Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit • Hacker News Board

Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit

#101

Post by technoir » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 11:07 PM UTC

csense wrote: post #71

technoir wrote: post #64

I once considered taking a serious crack at a subset of this problem. Didn't get any takers though. http://libpatent.com/

What's your marketing like? Have you tried approaching relevant blogs like Popehat for a mention? Or trying to get in contact with places where startups congregate, like YC? Or asking if EFF or others who oppose patents for ideological reasons would be willing to give you publicity, advice, or referrals? Heck, a Show HN post might get you some publicity and feedback. Also, the website is a little unclear about what e…

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

I originally created this page as an exercise in "marketing driven development" aka just testing the waters to see if there is a market for this sort of thing.

I did consider your last point of busting a bogus patent and self-funding the ex parte filing fee. I was considering going for a particular linked list implementation which was patented in the 2000s. My approach was more or less to grep / lucene a wide range of open source projects with extensive timestamps of publication dates (e.g. linux kernel).

It turns out that is a lot of work, and since I got no response to the site, I figured this kind of legal service is not really appealing -- for reasons I don't understand. At least, not enough demand to spend a bunch of time on it, since I have other projects I enjoy working on more.

Thanks again for the thoughtful response.

Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit

#102

Post by dhimes » Sun, Jul 21, 2013, 4:07 PM UTC

rfctr wrote: post #13

zalzane wrote: post #7

Lately 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…

> 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.

I'm late to the thread here, but, as one who has received a threat (entirely different situation), non-specific threats by themselves are usually non-actionable.

Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit

#103

Post by wglb » Sun, Jul 21, 2013, 6:12 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #100

thinkcomp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it? And that's why many law firms are laughing all the way to the bank, as well as why there's a growing trend to bring legal work in-house among the Fortune 1000, which has only recently realized that it's being fleeced. I'm not just guessing here. I just spent a year as a fellow at Stanford Law and heard all about it from people on both sides. I also have a friend who just quit his job as an associate at one…

There is always a surge of bringing legal work in-house after a recession, because you've experienced lawyers on the market looking for a job and willing to take a pay-cut to go in-house. It happened as well after the early 1990's recession. I don't know how permanent that phenomenon is, I think other shifts like the move to flat billing are going to be more sticky. Your friend's characterization of his work seems ph…

might have hundreds of thousands of documents

Actually the extreme is likely to be in the millions.

Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit

#104

Post by csense » Mon, Jul 22, 2013, 5:08 AM UTC

technoir wrote: post #101

csense wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your marketing like? Have you tried approaching relevant blogs like Popehat for a mention? Or trying to get in contact with places where startups congregate, like YC? Or asking if EFF or others who oppose patents for ideological reasons would be willing to give you publicity, advice, or referrals? Heck, a Show HN post might get you some publicity and feedback. Also, the website is a little unclear about what e…

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I originally created this page as an exercise in "marketing driven development" aka just testing the waters to see if there is a market for this sort of thing. I did consider your last point of busting a bogus patent and self-funding the ex parte filing fee. I was considering going for a particular linked list implementation which was patented in the 2000s. My approach was more or…

> since I got no response to the site

Just putting a website on the internet is no guarantee people will find you. There might be a lot of people interested in your service, and it could be that your site is too hard for them to find.

Re: Life for a startup on the receiving end of a patent law suit

#105

Post by Guvante » Mon, Jul 22, 2013, 9:51 PM UTC

dscb wrote: post #29

Guvante wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too easy to game. With the minimum legal cost of a successful defense being $200,000, what kind of monthly rate would cover that?

With car insurance claims easily being >100k due to injuries/death/multiple vehicle collisions, what kind of monthly rate could possible cover that? Other examples with high claim amounts, flood insurance, health care, etc. It doesn't matter how high the minimum cost is, and you cant judge any kind of insurance based solely on that. The chance of it happening is just as important. Let's say 1% of all companies get su…

Average cost of a claim and average claims per year are incredibly important.

Average cost of a car claim (ignoring glass) is probably in the $5,000 range. The average person gets in Average cost of a patent claim is, say $200,000 (that is a minimum, but we will treat it as an average). Average company gets 0.05 patent claims per year (1 in 20). Coverage would be $1,000 a month. Not too bad.

Now lets add what happens after the first time you pay out an insurance claim within 6 months. Someone in your company gets $200,000 for a client list, your patent claims per year just became 10 per client. Good luck.