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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

#141

Post by adventured »

victorhooi wrote: post #75
doktrin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come now. Patent trolls are a massive nuisance, but they don't represent an existential threat to this country - let alone all of human civilization.

Lol, it's probably hyperbole. But think about it - what exactly does American produce these days? Yes, they still have a heavy manufacturing base - but that's declining and fast. If you stifle innovation, you've basically shot yourself in the foot.

This isn't accurate at all. America is still the world's largest manufacturer, even larger than China (but not the largest exporter). The manufacturing base is not declining fast, manufacturing jobs are, due to dramatic and continuing productivity gains (America has the most productive manufacturing base on earth).

http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-a...

(it's understood this doesn't cover '10-'13, but it still makes the point it was intended to: 1) manufacturing is not declining; 2) America still has a truly massive manufacturing base)

"According to United Nations data, the U.S. is still the largest manufacturing country in the world. In 2009, American manufacturing output (in real terms) was nearly $2.2 trillion. That’s about 45% larger than China’s, at just under $1.5 trillion. (For statistical reasons, I chose to use figures that include mining and utilities as part of manufacturing.) Though China, of course, is growing very quickly, the U.S. has also maintained its global share of manufacturing, at 20% in 2009 compared to just over 22% in 1980. What’s more, American manufacturing is becoming more productive. In 2009, productivity in U.S. manufacturing increased by 7.7%, more than any other country followed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics."

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

#142

Post by acjohnson55 »

aquadrop wrote: post #114
allochthon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The basis for the plaintiff's suit no doubt consists of rarefied lawyerese, and the plaintiff has probably added no value to the world. But they get many millions. How has the property law been allowed to tie itself up into this knot?

Yes, I think they got millions for doing nothing is one of the problems. Probably, you should only have right to defend your patent if you're actually using it. Like that's part of your business. And if you don't use it for couple of years, patent goes to public domain.

I think even in the case that the invention is actually being used, patents may not be justified. I mean, suppose Google owned the patent they just got sued on. Would it make sense for them to have the power to freeze other people out of the market, when operating in the market without any statutory monopoly powers is already spectacularly profitable for them?

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

#143

Post by badman_ting »

iribe wrote: post #23
Gustomaximus wrote: post #17

The Microsoft settlement for the same was interesting: "Vringo also sued Microsoft over ads in its Bing search engine. Microsoft settled that case in May, agreeing to pay $1 million plus 5 percent of whatever Google ultimately pays." It's strange agreeing to pay 5% of Google outcome on the same and quite clever the more I consider the pros/cons.

They're arming patent trolls and aiming them at google. This isn't the first one (rockstar).

I don't understand why people keep coming to this conclusion. To me it just sounds like MS ducked faster.

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

#144

Post by PythonicAlpha »

doktrin wrote: post #51
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is clearly America's downfall -- and America is pulling the world with itself.

Oh come now. Patent trolls are a massive nuisance, but they don't represent an existential threat to this country - let alone all of human civilization.

The problem are not the patent trolls. If you think, the patent trolls are the patent system biggest trouble, than you are victim of the brain washing, the big corporations give to us all.

Please read my other post in the same forum about "intellectual property" to understand.

All the patent system by itself also does not end human civilization (I did not want to imply that), but the patent system is another symptom of the current state of human civilization and the state of human greed that drives western civilizations down.

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

#145

Post by zanny »

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'd argue you'd get more economic benefit abolishing patents entirely (not just the software ones, I mean the ones on reproducing someone elses car or gas furnace). You pay a cost in a loss of investment valuation towards invention because it is less economically beneficial if you can't have a monopoly on your patented good, but you benefit economically by letting new inventions reach natural price equilibrium immediately, and the spread of new inventions would propagate more inventions, even without a major profit motive - you still benefit being "first out the door" on a new idea. Which we see all the time in software, and then run into this problem where first out the door has already made a bunch but is now suing me for trying to do something even remotely in the same problem domain because I see demand there, but I won't be able to meet it because I'm artificially locked out of that market.

That applies to all economic domains. Patents worked back when it was extremely hard to sell your goods to its entire market, because you were either distance limited, communication limited, or production rate limited. In the first two situations someone could just take your idea, set up half way across the country, and made all the returns.

Today, I can invent anything I want and have it on ebay overnight and ship it anywhere in the world. I can advertise on most major ad services if I want, with an audience of the entire first world. The only limiting factor for me is demand, but that just means I have to be safe when bringing inventions to market, but it is good for the economy overall because it means if I can't meet demand, someone else will pick up the slack.

It is still, like I said, advantageous to the first to market with an idea, enough so that I wouldn't predict much of a drop in novel ideas. Like I said, I would expect more if technology and designs were more open and people could cheaply iterate and extend past concepts more readily.

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

#146

Post by andrewfong »

zanny wrote: post #145
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'd argue you'd get more economic benefit abolishing patents entirely (not just the software ones, I mean the ones on reproducing someone elses car or gas furnace). You pay a cost in a loss of investment valuation towards invention because it is less economically beneficial if you can't have a monopoly on your patented good, but you benefit economically by letting new inventions reach natural price equilibrium immedi…

Not necessarily opposed, but there are a couple areas where this might be a net loss absent other adjustments. Pharmaceuticals would be the obvious one -- they require a large upfront research cost, copying is trivial, and the FDA approval process erodes first-to-market advantages.

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

#147

Post by omni »

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.

It's entirely logical. You're talking about emotions, not logic.

Patent trolls win => his legit companies lose value, his patent troll gains value

Patent trolls lose => legit companies gain value, patent trolls lose value

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

#148

Post by munificent »

colechristensen wrote: post #25

Good. There are few things which can effect change better than billionaires in fear of losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. When it happens to small fry you lament because they can't do anything to change and end up settling to save themselves or losing and losing everything. When it happens to the 55th largest company you rejoice because they have the power and motivation to change the rules.

> There are few things which can effect change better than billionaires in fear of losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

What change would you like this to effect? I thought Google already had a solid reputation of being against patent trolls and software patents. For example:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/17/4233818/google-submits-pub...

http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/pledge/

http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/patents/

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

#149

Post by zaroth »

skj wrote: post #120
zaroth wrote: post #104

The money is going to the guy who patented a crucial part of Google's AdWords algorithm which neither they nor Bing can apparently design around. The guy got crushed in the market, being just a little fish, he was gobbled right up. But he bought back his patent, and took the fight to Google and Bing and won. You can argue the percentage calculation is a too rich by an order of magnitude or two (and I think it is), bu…

Let's remember that when the guy was "gobbled right up", Google was a dozen people with one server in a garage. The fact that multiple entities came up with this idea, without communication of the idea between them, means that it was more a function of the environment the idea was conceived in than the person who did the conceiving.

Agree with everything you've said, and I still think Google has to pay for infringing.

Patents are NOT just to prevent copying. Patents are not supposed to be worthless against larger companies who can just replicate your work without your help.

If you could just re-engineer any patented invention, patents would be worthless. Companies would be incentivized to bury their heads in the sand so they could be sure they were not 'inspired' by anything out there that might have been patented. The only way to prevent this is to say, we don't care if you "knew" about the patent you still can be found infringing.

The thing I hope will be reversed on appeal is willfulness. It seems to me this was not willful. Or perhaps the definition of 'willful' should be tightened to mean reverse-engineered or copied from a practicing entity. That's one way to get the damage award to be more reasonable.

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

#150

Post by rayiner »

zanny wrote: post #145
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'd argue you'd get more economic benefit abolishing patents entirely (not just the software ones, I mean the ones on reproducing someone elses car or gas furnace). You pay a cost in a loss of investment valuation towards invention because it is less economically beneficial if you can't have a monopoly on your patented good, but you benefit economically by letting new inventions reach natural price equilibrium immedi…

Being "first to market" only matters when you're building things like Facebook or Windows, where network effects are relevant. If you're making consumable or durable goods, being first to market is irrelevant. India will clone your drug within a few months of its release, but there is no way you'll make up all that capital investment by then.

Without patents, the rational thing to do is not invest any more in an invention than you can recoup in the short window before someone clones it and undercuts you on price. Moreover, it diminishes inventors and elevates manufacturers. The smart strategy in a world without patents is to build up massive overseas manufacturing capacity, because you can always quickly copy designs and then undercut the original designer with your manufacturing muscle.

'Andrewfong has a good point about independent invention being a defense. The idea of inventing something on your own only to have someone else claim they patented it is most of what bugs people about patents. In engineering circles where that is much less common, you don't have an anti-patent sentiment. When I was studying aerospace engineering in college, nobody I encountered perceived patents as anything but a good thing.

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