Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls • Hacker News Board

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#121

Post by fakedang » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

temporallobe wrote: post #93

btrettel wrote: post #60

Current USPTO patent examiner here. The most effective way to eliminate bad patents would be to give examiners more time, say double the time across the board to start. If an examiner can't find prior art in the little time they're given, and they have no other reasons to reject the application, they'll have to grant it. The amount of time was (basically) set in the 1970s based on data from the 1960s. There have been…

I do contracting for USPTO and have another perspective as an insider to their technology and internal processes (not legal), who works very closely with examiners and other stakeholders. The tools that patent examiners use is quite awful. Like many other government agencies, it’s embedded with legacy tools that are extremely obtuse, difficult to use, and time consuming. Many of these tools are decades old, unreliabl…

Is it possible to use publicly available patent office data to create a parallel database and tools which the PTO folks could use? Perhaps there is room for the development of an open-source collaborative effort to create a parallel data to fight back the trolls?

Anyone else feel free to chime in!

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#122

Post by delfinom » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:55 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #113

"Judge Connolly made very clear that, in cases before him, it is not truthful to represent that a post office box is a "principle place of business" of an entity. " "Uh Oh!" - Every Remote business owner.

Said remote business owners can declare their home office or whatever as principle place of business. That is different from a mailing address.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#123

Post by ksec » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

btrettel wrote: post #60

Current USPTO patent examiner here. The most effective way to eliminate bad patents would be to give examiners more time, say double the time across the board to start. If an examiner can't find prior art in the little time they're given, and they have no other reasons to reject the application, they'll have to grant it. The amount of time was (basically) set in the 1970s based on data from the 1960s. There have been…

Hats off for even admitting you are are a patent examiner. On a site that is 99% against patents and all patents ( or software patents ) are evil.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#124

Post by kelseyfrog » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

ajb wrote: post #120

btrettel wrote: post #60

Current USPTO patent examiner here. The most effective way to eliminate bad patents would be to give examiners more time, say double the time across the board to start. If an examiner can't find prior art in the little time they're given, and they have no other reasons to reject the application, they'll have to grant it. The amount of time was (basically) set in the 1970s based on data from the 1960s. There have been…

I'm not convinced that patent examiners could make good decisions on software given infinite time. A couple of reasons: Let's suppose you had access to all the source code in the world. Given a description of a patented invention, is there any way to find out if it is already implemented somewhere? The answer is no , there is no decidable method for doing that. The proposition that there is, violates Rice's theorem.…

While I applaud your effort, arguing that software would not benefit, the conclusions do not transfer across domains.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#125

Post by skeeter2020 » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

brador wrote: post #78

tracker1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly of the mindset that at this point, the vast majority of patents, from what I've seen, don't pass the obviousness test. At least when it comes to process and software patents, which are very arguable in the first place. I do with the costs for a patent were a bit front-loaded where it costs even half the total amount just to (re)apply, in order to better pay for the review costs.

Every patent should be automatically granted and the courts can sort out the winners if there is a dispute. That is the system we have moved to.

That's the opposite of how patents are used, amd where their value lies. They're no the defense your idea presents; they are weaponized offense, to which the only response is increase your own arsenal.

What you're basically saying is "every country in the world should have nuclear weapons and then let their respective god(s) sort out the winners if there is a dispute"

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#126

Post by jrmg » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

Andrew_Russell wrote: post #20

CoastalCoder wrote: post #5

Can someone explain the significance of the court's inquiry? I understand how it's interesting to see how one NPE structures it's relationships. But aside from the mail drop / physical location shenanigans, I can't tell if there's any legal significance to this information.

I'm the author. It's actually kind of hard to say at this stage, and the judge suggested amicus briefing to help the Court figure out what to make of all this.

The article says “All they had to do was become the owners of a patent assertion entity, and accept the "liabilities" that come along with that.”

Can you say more what this means? What were the risks these people were (I would guess unknowingly) accepting in return for their 5-10% if things went ‘well’?

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#127

Post by kelseyfrog » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #98

brador wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every patent should be automatically granted and the courts can sort out the winners if there is a dispute. That is the system we have moved to.

Right, so the players with money can simply massively burden the minor players, often to bankruptcy. A Patent is simply a ticket to start a lawsuit as a plaintiff. So just file, get your ticket, and start suing competitors, putting on them the burden of proving your patent is worthless. That is the opposite of the way it is supposed to work. Without some kind of penalty beyond the costs of patent & prosecution, this…

Make fees means tested and scaled to income or wealth. Make fees scale according to a power law. There are numerous ways to level the playing field. We have only to improve upon the current system and cannot let perfect be the enemy of good.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#128

Post by lordnacho » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

temporallobe wrote: post #93

btrettel wrote: post #60

Current USPTO patent examiner here. The most effective way to eliminate bad patents would be to give examiners more time, say double the time across the board to start. If an examiner can't find prior art in the little time they're given, and they have no other reasons to reject the application, they'll have to grant it. The amount of time was (basically) set in the 1970s based on data from the 1960s. There have been…

I do contracting for USPTO and have another perspective as an insider to their technology and internal processes (not legal), who works very closely with examiners and other stakeholders. The tools that patent examiners use is quite awful. Like many other government agencies, it’s embedded with legacy tools that are extremely obtuse, difficult to use, and time consuming. Many of these tools are decades old, unreliabl…

I used a patent lawyer who said the patent had to be filed using a fax machine.

For those who are too young, a fax machine is this arcane device that used to be everywhere, like a remote photocopier.

Got the US patent dated 2013. Was the lawyer pulling my leg?

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#129

Post by thorin » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

hulitu wrote: post #45

speeder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of patents, is incentive companies to share their secrets. For example, Coca-Cola never patended their formula. So you might think: I can copy it and sell my own right? Well, yes, legally yes, if you ever found their formula, somehow. They been successful for more than a hundred years now in hiding that formula. Thing is, software patents allowed people to actually patent ideas, concepts, stuff that is ob…

> They been successful for more than a hundred years now in hiding that formula. This is a legend. Coca Cola is just water with sugar. The "formula" tastes different in every country. And today's coca cola is not the same like yesterday, so they shall fill a patent every other year in every country.

It doesn't taste that different in every country (I've had it in most continents and quite a few countries). For whatever reason I still massively prefer regular coke to most of the other mainstream suppliers. I do like some small batch niche cokes though. Strangely as a kid I drank loads of diet pepsi, but I never drink diet soda now, and I probably only have 1 or 2 cans of coke/month on average.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#130

Post by anovikov » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

btrettel wrote: post #60

Current USPTO patent examiner here. The most effective way to eliminate bad patents would be to give examiners more time, say double the time across the board to start. If an examiner can't find prior art in the little time they're given, and they have no other reasons to reject the application, they'll have to grant it. The amount of time was (basically) set in the 1970s based on data from the 1960s. There have been…

It probably creates a snowball effect because examiners frustrated by their inability to do quality work within constraints they are given, probably churn out , so lower qualified ones/having less options, stay on the job, resulting in further decrease of quality... You must be onto something.