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Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

rackspace.com

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Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#41

Post by maeon3 »

The key is making congressmen pay attention to this is to translate it into words they can understand. Money. All the techno babble about who own's what and morality and fairness is like telling a dog to eat vegetables.

When patent trolls sue organizations for infringing on their patents with no intention of innovating, it creates less GDP which means less revenues for the big corporations which pay the most taxes, less taxes means less happy bottom feeder voters, which means you don't get re elected. When they get that through their heads, legislation will happen to fix the "injustice".

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#42

Post by hermanhermitage »

I'm wondering if you can analyse the problem of Patents from a game theoretic point of view.

The problem is this, those that don't Patent or were unable or disincentivized to Patent (different country, or different time period) cannot compete on a level playing field.

They do not gain sufficient arsenal to defend against Patents.

Patent law is fundamentally incompatible with the past. In a different era or different arena some ideas were not considered suitable for patenting (lack of utility, novelty, and nonobviousness).

An example is software patents or business process. As money pours in to create changes to the rules those not playing the same game are at a disadvantage.

That is their past IP unprotected by Patent law is now differentially disadvantaged in the marketplace.

The only way to rectify this is to reduce the power of Patents over time until they are eliminated.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#43

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

One of the entities RS acquired was SGI. Whom I suspect may have had a patent portfolio.

Not sure who got that though. Oh ... crap. Looks like they were retained by Graphics Properties Holdings, who is, you guessed it, a patent troll themselves:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120419/02113518553/sgi-ba...

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#44

Post by dredmorbius »

htf wrote: post #37
dredmorbius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patent infringement isn't restricted to manufacture: "Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent." 17 USC 271(a) http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/271

Wow, even just using a patented invention counts as infringement. I didn't expect that.

On the upside, you can scarcely breath without infringing a patent these days. I doubt a patent troll can operate in a non-infringing manner should a sufficiently large portion of the patent-holding community decide to get pissed off at it.

Problem is that the trolls also have few or no assets, other than their portfolios, that is.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#45

Post by luriel »

rz2k wrote: post #25

The SHIELD Act does not strike me as the most effective way to attack this problem. Presumably there are legitimate innovators who will not be as quick at execution as incumbent competitors. They may leverage themselves highly in order to try to scale up production, and afterwards will have scarce resources to hire legal representation. Depending how open and shut the case looks, representation may take them on as cl…

> However, I don't understand how skepticism about the role of intellectual property protections has turned into uncritical acceptance that it only causes harm.

Is not uncritical acceptance, there has been plenty of research and evidence that shows intellectual property harms innovation:

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.h...

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#46

Post by sirmarksalot »

robomartin wrote: post #27
neya wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I obviously didn't work out all the details. I would imagine that there would have to be some kind of a mutual agreement to not go after member companies. Also, in order to be accepted you can't be a pure IP business. You have to actually have products in the market. In other words, a real business. Lots of details to work out mostly by legal minds.

The fundamental problem is that it assumes that all patents are invalid, and that no legitimate grievance can exist over the companies' intellectual property. While this may be a popular opinion on HN, I doubt many actual companies are going to be willing to sign away their right to sue when another member company brazenly steals their work.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#47

Post by udpheaders »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #18
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.

Yep. One of the co-founders is a former lawyer who in fact coined the term "patent troll". Now they are world leader in patent trolling. "If you can't beat `em, ..."

It's great lesson in copouts. Instead of using your resources (e.g. a former Microsoft CTO's intelligence and amassed wealth) to fix a problem, you take the easy way out and exploit the broken system. What a tremendous success story.

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#49

Post by wamatt »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #18
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.

I was rather fascinated by Myhrvold, and the IV gang a few years back. The promise of a "pure invention" company where hundreds of scientists were toiling away on big ideas, creating a true innovation market, seemed rather exciting.

This was after all the guy that founded Microsoft Research, which unlike most of MS, has produced some rather interesting and innovative tech.

The reality though is they seem to spend way more time buying up cheap patents and then sending out "an offer you can't refuse" to hundreds of companies, hoping they will invest.

Which ultimately amounts to a smart, sophisticated patent troll. A super-troll if you will :p

Furthermore they were in the habit of outsourcing the muscle to 3rd parties that do most of the dirty work like suing, so their reputation comes across more noble, at least on the surface of things.

It's not like they are all bad, and comprised solely of attorneys. They really did invent some stuff, like the tech behind TerraPower a traveling wave nuclear reactor.[1]

The trouble with IV is that suffers from bi-polar disorder. On the one hand they want to invent stuff, but yet suing everyone else and generally being shitty is what pays the bills.

>"Litigation is a huge failure," Myhrvold says. It's "a disastrous way of monetizing patents." (2006) [2]

Then in 2010 they filed the first lawsuits directly.

An Intellectual Ventures spokesperson added that the company expects people to use the “patent troll” term, but “this is simply our company protecting its assets.” [3]

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower

[2]http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-07-02/inside-nathan...

[3] http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2010/12/08/intellectual-ventu...

Re: Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay

#50

Post by toddmorey »

dredmorbius wrote: post #43
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…

One of the entities RS acquired was SGI. Whom I suspect may have had a patent portfolio. Not sure who got that though. Oh ... crap. Looks like they were retained by Graphics Properties Holdings, who is, you guessed it, a patent troll themselves: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120419/02113518553/sgi-ba...

Oops, Rackspace never acquired SGI. That acquisition was done by a company called Rackable Systems.
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