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Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

clickerheroes2.com

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Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#141

Post by chapill »

gowld wrote: post #89
chapill wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Pretty obvious patent trolling Not really. The patent was filed in 2000. Approved in 2007. It hasn't changed hands. The company makes software. Believe it or not, this is the US system working as intended. An obvious troll is a patent holding company, with no products, who purchases old patents, then goes on a suing spree for any company that uses printers.

If someone can replicate your invention simply by hearing the title of your patent application, it's not "non-obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art", so not patentable.

If you can get a patent from the patent office, it is by definition.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#142

Post by OrganicMSG »

danschumann wrote: post #139

According to their flow, they collect user information after displaying a policy. My point is, if you re-arrange their flow chart, do you "invent around" the problem? (thereby negating their claim that you violate their patent(since their patent still relies on a specific process)?

Perhaps teach an expert system to automate selecting a flowchart on the fly for each user, that will accomplish a given set of requirements and also not be found in a search of the existing patent corpus. Don't forget to patent it though.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#143

Post by MrLeap »

mmihaly wrote: post #137
ActsJuvenile wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the rest of the HN community, how do you fight patent trolls like these? How much does it cost ballpark to defend a product?

I don't really know the ins and outs of how. I've never been sued by patent trolls. I've been threatened, just responded with some of the evidence I have and a, "Are you sure you really want to do this?" and I never hear from them again. When I've helped defend other companies (two of which are among the largest/most prominent in the games industry), I've just provided expert witness testimony as to the existence of…

You're a good person. I hope a lawyer with your character contacts you about pursuing sanctions for vexatious litigation against these guys.

At least invalidating the patent.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#144

Post by jasonlaramburu »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #132
jasonlaramburu wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered taking action against the lawyers representing the trolls? Most likely they are working on a contingency basis and will keep 1/3 of whatever the trolls can extract from you. It's likely that their friends, family and the people in their community have no idea they engage in these activities. I have heard of defendants using PR campaigns effectively in these cases. Oftentimes a potential $10k…

If you already don't have much money for legal fees, making things personal with an unscrupulous lawyer who doesn't mind filing petty lawsuits seems like a dangerous idea.

Please don't take any of my comments as legal advice but I have been through this nonsense before. The unfortunate thing about these lawsuits is that if you try to fight/defend them through traditional means, you almost always end up spending more than what you would have spent in an early negotiated settlement (especially when your time and stress are factored in). Unless the defendant has a lawyer friend willing to work at a discounted rate, $35k will not get him very far at all, especially if this goes to trial.

Who is this expert hired by GTX? He appears to be a startup guy himself so it's surprising he would get involved in this. It might be worth reaching out to him to confirm 1) that his signed statement is legitimate and 2) try to reason with him.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#145

Post by OrganicMSG »

cortesoft wrote: post #81
zaroth wrote: post #54

This patent is absurd... selling credits was invented about a day after the concept of money itself. Accounting for those credits in a database was done by the fucking Egyptians. What the heck does this patent actually teach ? It teaches absolutely nothing. It goes on for pages describing technology that already existed at the time and for decades prior to 2000. It’s a disgrace and an embarrassment.

I think credits actually pre-date currency.

Writing seems to have developed initially to keep track of favours.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#146

Post by stale2002 »

MereInterest wrote: post #133
stale2002 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One I just remembered from a decade or 2 ago: Realm of the Mad God. Its a browser based 16 bit mmo, and used the free to play, micro transactions model way before it was popular.

That one was released in June 2011, according to Wikipedia, so not useful as prior at to a patent filed in the 2000s.

Really? Man, it is hard to keep track of time.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#147

Post by realusername »

mchannon wrote: post #38
zerostar07 wrote: post #22

Can american patent trolls equally easy bully companies outside the US?

Probably not. US Patents are the cheapest patents to get. If, say, a German company infringed on a US Patent by selling to a customer in France, that would be completely legal, unless the US Patentholder also had a French patent, which is often not the case. They'd have to prosecute in French court as well, which, given the size of France's market vs. the US, would be Pyrrhic (with a capital P) at best. The calculus…

And also software patents are non-existent in the EU as far as I know so it would not work at all.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#148

Post by jasonlaramburu »

ActsJuvenile wrote: post #123
mmihaly wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I'm the friend he mentioned. Achaea.com was the first game in the world to use virtual currency/goods as its business model, back in 1997. Still live today. My company's at ironrealms.com. I mailed you offering help.

For the rest of the HN community, how do you fight patent trolls like these? How much does it cost ballpark to defend a product?

The following is not legal advice and should not be construed as such. Short answer is that it really depends on your strategy and the rate of your firm. For example, a colleague of mine works at a top tier firm. They were hired to defend a major auto maker against a troll. They took the case to trial, won and then successfully countersued for repayment of fees. The whole thing took a couple years (patent cases move at a glacial pace), and the lawyers ended up billing the car company for several million dollars. I also don’t know that they were ever able to successfully collect on the countersuit judgement.

Another strategy is to try and invalidate the patent via the USPTO before it goes to trial. This often does work with bogus patents, but it’s still not cheap. I have heard the ballpark figure is $100k.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#149

Post by mysterypie »

dragonwriter wrote: post #95
mysterypie wrote: post #67

In the PDF documents that Playsaurus has put online, the accuser's lawyers have redacted one line, and that's in the "The lawsuit they will file if we don't pay" document at the bottom, where it says: THE deBRUIN FIRM, LLC [Redacted] David W. deBruin (#4846) 1201 N. Orange Street, Suite 500 Wilmington, Delaware 19801 Telephone: (302) 660-2744 Facsimile: (302) 650-1574 ddebruin@thedebruinfirm.com Of Counsel: RUBIN AND…

It looks like Leslie L. Jacobs, Jr., of Rubin and Rudman is associated with working in some manner on this case for the deBruin Firm, despite not being in the regular employ of the firm, and hence is listed in the filing as “Of Counsel” [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_counsel

Do you suppose that the deBruin Firm did this deliberately to distance themselves from the case, so they still get a cut of the money, but Leslie L. Jacobs, Jr. and his firm Rubin and Rudman get the potentially bad publicity for being patent trolls? Leslie L. Jacobs wrote pro hac vice ("for this occasion only") after his name, which makes it sound like a one time engagement and not a frequent collaboration with the deBruin Firm.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#150

Post by mysterypie »

mchannon wrote: post #63
scarmig wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be some kind of patent troll clearinghouse. Companies can check it to see if other companies are reporting the same shakedown tactics for a given patent. Though, could a patent troll could get around that by spacing out the trolling? So by the time any company finds another company that's been trolled, they've already paid it up and don't have as much incentive to fight the patent troll after the fact. T…

https://trollingeffects.org

Regarding trollingeffects.org, someone needs to submit this current case to the them. I searched for all of the following: 7,177,838 (the patent number), Playsaurus, Clicker Heroes, deBruin/Rubin/Rudman/Jacobs (the trollish lawyers). Nothing showed up.

The site does look like it's being maintained. The most recent case I found was from June 2017:

https://trollingeffects.org/demand/landmark-technology-llc-2...

Also noticed in the "About" section that Trolling Effects is a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Which is another great reason to support the EFF.

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