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US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

inc.com

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Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#51

Post by jimbokun »

rayiner wrote: post #36
vanderZwan wrote: post #28

Good news, but the last sentence of the article made me curious: > The total median awards to trolls is now nearly twice as high as those to legitimate patent holders, whose median reward fell about 30 percent to $4 billion, according to a 2013 report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. I was wondering how they estimated this, so I checked out the report: > We collect information about patent holder success rates, time-to-tri…

> So, just to play the devil's advocate: are NPEs by definition patent trolls? I can't think of a counterargument, but maybe someone else can? There are lots of counter-examples. E.g. Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Aerospace_Ventures . It's the patent-holding company that owns all the patents for Spaceship One. It's a vehicle to intermediate between the major investor, Paul Allen…

Granting your point about non-trolling benefits to NPE corporate structures, doesn't this also give MAV the ability to troll while protecting the assets in Spaceship One and the other corporate structures responsible for the actual development? In other words, legal action taken by MAV to enforce their patents would still seem to fit the colloquial usage of "patent trolling".

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#52

Post by sizzle »

bananacurve wrote: post #19
Flimm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably a violation of copyright to copy an article and paste it here. Copyright automatically applies, paywall or not.

The copyright holder is free to send pg a takedown request letter. https://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html

thank you

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#53

Post by inetsee »

ceejayoz wrote: post #24
Nutella4 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I hope the many companies that caved to this patent troll and paid it millions for claiming it owned the shopping cart now go after it to get all those millions back. With interest.

My understanding is that revenues get siphoned very quickly out of the shell company to avoid precisely that.

I think that one of the fundamental problems with the current patent system is that NPEs are able to use shell companies to shield themselves from the financial consequences of their bad acts. I hope one of the "finer points of patent law" that the Supreme Court will be looking at is just this issue.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#54

Post by 6cxs2hd6 »

chaz wrote: post #46
chongli wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would surmise that most readers of Hacker News either use an ad-blocker or don't click on ads often/ever. Viewed in this light, traffic to the site from here might even be considered a cost!

Revenue is to be made on unique visitors and impressions. No clicks are required.

So the loss of traffic is a good thing because advertisers aren't paying for impressions that aren't actually seen? ;)

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#55

Post by Nutella4 »

grellas wrote: post #43

A few thoughts: 1. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Soverain from an adverse ruling by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals that had determined the Soverain "shopping cart" patent to be invalid on grounds of obviousness. 2. The Federal Circuit's holding by a 3-judge panel had been remarkable and had shocked patent lawyers generally in that the parties before the court had not even raised the issue on a…

Yes, Soverain is the quintessential patent troll. It did not acquire the original company that came up with the shopping cart idea. That thing had been sold at least four times before Soverain came along.

No, shopping cart is not and never was a non-obvious technology. It's a clever metaphor for the very common pre-computer business method of maintaining order line records for unconfirmed orders.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#57

Post by bostonpete »

dded wrote: post #34
revelation wrote: post #26

I guess this is why HN mods edit titles on submissions (although the original title is just as terrible). The Supreme Court did not side with anyone; they denied a petition to the court, which is the case for the vast majority of petitions. If they did accept this particular petition, this would not mean that the Supreme Court sides with the patent troll and the world is doomed; it simply means that the case deals wi…

I cut-and-pasted the original title, which now appears to have changed.

I thought cut-and-pasting the title was the only sanctioned approach to titles on HN and anything else was "editorializing". I've seen any number of more useful titles changed to match the linked article supposedly for this reason.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#58

Post by petermonsson »

Karunamon wrote: post #31
vanderZwan wrote: post #28

Good news, but the last sentence of the article made me curious: > The total median awards to trolls is now nearly twice as high as those to legitimate patent holders, whose median reward fell about 30 percent to $4 billion, according to a 2013 report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. I was wondering how they estimated this, so I checked out the report: > We collect information about patent holder success rates, time-to-tri…

I think the canonical example of a NPE is ARM. They don't fabricate their own chips, but they license out their designs.

By that definition even Qualcomm (top 5 semiconductor company) is an NPE as TSMC fabricates their chips. ARM licenses both RTL (code) and GDSII files (the files that a foundry such as TSMC uses to freate masks for fabrication) just as you would license software. They can hardly be called a NPE.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#60

Post by shmerl »

grellas wrote: post #43

A few thoughts: 1. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Soverain from an adverse ruling by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals that had determined the Soverain "shopping cart" patent to be invalid on grounds of obviousness. 2. The Federal Circuit's holding by a 3-judge panel had been remarkable and had shocked patent lawyers generally in that the parties before the court had not even raised the issue on a…

There was prior art, therefore the patent was invalid not just because it was obvious, but because it was not even invented by those who filed that patent. Case closed. The troll deserves to be slammed with the decision. I'd also force them pay all the money back to those from whom they extorted it, but I doubt the court can go that far.
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