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Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

arstechnica.com

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Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#61

Post by analog31 »

ScottBurson wrote: post #36
x0054 wrote: post #20

Have you guys looked at the patents in this case? They look thick and serious, but if you actually read the claims, you will soon realize that it's nothing but an obvious and straightforward procedure for deciding when and with whom to establish a VPN. None of these patents make sure that a VPN connection is more secure, more reliable, or in any way better. Majority of the patent is explanation on how a VPN works, di…

Okay, I'm looking at 6502135... Claim 1 is a joke. How does this not apply to HTTPS? I would toss it and all its dependents. Claim 13 is almost as obvious, but in this case I am not sure about the dependent claims. Some of them sound to me like they might be inventions. Claim 10 seems stronger to me. Networking is not my field, so I am not at all sure there is not prior art, but at least it seems to contain an actual…

IANAL, but Including material that is not referenced by the claims, gives you the chance to submit amended claims at a later date if your original claims are invalidated.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#62

Post by Retric »

rayiner wrote: post #32
ghayes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VirnetX is a company some call a "patent troll" because its only business is now patent enforcement. I believe this viewpoint is shared by a number of people. Specifically, that a litigious NPE is, by colloquial definition, a "patent troll." There is a conversation to be had as to whether the practice is good or bad, or if they are acting more appropriately than their peer group, but I think the term fits in this c…

I don't disagree it's a common viewpoint, I'm just saying it's not very useful to call every NPE a patent troll. It lumps universities together with companies that seek nuisance settlements using the cost of litigation as leverage. In general, the law allows you to sell your cause of action to someone else. For example, many investors who had suits against big banks over mortgage-backed securities sold their causes o…

A patent troll only uses patents to sue people and return money to it's investors.

So, I think there is a reasonable argument that if your actively doing research your not really a NPE. AMD and University's both make money from both obvious and non obvious patents but they have positive contributions where companies that only buy existing patents and sue don't contribute anything as the patents already exist.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#63

Post by skoob »

lorddoig wrote: post #3

We shouldn't blame patent trolls for acting the way they do in the same way that we shouldn't blame banks and stockbrokers for acting the way they do. If there is big money to be made, and it's legal, somebody is going to do it - and if it's not you, well, your loss. This is, and always has been, a problem of bad legislation . It is a structural problem in the system . The human race would save so much time, money, a…

"Don't hate the player, hate the game" is a false dichotomy. It's perfectly possible to conclude that the system is rotten and still call out those who take advantage of it in ways which hurt others. The fact that there's money to be made and that it's legal doesn't make it any less sleazy and immoral.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#64

Post by octonion »

The real problem is that patents have become an intellectual land grab, no matter how obvious, whether or not violators were even aware of the patents, and whether or not the patenting company has any interest whatsoever is using the patent in an actual product. The majority of inventions are not strokes of genius - when the time is right, ideas emerge naturally and tend to be invented by multiple people around the same time.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#65

Post by meepmorp »

Maarten88 wrote: post #38
kryptiskt wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has a lot of money they could use to finance lobbying for patent reform. Maybe this will help them see the wisdom in that.

A strong signal would be if Apple raised prices for affected products (iPhones and iPods) by exactly 0.98% and send out a press release that this is necessary to offset increased patent-related costs and will only affect US prices. Further increases are not expected, but can't be ruled out. Foreign pricing will not be affected. I'd like to see politicians react to that...

I doubt politicians would give a shit, perhaps notwithstanding a few minutes of grandstanding during some floor speech or committee hearing. Certainly, no action would come of it.

Lobbying, though, would get their attention. Like it or not, that's how one operates the levers of power in Washington at the moment

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#66

Post by reddit_clone »

bediger4000 wrote: post #26
georgemcbay wrote: post #19

At this point I honestly believe the only way the patent system gets any better is by becoming so overbearing that it collapses under its own weight. The lobbying machine in place to protect patents essentially as they are now (with maybe some token changes to look like progress) is way too big and way too strong for reform otherwise. So in that sense, I'm happy about this.

That was my emotional reaction too, but my thought was different. I saw the article and thought, "Maybe if 2 or 3 more trolls win big against Google, Microsoft and GM or GE, we'll see some legislative action."

I remember RIM was nearly brought down with patent litigation. I expected some backlash since a lot of people in US government were affected by the potential outage.

Sadly nothing happened. Rim paid up I believe.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#67

Post by nslocum »

If VirnetX were on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue, their stock price would reflect it. However, it does not.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEMKT%3AVHC&ei=h-WTU4DYNs...

VirnetX's market cap is $850 million, which would be a very steep discount if the company were "on the verge" of being paid $340 million/year from Apple.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#69

Post by yohui »

lorddoig wrote: post #28
nitrogen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human race would save so much time, money, and energy if it tackled problems at their root instead of dossing around in the details, oblivious to the actual issue. Nobody's oblivious to the actual issue; it's just that the root of the problem is inaccessibly mired in a tangled web of lobbying networks, conflicting interests, and impenetrable committees. Opportunists are just as guilty of making the world worse as…

Nonsense. Opportunists are faced with the decision "Should I attempt to make a bucketload of cash, and secure my family's - and my stakeholders families' - future, or should I take a moral stance, make no money, and console myself in poverty because I'm a 'good' person?" Contrarily, lawmakers have all of the tools required to make a better system, and yet choose not to, for the same indecipherable reasons so many pol…

They could have chosen other ways to make a living. Patent trolling is hardly a blue collar enterprise.

Re: Patent troll on the verge of winning 1% of iPhone revenue

#70

Post by flipped_bit »

The core of the issue (if any) is that historically, the patent system is inextricably tied into the free-market/laissez-faire economic system, which for all its flaws, did create the world as we know it for the last ~ 200 to 300 years which led to an exponential rise in technological development - a unique phase started in the Western world, where now some of the 'successful and well-developed' countries in the Eastern world (e.g. Japan, South Korea, Singapore) have incorporated into their respective systems.

From Stallman's article which did show up here:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

"Patent law was intended to promote the publication of useful ideas, at the price of giving the one who publishes an idea a temporary monopoly over it—a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others."

The real question is does all software patents come in the last part of the aforesaid sentence: ".....—a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others."

A knee-jerk reaction to throw out the baby out with the bathwater by abolishing the whole patent system may not be the right solution here.

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