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Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

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Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#91

Post by tanzam75 »

mythz wrote: post #58
magicalist wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, unfortunately http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-heres-why-im-takin...

Wow, hedging against patent trolls by backing them is some sick and twisted logic.

> Wow, hedging against patent trolls by backing them is some sick and twisted logic.

But not unexpected for Mark Cuban.

This is the man who owes his status as a billionaire to hedging. If he hadn't hedged out his Yahoo exposure at the very top of the dot-com bubble, then he would've been worth about $60 million by the time his lock-up period expired.

$1.4 billion vs. $60 million. Being one of the richest 500 Americans, vs. not even being able to buy the Dallas Mavericks. You can see why Mark Cuban believes in hedging.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#92

Post by eru »

andrewfong wrote: post #84
dangrossman wrote: post #2

> Even though there was no evidence of copying—Vringo admitted as much What a ridiculous system we all operate under. You come up with a mathematical formula for ranking some text on a page (in this case, what ads to show first), and you could now owe $250M/year to some company you've never heard of because they already bought the rights to that formula. It turns my stomach; sorry that I have nothing of more substanc…

The lack of an independent invention defense (or some variation of this) is pretty much 80% of what's wrong with patent law in my opinion. A sampling of the issues an independent invention addresses: * Obviousness. Patents are required to be non-obvious to a "person holding ordinary skill in the art", but obviousness is highly subjective and difficult to assess (especially for a non-technical jury). In contrast, eval…

I mostly agree. Though, you'd get some interesting reverse engineering related problems.

Ie look at the patent, come up with a problem that would make this patent obvious, lock some engineers in a sealed room with the problem, and wait for something like the patent to fall out. Was that independent invention, then?

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#93

Post by cperciva »

andrewfong wrote: post #84
dangrossman wrote: post #2

> Even though there was no evidence of copying—Vringo admitted as much What a ridiculous system we all operate under. You come up with a mathematical formula for ranking some text on a page (in this case, what ads to show first), and you could now owe $250M/year to some company you've never heard of because they already bought the rights to that formula. It turns my stomach; sorry that I have nothing of more substanc…

The lack of an independent invention defense (or some variation of this) is pretty much 80% of what's wrong with patent law in my opinion. A sampling of the issues an independent invention addresses: * Obviousness. Patents are required to be non-obvious to a "person holding ordinary skill in the art", but obviousness is highly subjective and difficult to assess (especially for a non-technical jury). In contrast, eval…

evaluating whether something was independently invented, while not necessarily simple, is a more a objective test

Only if you take a very generous interpretation of "independent". For an reinvention to be truly independent, the reinventor would not only need to not have read about the original invention, but also to have not read about anything inspired by the original invention, and not talked to anyone who read about anything inspired by the original invention, etc.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#94

Post by WalterBright »

chavesn wrote: post #80
graving wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They(and you), did hear of the company that originally got these patents. Here's the very interesting story behind the patents. http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/31/why-google-might-be-going-t... edit: I am rate limited from replying to fpgeeks reply below so I will post my reply here. First, the author is extremely clear that he invested in Vringo, in fact the whole article is about why he did so., so I am not sure why…

> You can think to yourself: “ugh, patent trolls are disgusting”. But the protection of intellectual property is what America is built on. Smart people invent things. Then they get to protect the intellectual property on what they invents. Other companies can’t steal[1] that technology. "Protection of intellectual property is what America is built on ?" Hyperbole much? "Smart people invent things. Then they get to pr…

> But the protection of intellectual property is what America is built on.

Is it? I recall the story of how the textile industry in America was built upon designs illegally smuggled out of Britain.

Also, the movie, auto, and aviation industries were all hobbled for years under patent lawsuits. It was so bad in the aviation business that development in the US pretty much ground to a standstill and the center for aviation progress switched over to Europe for a decade or two.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#95

Post by andrewfong »

eru wrote: post #92
andrewfong wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of an independent invention defense (or some variation of this) is pretty much 80% of what's wrong with patent law in my opinion. A sampling of the issues an independent invention addresses: * Obviousness. Patents are required to be non-obvious to a "person holding ordinary skill in the art", but obviousness is highly subjective and difficult to assess (especially for a non-technical jury). In contrast, eval…

I mostly agree. Though, you'd get some interesting reverse engineering related problems. Ie look at the patent, come up with a problem that would make this patent obvious, lock some engineers in a sealed room with the problem, and wait for something like the patent to fall out. Was that independent invention, then?

Probably not, although you could write the rules in a way that avoids this I think -- e.g. the knowledge of the person who looks at the patent is imparted to the engineers because they're all part of the same organization.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#96

Post by andrewfong »

cperciva wrote: post #93
andrewfong wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of an independent invention defense (or some variation of this) is pretty much 80% of what's wrong with patent law in my opinion. A sampling of the issues an independent invention addresses: * Obviousness. Patents are required to be non-obvious to a "person holding ordinary skill in the art", but obviousness is highly subjective and difficult to assess (especially for a non-technical jury). In contrast, eval…

evaluating whether something was independently invented, while not necessarily simple, is a more a objective test Only if you take a very generous interpretation of "independent". For an reinvention to be truly independent, the reinventor would not only need to not have read about the original invention, but also to have not read about anything inspired by the original invention, and not talked to anyone who read abo…

Right, independence isn't binary. There are definitely degrees of dependence. But it's more objective than "obviousness" at least. Obviousness is also non-binary, and because the jury must assess obviousness from a "person holding ordinary skill in the arts", there are additional questions as to what constitutes "ordinary skill" and what constitutes the requisite "art".

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#97

Post by stevewilhelm »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #4

Disgusting, what a broken system. Can anybody actually defend such a system and explain how it promotes innovation?

Software startups are more likely to raise VC funding if they can demonstrate they have a defensible product or service.

One of the ways of making a product defensible is to patent its underlying technology.

If a software startup doesn't hold a patent, there is a chance a larger player could just copy the startup's product or service and drive the startup out of business.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#98

Post by Hermel »

andrewfong wrote: post #84
dangrossman wrote: post #2

> Even though there was no evidence of copying—Vringo admitted as much What a ridiculous system we all operate under. You come up with a mathematical formula for ranking some text on a page (in this case, what ads to show first), and you could now owe $250M/year to some company you've never heard of because they already bought the rights to that formula. It turns my stomach; sorry that I have nothing of more substanc…

The lack of an independent invention defense (or some variation of this) is pretty much 80% of what's wrong with patent law in my opinion. A sampling of the issues an independent invention addresses: * Obviousness. Patents are required to be non-obvious to a "person holding ordinary skill in the art", but obviousness is highly subjective and difficult to assess (especially for a non-technical jury). In contrast, eval…

A much simpler solution would be adjusting the expiration of IT-patents. The patents in this case are from 1996 and expiring in 2016. If the term for IT patents was reduced to 10 years, we would have many fewer problems.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#99

Post by noptic »

I´m a peacefull and calm person, which despites violent but the more I read about US patent law the more I want to set a torch to the trolls and kill them with fire.

I know that this is not very constructive. I know that violence is not a solution. But seeing what these [insert insult here] do to our industry I just can not help myself.

Re: Court: Google infringed patents, must pay 1.36 percent of AdWords revenue

#100

Post by andrewfong »

Hermel wrote: post #98
andrewfong wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of an independent invention defense (or some variation of this) is pretty much 80% of what's wrong with patent law in my opinion. A sampling of the issues an independent invention addresses: * Obviousness. Patents are required to be non-obvious to a "person holding ordinary skill in the art", but obviousness is highly subjective and difficult to assess (especially for a non-technical jury). In contrast, eval…

A much simpler solution would be adjusting the expiration of IT-patents. The patents in this case are from 1996 and expiring in 2016. If the term for IT patents was reduced to 10 years, we would have many fewer problems.

Fewer problems, but still a pain. If you independently come up with something one year in IT after the original patent holder, that's still nine years of suck.
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