Could this be the commencement of the long feared software patent Mutually Assured Destruction?
Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
11–20 of 77 posts
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#12Sad to see him become a Patent troll. Also, what could be the point of such a lawsuit? Surely Paul Allen cannot think that he can have out-of-court settlements (no cross-licensing since his company does not produce anything) with all the listed companies. Some of them will surely fight back.
> Sad to see him become a Patent troll.
Yes, quite. Paul Allen had an excellent reputation up to this point. He always struck me as the one with the interesting projects, such as backing Burt Rutan.
> Some of them will surely fight back.
all of them will fight back.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#13So he's suing Apple, Google, AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube.
The only one missing from that list is Microsoft, wonder why... and youtube == google.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#14Maybe it's performance art?
or reverse psychology? I find it hard to imagine that someone who agreed to donate his billions to charity suddenly becoming a patent troll. Maybe he is trying provoke a repeal of business method patents the most direct (and expensive) way possible.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#15That's got to be the mother of all patent lawsuits to date. I hope that it will now become clear to the world at large that a patent without any intention to produce a product is simply a waste of time and money. I'd much prefer it if all these patent filing clowns would keep their 'research' locked up in their vaults and called them trade secrets, that would give nobodies like me a chance at just getting on with our…
The optimistic side of me hopes that people are seeing the writing on the wall for software patents, and are hoping to extract value before the landscape changes.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#16So he's suing Apple, Google, AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube.
The only one missing from that list is Microsoft, wonder why... and youtube == google.
> "The only one missing from that list is Microsoft"
FTA: "Notably missing from the defendants' list are Microsoft, in which Mr. Allen remains a major investor"
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#17You know what I think we should do? Institute a law where you can't sue a company for patent infringement unless you do so before they introduce and make a substantial amount of money off that product. Say, 1 million in revenue or something.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#18It's really odd that Paul Allen is doing this, he certainly doesn't need the money or the hassle. Is it possible that he's suing these high profile companies to spark some kind of legislative reform re: software patents?
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#19This is the problem with Patent troll "portfolio companies" like his: It doesn't make anything, so there can never be a countersuit with protective patents.
So, even if we had IBM step in with its portfolio of 30,000 patents (and growing by 5000 each year) and snarl up the entire industry to prove a point, Allen would be like "whatever" and soldier on, because he makes nothing.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#20"We recognize that innovation has a value, and patents are the way to protect that." Innovation has no value to the public if you don't produce and ship a good product. In my opinion the company that actually ships something should always have the upper hand because it's good for consumers. Patent reform should follow a use-it-or-lose-it model. If a company comes up with an innovative idea, ships a product, and that…
I mostly agree, but patents were partly intended to protect small-fry scientists/inventors who came up with good ideas that they couldn't necessarily commercialize themselves, by providing a legal mechanism to keep manufacturers from just ripping off the idea as they shopped it around. It makes more sense when it's not a portfolio company holding hundreds of patents, though, and when the inventions are genuine breakthroughs: e.g. if a biotech researcher comes up with something that really would improve pharmaceutical research greatly, it seems okay to me if there's a legal mechanism to make pharmaceutical firms pay him licensing fees if they want to use the invention, even if he himself never ramps up into pharmaceutical research. This becomes much more of a minefield if the bar to novelty/nonobviousness is low, though, because then you just get people preemptively "inventing" a bunch of things that other people would've found anyway, and then demanding licensing fees.