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The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

inc.com

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Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#41

Post by pravda »

rayiner wrote: post #30
blindhippo wrote: post #23

One of the interesting themes in the article is "we can't afford to go to court". Not to detract from the main issue of patent reform but perhaps America should look into making it's legal system a bit more user friendly. It should be completely viable for a smaller entity to take on one of these "bogus" claims in court and not go bankrupt doing it. Smacking these claims down in court might go a long way towards prev…

Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. Maybe this is an easy way to disrupt patent trolling: a "how to" guide for taking an obviously stupid claim out in summary judgment.

In the USA, you can't represent yourself if you are a corporation or an LLC. Gotta pay a lawyer. Although I suppose you can find some unemployed law school graduate pretty cheap on craigslist.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#42

Post by noonespecial »

zalzane wrote: post #27

This is probably the biggest barrier preventing me from starting a business. I know that if I ended up getting hit with NPE patent infringement claims, I'd probably just buy a gun and go shoot up their office.

You're more than 100 years too late with that strategy.

http://forthillhistory.tumblr.com/post/16595519368/josiah-ba...

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#43

Post by pravda »

zalzane wrote: post #27

This is probably the biggest barrier preventing me from starting a business. I know that if I ended up getting hit with NPE patent infringement claims, I'd probably just buy a gun and go shoot up their office.

I hope you're not serious. Not about the second part, that sounds like a great idea.

About the first part. You need for your business to be successful in order to have any chance of attracting a patent troll. Most businesses don't get successful enough to warrant a shake-down.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#44

Post by krichman »

rayiner wrote: post #30
blindhippo wrote: post #23

One of the interesting themes in the article is "we can't afford to go to court". Not to detract from the main issue of patent reform but perhaps America should look into making it's legal system a bit more user friendly. It should be completely viable for a smaller entity to take on one of these "bogus" claims in court and not go bankrupt doing it. Smacking these claims down in court might go a long way towards prev…

Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. Maybe this is an easy way to disrupt patent trolling: a "how to" guide for taking an obviously stupid claim out in summary judgment.

> Nothing prevents you from representing yourself.

If you have foolishly decided to conduct business without creating a corporate entity to protect your personal assets from lawsuits, then yes you may.

If you have created a corporate entity it may only be represented by a licensed attorney.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#45

Post by roc »

paulrademacher wrote: post #31
d2vid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about an IP lawfirm offering insurance against patent trolls? Your company pays an annual fee. Once you get a shakedown notice, the law firm responds, letting the patent troll know that you have $0 marginal cost to making a stand. If the law firm had enough clients, their incentive would be to go to court to invalidate bad patents so they don't have to keep responding to the same shakedown notices.

Ugh, that's still protection money. It just went to a different lawyer.

True, but money you can plan for as a cost of doing business. Unlike shakedowns, which hit at unpredictable times for unpredictable amounts.

It wouldn't be the solution, but it could be an improvement for small and medium-sized software vendors.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#46

Post by rayiner »

noonespecial wrote: post #38
thaumaturgy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. ...other than good sense.

That's the part that needs fixing. A greedy amoral entity can threaten your entire livelihood for no cost to them and you are powerless to defend yourself or even understand the process by which to do so. That sounds like institutionalized injustice to me.

How are you "powerless to defend yourself or even understand the process?" There is nothing magic about the legal system. You can pick up the crucial aspects of the patent law probably in less time than it'd take you to pick up a new scripting language. And since it's federal law, the rules of civil procedure and evidence are written in very easy to understand English.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#47

Post by rayiner »

krichman wrote: post #44
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. Maybe this is an easy way to disrupt patent trolling: a "how to" guide for taking an obviously stupid claim out in summary judgment.

> Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. If you have foolishly decided to conduct business without creating a corporate entity to protect your personal assets from lawsuits, then yes you may. If you have created a corporate entity it may only be represented by a licensed attorney.

If you're incorporated, then you're not representing yourself if the corporation is sued.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to treat the corporation as a separate person for liability purposes, you have to accept that it'll be treated as a separate person for other purposes.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#48

Post by rayiner »

pravda wrote: post #41
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing prevents you from representing yourself. Maybe this is an easy way to disrupt patent trolling: a "how to" guide for taking an obviously stupid claim out in summary judgment.

In the USA, you can't represent yourself if you are a corporation or an LLC. Gotta pay a lawyer. Although I suppose you can find some unemployed law school graduate pretty cheap on craigslist.

A corporation is not "yourself" it's a distinct legal entity. Corporate form isn't just a neat little giveaway to businesses--treating your business as a separate person has both advantages and disadvantages.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#49

Post by sigsergv »

rayiner wrote: post #46
noonespecial wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the part that needs fixing. A greedy amoral entity can threaten your entire livelihood for no cost to them and you are powerless to defend yourself or even understand the process by which to do so. That sounds like institutionalized injustice to me.

How are you "powerless to defend yourself or even understand the process?" There is nothing magic about the legal system. You can pick up the crucial aspects of the patent law probably in less time than it'd take you to pick up a new scripting language. And since it's federal law, the rules of civil procedure and evidence are written in very easy to understand English.

You WON'T “pick up crucial aspects” because there all aspects are crucial. Law practice costs so much money mainly because it's totally entangled and messed up, and ordinary person just physically can't follow all these legal procedures correctly.

Re: The Real Toll of Patent Trolls

#50

Post by jrogers65 »

mistercow wrote: post #36
lancefisher wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+literally "2. Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling."

I think we should stand our ground on this one. We've let every word that can convey the correct definition of "literally" slide down the hyperbole treadmill. I realize that languages live and evolve, but the loss of all unambiguous indicators of actual literalness has made our language objectively worse. You might argue that we can always tell the intent from context, but the whole point of "literally" is for when t…

> If I say "I literally ate all of the soup in my house last night", you don't know if I'm actually out of soup now, or if I just ate a bunch of soup.

The majority of communication between people is non-verbal. Learning to read body language, voice tonality and keeping the context in mind resolves the vast majority of the inaccuracy given that one takes all the information in instead of obsessing over form.

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