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Don't mess with Newegg

blog.newegg.com

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Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#161

Post by afarrell »

taude wrote: post #127
mixmax wrote: post #14

It seems to me that the legal system in the US is largely broken, and that just about anyone can be sued if only you find the right grounds. Being sued and defending yourself is enormously expensive which is what patent trolls exploit. Why not use this offensively against patent trolls? Find all sorts of ways to take them to court, the American legal seems to have plenty of opportunities in that regard. There are som…

It's weird that 40-45% of Congress is attorneys.

Its equally weird that a large chunk of people employed to write software went to college and majored in things that require understanding and writing software.

Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#162

Post by afternooner »

mixmax wrote: post #14

It seems to me that the legal system in the US is largely broken, and that just about anyone can be sued if only you find the right grounds. Being sued and defending yourself is enormously expensive which is what patent trolls exploit. Why not use this offensively against patent trolls? Find all sorts of ways to take them to court, the American legal seems to have plenty of opportunities in that regard. There are som…

The system is working perfectly, if you subscribe to the belief that you can own an idea. If an idea can be property, and you can control how your property is used and distributed just like any other property you own. I can not make a product, but simply licence it's use. A middle man is after all the bulk of capitalism. The patent trolls are a solid business model, and the system isn't broken. Again, this is only if you subscribe to the notion that an idea can be owned.

I don't think you can own an idea, actually I know you can't. But we create an artificial and abstract environment in order to put real world constraints on things that simply cannot be contained. It's why we get all these stupid laws, and why they don't work. They are trying to do the impossible.

A corporation is not a person, an idea is not property. But it will take a revolution to change that, and I'm too lazy to start it.

Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#163

Post by mikeash »

taude wrote: post #127
mixmax wrote: post #14

It seems to me that the legal system in the US is largely broken, and that just about anyone can be sued if only you find the right grounds. Being sued and defending yourself is enormously expensive which is what patent trolls exploit. Why not use this offensively against patent trolls? Find all sorts of ways to take them to court, the American legal seems to have plenty of opportunities in that regard. There are som…

It's weird that 40-45% of Congress is attorneys.

It's no weirder than a large percentage of programmers holding degrees in computer science or computer engineering.

Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#164

Post by mikeash »

calbear81 wrote: post #74
mst wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What fascinates me is how easy it is to fight if you practice. Lee Cheng is impressive, but I suspect his secret weapon is actually having fought a bunch of such cases knowing he has a 'fuck them, they are going to lose' mandate. An enemy who's very practiced at -not- settling is probably not something his opponents know how to deal with.

Newegg has always been against paying out even way back in the day when I worked there. In the early days of patent trolling, someone sued us in a printer-related lawsuit and they offered to settle for a small sum (VERY small). Basically, the in-house lawyer said that it would cost more money to fight it given his hourly wage but that the CEO was not going to pay if it was a frivolous lawsuit. I see that the same pri…

It's strange that more companies don't see the long term problems created by signaling that you're willing to spend money to settle frivolous lawsuits. Another symptom of the corporate world's excessive focus on the short term?

Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#165

Post by mikeash »

yxhuvud wrote: post #143
jessaustin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL: The trial court had found for Newegg on the infringement case, but had not taken the additional step of awarding attorney's fees to Newegg. The appeals court has now recommended that the trial court take that additional step. The appeals court doesn't have time to wade through reams of legal invoices. Actually the trial court may have been trying to avoid that as well, but now it has no choice. It's my impress…

Living in a country where the default is that the loser pays (within reason), I must wonder: Why is discouraging litigation a bad thing?

Litigation isn't inherently bad. It all depends on how it's used. You don't want a policy that makes life hard for patent trolls to also make it impossible for, say, a person who's horribly disfigured in a car crash from suing the company for a legitimate design defect that caused the crash.

Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#166

Post by mikeash »

wutbrodo wrote: post #97
jeorgun wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they're being rewarded for their actions doesn't mean that those actions aren't laudable (especially when that reward consists of their being lauded).

The HN community collectively hasn't ever been able to grasp this concept; apparently if a corporation has any possible benefit from an action, it MUST be the motivation behind the action. It's a particularly delightful cop-out because any positive action (including philanthropy) can be dismissed as a PR move.

This would seem to imply that mantis369 is representative of "the HN community" but jeorgun is not, which seems like an odd distinction.

Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#167

Post by metaphorm »

weland wrote: post #104
bsder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the troll companies are always shell companies with nothing but the patents. So, even if you win, the shell company will declare bankruptcy. This is what changed the game. Before, two big companies generally had enough patents that they would simply agree to cross license because they both infringed one another's patents. So, for the company being sued, it's a no win situation.

IMHO, this should not be dealt with at a company level, since the shell company is arguably not engaged in any economic activity: their juridical entity is, essentially, worthless. Instead, given the toxic economic climate the people behind it create, this should be transported into criminal charges brought against the make-believe CEOs behind the shell companies that specifically engage in patent trolling. They're a…

I agree with your interpretation. I've seen some legal experts try to argue in favor of the RICO laws being used to prosecute the owners of patent troll companies for engaging in what amounts to racketeering and extortion.

Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#168

Post by Goronmon »

lazyant wrote: post #150

Great but singing victory too soon, Newegg haven't won any money yet

>Great but singing victory too soon, Newegg haven't won any money yet

They even said that there endgame isn't even to win money in these situations. They are just happy if they can get the other side to spend their own resources/time/money more than they normally would want to litigating cases like this.

Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#169

Post by Goronmon »

xtrumanx wrote: post #71
lotharbot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I was just trying to present some truth" Here on HN, we don't want mere truth. We also optimize for interesting and directly relevant comments. "Newegg egregiously screwed up a return for me" may be true, but how exactly is it interesting or relevant in a discussion about their response to patent trolls?

> ...but how exactly is it interesting or relevant in a discussion about their response to patent trolls? Another comment on this thread simply states "Newegg is my hero!". How come you're not lecturing that commentator? I found joshjdr's comment relevant. From my years on Hacker News, I've never had the impression that every comment was directly relevant to the posted link. Most of the time someone leaves a comments…

It's in the context of what the original link is about.

In your example:

Another comment on this thread simply states "Newegg is my hero!". How come you're not lecturing that commentator?

"Newegg is my hero" is a comment stating that the user likes Newegg because of what is being described in the link. While not extremely useful, the comment is directly related to the subject being discussed.

Whereas, "I don't like Newegg because they screwed up a return." is both not useful and also has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. It has as much to do with the story as "I don't like Newegg because an employee once cut me off on the highway."

Not to mention that with sites like HN, it gets old fast when people use every mention of certain subjects/people/companies as a catalyst to air any unrelated grievances they have just because. Imagine (this is a fictitious scenario) that joshjdr reposted his original comment in every thread mentioning Newegg, regardless of context. That sort of stuff can be frustrating to wade through regularly so people tend to react poorly to comments that appear similar in nature.

Re: Don't mess with Newegg

#170

Post by the_watcher »

tunap wrote: post #50
the_watcher wrote: post #28

I really wish NewEgg had shirts that looked better than the ones they sell.

I get plenty of compliments on my "Geek On" shirt. Of course, something more subdued and pro would be nice...maybe even a collar? I've been down on their services the last few years, lots of headaches and noticeable lag in ship times... it feels like they had the IPO after all. Also, I don't appreciate having to take the extra step/refresh to exclude the 'Marketplace' from my searches every time... drop-ship crap has…

I meant the patent troll shirt. It's a shade of gray that makes it hard to see the image, and I'd like one more obvious about what it's about.
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