, public company: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=pts&hl=en&q=inassi... The tone of the article -- specifically focusing on patent trolls being problematic, but less focus on the other systemic problems with the patent system -- made me wonder if they were just going…

> going after the cases that annoy them.

Perfect definition of "focus". One of the key components of success.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#13

Post by rayiner »

meritt wrote: post #6
gitlock wrote: post #4

So what exactly can we do to make them pay?

> This bill would require plaintiffs to pay defendants’ legal costs if the suit is unsuccessful. Under current law, the patent trolls don’t have any meaningful risk in bringing litigation. The defendants, on the other hand, are subjected to enormous legal expenses and discovery costs. The SHIELD Act is designed to level the playing field and take away the trolls’ unfair advantage. We encourage all of our customers, p…

There's no perfect answer to this particular situation. If you make losing plaintiffs pay, you basically give large companies free license to misuse the intellectual property of small companies. "Loser pays" is proposed in many different contexts (e.g. tort litigation) and has been rejected for the same reasons. In the US, we perceive it to be more fair for defendants to have to deal with litigation costs than to stifle meritorious litigation against deep-pocketed defendants. It's a trade-off.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#14

Post by neya »

robomartin wrote: post #11

I've posted this a few times on HN. The solution to this problem is, in my humble opinion, very simple. Rather than presenting a divided community to trolls, we have to present a united front. This would come in the form of a legal support organization that would be 100% dedicated to fighting trolls on behalf of it's members. Call it insurance, if you will. Member companies would pay a monthly or yearly membership fe…

While this is certainly a good idea, what happens when one member from the organization tries to sue another? Back to square one?? I'm just curious, I'm no patent lawyer either.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#15

Post by steve8918 »

What's to stop patent trolls from forming a corporation with no assets, suing people, and then declaring bankruptcy if they lose their case? They could forfeit their patents, but it would be worthless anyway if they lost the case.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#16

Post by JoshTriplett »

robomartin wrote: post #11

I've posted this a few times on HN. The solution to this problem is, in my humble opinion, very simple. Rather than presenting a divided community to trolls, we have to present a united front. This would come in the form of a legal support organization that would be 100% dedicated to fighting trolls on behalf of it's members. Call it insurance, if you will. Member companies would pay a monthly or yearly membership fe…

A few such organizations exist. For instance, see OIN.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#17

Post by JoshTriplett »

steve8918 wrote: post #15

What's to stop patent trolls from forming a corporation with no assets, suing people, and then declaring bankruptcy if they lose their case? They could forfeit their patents, but it would be worthless anyway if they lost the case.

I think you've summed up one of the major problems precisely, yes.

Ideally, such a transparent attempt at patent trolling ought to result in a pierced corporate veil and personal liability on behalf of the owners, but in practice that seems unlikely to happen.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#18

Post by reitzensteinm »

robomartin wrote: post #11

I've posted this a few times on HN. The solution to this problem is, in my humble opinion, very simple. Rather than presenting a divided community to trolls, we have to present a united front. This would come in the form of a legal support organization that would be 100% dedicated to fighting trolls on behalf of it's members. Call it insurance, if you will. Member companies would pay a monthly or yearly membership fe…

Ironically, this was more or less the original business model behind Intellectual Ventures themselves. I guess they quickly figured out that the money is on the other side.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#19

Post by larrys »

Notice that there is nothing in this blog post that indicates how vigorously they will fight the lawsuit and certainly no bravodo type language. Only essentially a call to action "We encourage all of our customers, partners, open source collaborators and friends to support Reps. DeFazio and Chaffetz in their effort to discourage these abusive patent troll lawsuits."

I takes this as potentially meaning that they might very well settle this out of court w/o paying -or- they are planning some other atypical legal action and don't want to telegraph anything. Even if they get this dismissed because of the github assumption that doesn't prevent it from being refiled correctly I believe.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#20

Post by ahi »

>They are just another patent troll attempting to take advantage of bad law. It is their nature. They look for opportunity, and patent litigation can be very profitable. The real problem is the law.

Disagree. Assholes will always be able to abuse the law. We should name and shame the trolls responsible. The lawyers and investors behind patent trolls should have severe social consequences.

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