Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 117 posts

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#91

Post by stephencanon »

geuis wrote: post #31
dctoedt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should he be careful about what he says on a forum? He didn't threaten anybody. Like it or not, libel laws apply on-line as much as anywhere. As just one example, in 2006 a Florida woman won an $11 million verdict against a Louisiana woman who had called her a crook, a con artist, and a fraud in an on-line forum [1]. Do a Google search for "libel on-line" and you'll see lots of ads for lawyers hoping to be hire…

Libel applies when you are making false, damaging statements about someone in a way intended to cause damage in some form. This is not even close to what I'm doing. I look at the world scientifically. Hence a hypothesis and not a theory. I am asking a question and don't have hard evidence one way or the other. I have a suspicion, which is where hypothesises get started. This is not libel, it's fact finding. Were I to…

> Libel applies when you are making false, damaging statements about someone in a way intended to cause damage in some form.

Look up "libel per se". Certain types of false statements are so clearly damaging that there is no requirement of malicious intent for uttering them to constitute libel. Falsely accusing someone of committing a crime, for example.

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#92

Post by hrabago »

chetanahuja wrote: post #34

The texas east district stuff is fascinating. What if the app and software developers start licensing their apps with a license and technical measures explicitly excluding East Texas (or the entire state of texas, for extra safety) from the operation of the app. It could be enforced by some soft of geofencing at app startup that splashes a "You're from East Texas, our app doesn't work there" type language. Will that…

I've wondered about this, too. Would this approach be a legit workaround for this problem?

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#93

Post by mistercow »

VLM wrote: post #46
mistercow wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In a 2010 article, Stanford law professor Mark Lemley, who is known for his careful statistical analysis of patent cases (and is cited amazingly often by the Supreme Court), noted that the win rate for patent owners in the Eastern District was 40% That statistic is meaningless without the base rate, which turns out to be 32.5%. I'd also point out that there's something very weaselly about Lemley saying the district…

My strategic advice would be to research the shape of a graph of all states; is there anything peculiar about Texas? It might be possible to change the locale without changing the outcome. A similar analogy would be declaring poverty to be the bottom quartile of financial resources, then being surprised that as long as more than 5 people exist we'll always have a bottom quartile therefore always poverty. What I'm get…

I mostly agree with you. I was just pointing out that there was some bias in the way that Lemley characterized the situation, and that it's not very useful to say "40% win rate" without citing the average nationwide.

In fact, it's fairly deceptive, since in the absence of anything else to go on, people may tend to assume that the base rate should be 50/50 (that would be maximum entropy, after all), and might think that 40% is low.

In fact, it's quite high; but it I would agree that it doesn't seem so high as to be completely out of whack (except insofar as a 30% win rate on patents nationwide is probably pretty out of whack).

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#94

Post by anologwintermut »

saryant wrote: post #86
possibilistic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this idea a lot. If the population living in the causative region understands the nature of what their governing body is doing to impact and infringe upon on the rest of the world, maybe they'll change who holds the relevant positions of power. It would be great if we could do this to websites and technology in general as well. Maybe we can start with this kind of campaign [1], but utilize geo-IP targeting. [1…

It's a federal court, the State of Texas has nothing to do with it. These judges are appointed by the President.

With the recommendation and consultation of the representative for the district and the two Senators for the state. Who clearly have something to do with this. How else can you explain east texas being the venue of choice?

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#95

Post by saryant »

anologwintermut wrote: post #94
saryant wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a federal court, the State of Texas has nothing to do with it. These judges are appointed by the President.

With the recommendation and consultation of the representative for the district and the two Senators for the state. Who clearly have something to do with this. How else can you explain east texas being the venue of choice?

A friend of mine who's a patent lawyer explained it to me once. Some time back the chief judge started putting patent cases at the top of his docket so his district became known as a having "rocket docket" and began attracting patent cases from across the country. A cottage industry sprung up in the area and the rest is history.

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#96

Post by robomartin »

Six million developers in the US iOS ecosystem?

If that's the case that is a massive number of people, particularly if you consider employees and contractors they might work with.

Perhaps I am being a simplistic moron. To me the solution to these problems is to make a lot of noise. A lot of it. And to do it continuously. And to do it through all available media and channels. And not to stop until the issue is dealt with by legislators. You want coverage by every single media outlet on a daily basis.

This community can make something like that happen. It's isn't that difficult if top level companies take lead. With one simple addition to their websites the entire world would become aware of the issue that is killing innovation in tech circles.

This is a community that has the power to do this. If this community unites behind a common message tomorrow the entire world could start to feel the pressure. Political leaders will have to both acknowledge and act to solve the problem.

This is not a war that will be won one battle at a time. This is a war that needs to be won through legislative action. There are far more people affected by bullshit patents than most imagine. All we need is an organization under which we could all unite and start making noise. Banners on all websites. Pop-ups on all apps. Whatever it takes.

Would it be inconvenient to our users? Possibly. However, you have to consider the idea that there's a huge opportunity here to educate everyone and, at the same time, highlight the fact that a more sensible patent system would actually improve things across the world. I am not going to do them math, but I am sure one could easily show economic advantages which will include job creation.

I wish I had the standing, time and resources to launch such a thing. I don't. There are well-funded companies with more than enough resources to devote to such an effort. To borrow from Bravehart:

Help us. Help yourselves! Now is our chance, now! If we join, we can win. If we win, well then we'll have what none of us have ever had before; freedom to create; freedom from the fear of trolls; the ability to innovate to the extent of our abilities; the freedom to create whatever our minds can imagine. You are the technology leaders and there is strength in you. Unite us. Unite us!

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#97

Post by Natsu »

saryant wrote: post #95
anologwintermut wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the recommendation and consultation of the representative for the district and the two Senators for the state. Who clearly have something to do with this. How else can you explain east texas being the venue of choice?

A friend of mine who's a patent lawyer explained it to me once. Some time back the chief judge started putting patent cases at the top of his docket so his district became known as a having "rocket docket" and began attracting patent cases from across the country. A cottage industry sprung up in the area and the rest is history.

It's a rather small jurisdiction, so there are only a few judges there and not very many cases aside from patent cases. The fact that there are a number of very pro-patent precedents there only tended to drive it further, as the plaintiffs usually get to decide where to litigate and will seek every advantage.

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#98

Post by andybak »

andybak wrote: post #17
benologist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems highly unlikely given that Apple etc aren't retarded and would have pursued that theory if they thought it was possible.

This is the worst quality top comment I've seen on HN in a while. I hope it doesn't stay top.

Just to clarify I was talking about the grandfather comment, not the parent. Too late to edit my comment now.

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#99

Post by dctoedt »

saryant wrote: post #89
VLM wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My strategic advice would be to research the shape of a graph of all states; is there anything peculiar about Texas? It might be possible to change the locale without changing the outcome. A similar analogy would be declaring poverty to be the bottom quartile of financial resources, then being surprised that as long as more than 5 people exist we'll always have a bottom quartile therefore always poverty. What I'm get…

These judges aren't appointed by Texas, they're appointed by the President. We're talking about a federal district court.

> These judges aren't appointed by Texas, they're appointed by the President.

Here's how it really works. From the names of those lawyers who have applied to be considered, a name is "suggested" by whoever is the state's senior senator of the same party as the president. Assuming the vetting checks out, the suggested person is then nominated. If neither senator is of the president's party (as is currently the case in Texas), then somehow the congressional delegation of the president's party gets involved; I forget the details.

(The late federal judge Norman Black in Houston, appointed by President Carter, was both well-liked and well-respected. He used to tell a joke: A trial lawyer is someone who knows how to try cases. A litigator is someone who knows how to take depositions. And a federal judge is someone who knows a U.S. senator.)

Re: Judge tosses Apple motion, allows patent troll Lodsys to continue rampage

#100

Post by harryh »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #82
rayiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are federal judges. They have life tenure. Fewer patent cases just means more time for golf.

I think the commenter's point was that simply having life tenure as a judge isn't the only potential motivation for their alleged bias toward patent trolls. That, in fact, their friends' and families' stakes in local businesses (e.g. the shell 'office' suites these patent trolls incorporate in) provide additional indirect motivation for the judges to keep the patent troll gravy train rolling. Peer pressure, especiall…

Patent troll companies spend a lot of money for shell 'office' suites? I don't think that's actually true.
Post reply on HN