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Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

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Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#181

Post by [deleted] »

ehsankia wrote: post #134
bluejekyll wrote: post #41

Here's something I don't quite understand, and where some of this feels a little hypocritical: Apple, the most valuable company in the world, could be working to reform patent law in order to make this a non-issue. Everyone talks about US politics as pay-to-play, it should be possible for Apple, Google, MS, Amazon, etc., to lobby for Software Patents, for example, to be reclassified as "math" and therefor not patenta…

Honestly, historically tech companies have had a very hard time lobbying in my experience, both in the US and in EU. See FOSTA-SESTA, net neutrality, rule 11 and 13 in EU, GDPR, etc. Maybe they just don't want to stoop as low as other lobbying groups, or maybe lobbying isn't as powerful as people make it.

[deleted]

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#182

Post by tylerl »

bluejekyll wrote: post #41

Here's something I don't quite understand, and where some of this feels a little hypocritical: Apple, the most valuable company in the world, could be working to reform patent law in order to make this a non-issue. Everyone talks about US politics as pay-to-play, it should be possible for Apple, Google, MS, Amazon, etc., to lobby for Software Patents, for example, to be reclassified as "math" and therefor not patenta…

Nobody gets to just "do away with software patents," because that'd be a legislative procedure, and an uphill battle in a snowstorm even understand the best of circumstances.

Take a quick glance at what the US legislative process is up to at the moment, and will be up to at least through 2020. There will be no progress. On anything.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#183

Post by tylerl »

mchannon wrote: post #146
jmurzy wrote: post #145

Having recently watched The Patent Scam, I wish more companies would follow suit here and exit EDOT, maybe then people would wake up and demand that these corrupt judges are removed from the bench! edit: correction made per child comment.

Federal judges aren't the sort that get voted out. They're appointed for life. The degree and direction of corruption within a judge bear a striking resemblance to the president who appoints them.

Well... They CAN be voted out... Its a vote that's not regularly held, you have to be personally nominated for being voted out, and you need a 2/3 majority of the Senate to vote against you...

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#184

Post by [deleted] »

Aloha wrote: post #116
gamblor956 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you don't. Residency is not nexus. You can have nexus without having residency, but residency on its own gives rise to nexus.

As from a page linked from within the article: "Despite the limitations imposed by TC Heartland, § 1400(b) offers an alternative path to a desired district “where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.” Merely months after TC Heartland, which did not address this alternative, the Federal Circuit in In re Cray[3] rejected the Eastern District of Texas’ exp…

[deleted]

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#185

Post by fastball »

zazen wrote: post #136
Aloha wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As from a page linked from within the article: "Despite the limitations imposed by TC Heartland, § 1400(b) offers an alternative path to a desired district “where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.” Merely months after TC Heartland, which did not address this alternative, the Federal Circuit in In re Cray[3] rejected the Eastern District of Texas’ exp…

I can't tell what point you imagine you're making. That quote appears to just be a definition of "established place of business".

The issue is that both of you chose to focus on one facet of a multi-faceted question and are now talking circles around each other.

As Aloha pointed out, SCOTUS has ruled that a corporation only has residency in its state of incorporation, so Texas no longer qualifies for Apple (as it could before the 2017 ruling).

You then pointed out that a case can be brought against a defendant if they have "an established place of business" in that district.

These are two facets of the same problem, and a thorough answer to OC's question requires both parts. It wouldn't make any sense for Apple to close their locations before the SCOTUS ruling, because a plaintiff could argue that they had residency there, regardless of where their physical places of business happen to be. One is the what, the other is the "why now?"

But I think Aloha's point was less "here is the entire explanation" and more "maybe if you RTFA you'd have the answer to your question". Which is what OC definitely should've done, rather than NOT reading the article and immediately going to the comments to ask a question which is answered in the article. Instead, you guys each answered half of the question and then started talking circles around one another.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#186

Post by sorokod »

mjevans wrote: post #124
johnm1019 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His spellcheck works fine, the grammar check is broken. :)

The English language is broken by design and historical practice with respect to spelling (borrowing when it needed to steal) and grammar; though it may possibly not be as broken as other historical languages. Also, before you propose something like Esperanto; that language appears to be the antithesis of what I'd prefer as a replacement. The general design goals being more: * a 'RISC' (rather than CISC) style use of…

That is just not how human languages work. To take one example,phonetic spelling was the only spelling in "Old English" ( roughly pre 1066 ). Naturally it was all over the place due to variations in pronounciation e.g "daughter" and "knight" are spelled the way they are exactly because of that.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#187

Post by SZJX »

ehsankia wrote: post #133
dublo7 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. My previous company has to deal with trolls like this. They somehow managed a patent on turning 2d pictures into 3d panoramas which Google and iPhone do in the phones. We used software from Germany but since it violated the patent and we were tiny, boom lawsuit. This supreme Court ruling saved the company because we got it transferred to our state and the judge laughed them away. It would be like suing a groc…

Is there any reason why those judges don't also laugh them away? What do those jurisdictions have to gain? You'd think that tech companies would have stronger lobbying than patent trolls. What incentives do courts have to side with patent trolls?

It's a local industry. They have a whole foodchain based on this and everybody stands to profit. I think in an earlier HN thread somebody also mentioned that in the early 20th century there were also towns that simply rob and kill any passer-by that would lodge in a hotel, with the sheriff etc. all complicit. In a sense this is typically American isn't it. Similar is how some towns would issue tickets for infringements such as jaywalking all the time without any oversight whatsoever.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#188

Post by Aloha »

fastball wrote: post #185
zazen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell what point you imagine you're making. That quote appears to just be a definition of "established place of business".

The issue is that both of you chose to focus on one facet of a multi-faceted question and are now talking circles around each other. As Aloha pointed out, SCOTUS has ruled that a corporation only has residency in its state of incorporation, so Texas no longer qualifies for Apple (as it could before the 2017 ruling). You then pointed out that a case can be brought against a defendant if they have "an established place…

Largely, yes.

The Supreme Court case (and subsequent rulings) eliminated what amounted to "someone might have conducted business in this jurisdiction" and narrowed it to, "place of incorporation" and "a place where the company has a permanent office and regularly does business"

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#189

Post by amanaplanacanal »

mjevans wrote: post #124
johnm1019 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His spellcheck works fine, the grammar check is broken. :)

The English language is broken by design and historical practice with respect to spelling (borrowing when it needed to steal) and grammar; though it may possibly not be as broken as other historical languages. Also, before you propose something like Esperanto; that language appears to be the antithesis of what I'd prefer as a replacement. The general design goals being more: * a 'RISC' (rather than CISC) style use of…

As a language, English is probably as good as you are going to get. I has been simplifying for hundreds (thousands?) of years, and is fairly closely related to the languages spoken by most of the developed world, which makes it easier to learn.

The spelling is pretty bad, though. I'm guessing that even if you managed to clean up the spelling, it would be a temporary fix. Pronunciations change over time, and vary between dialects.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#190

Post by amanaplanacanal »

paulgb wrote: post #169
repiret wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federal judges are appointed by the President and serve for life. There are possibly corruption problems in the Eastern district of Texas, but the root problems are the patent laws themselves, and its the elected members of congress who can fix that.

I'm curious about another root problem: why are corporate civil cases heard by a jury in the first place? Never mind that juries are bound to be influenced when billions of dollars are at stake[1], how about the fact that these cases are both technically and legally complex? I'm not an expert in this stuff but as far as I can tell the USA is unique in allowing juries to hear this sort of trial, even among countries w…

It's the seventh amendment to the constitution.

Amendment 7 - Rights in Civil Cases In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law.

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