Excuse my ignorance, but have any companies succeeded by just replying "Go Get Fucked" to patent trolls?
If they file suit you have to show up or you lose the case. If you don't get lawyers involved you are hosed.
Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
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Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
#32Algorithms shouldn't be patented; UI components/metaphors shouldn't be patented; Anything potentially leading to monopolism shouldn't be patented; Monopolists should get their patents revoked. This is my opinion.
The point of a patent is a state sanctioned monopoly.
Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
#33Does anyone sell patent-troll insurance?
Too easy to game. With the minimum legal cost of a successful defense being $200,000, what kind of monthly rate would cover that?
Seeing that all startups are essential equally likely to be sued with all the bad patens that are out there, by simply having an army of attorneys behind you it seems you could significantly reduce your risk. Therefore simply by paying for insurance your significantly reduce the likelihood that that insurance will be needed.
Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
#34In addition to patent reform, why legals bills are so astronomical? The whole thing stinks.
Legal bill = billing rate * hours billed.
The number of hours billed is very dependent on the structure of the law. One of the goals of courts is to streamline the law so that cases that don't have merit can be dismissed quickly and easily. If you follow litigations in the popular press, you'll see that a lot of lawsuits get dismissed on "technicalities" (i.e. procedural rules). E.g. the EFF's NSA litigation is in danger of getting dismissed for a lack of standing (i.e. dismissal because the plaintiff can't show actual injury). Courts create these procedural barriers because getting to the merits (i.e. looking at the facts) of litigation is time-consuming and expensive. Courts also create other barriers. For example, in a shareholder suit, there is something called the business judgment rule: i.e. in the absence of a conflict of interest or something like that, a court will defer to management's superior business judgment. Rules like that allow shareholder suits to be evaluated and dismissed based on facts that are easy to prove without having to reach facts that are expensive to investigate and prove.
In patent litigation, there is precious little of that. Patent litigations very quickly become a very fact-intensive process of interpreting a complex and voluminous patent, getting expert witness testimony about exactly how the defendants product works, etc. Once a lawyer is sitting down with an engineer looking over code, the clock really gets going.
The Supreme Court has been very reluctant to create categorical rules in terms of patentability, and that's largely because the Patent Act is written in a way that makes such categorical rules inconsistent with the intent of the law. But the fact is that categorical rules (e.g. no software patents, deference to business judgment) make litigation cheaper, and that's an important consideration too.
Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how one of these PAE lawyers would react if you told him his daughter's name and the school she goes to They would make sure you're behind bars in no time.
What if 'you' are an anonymous remailer service account and a bitcoin address? It would be amusing if patent trolling got bad enough to force startups to operate on the black market. After all, what's the ROI on legitimacy if the state can't protect you from banditry?
What if his daughter really got killed or raped?
Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
#36Would it be safe to move the company outside of US where patent troll cannot reach in legal jurisdiction?
You can move the company. But as long as you make sales in US, you can be blocked from doing business.
Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
#37Lately my group of friends have been discussing the most underhanded ways to get PAE's to bugger off. Nothing serious, but it's interesting to think about how one of these PAE lawyers would react if you told him his daughter's name and the school she goes to. It kinda surprises me that none of these extortion cases have escalated to that sort of thing. When someone puts 5-10 years of sweat, blood and tears into a com…
Well in general (and not specific to this situation) one of the effective ways you can deal with someone like this is to waste as much of their time as possible in whatever way can. The person on the phone has to have a certain amount of productivity and while they are not going to drop their claim against you if you become a nice pain in the ass they will have the motivation to work with you. If you are quick and ea…
but aren't you wasting your time too, while wasting theirs? for them, it is a full time job (so they might not care), but for the people who have to deal with them, it isn't
Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
#38I have an LLC (US), but this is one of the blunders I've made and I plan on dissolving it soon. There are many reasons to my answer, here are some: The problem with a US based LLC is that you open up free access to thousands of patent trolls waiting to eat your hard earned money. This isn't a problem if you can afford a decent Lawyer for $5000-15000, but for businesses like mine, which are bootstrapped, it's totally…
Samsung was in South Korea. Apple blocked Samsung's sales in US based on patent issues.
It doesn't matter where you're located. What matters where you want to do business.
Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
#39The real problem and challenge of the issue (especially in terms of litigation) is taking the power away from PAEs but also not taking the power out of our patent system.
The fact that our system allows folks to invent but not manufacture led to substantial growth in our country and also to the entrepreneurial culture we all enjoy.
PAEs are abusing this and absolutely need to be stopped.
Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if 'you' are an anonymous remailer service account and a bitcoin address? It would be amusing if patent trolling got bad enough to force startups to operate on the black market. After all, what's the ROI on legitimacy if the state can't protect you from banditry?
What if his daughter really got killed or raped?
Other patent assertion entities would be inspired to think carefully about targeting entities subscribing to our protection service.