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IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

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Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#181

Post by therealx »

freejazz wrote: post #39
yazr wrote: post #28

Is there some sort of group-defense, where several sue-ees group together to contest a ridiculous patent ? I guess the main difficulty is not the legal framework, but the business framing

Yup, you can seek a declaratory judgment of non-infringement, or institute an IPR at the PTAB to get a patent knocked-out. As a patent litigator, I believe most people don't understand patents, the patent system, nor what it tries to achieve.

What else do you think people don't know? I'd love to hear from someone knowledgeable.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#182

Post by ambyra »

The patents involved in the case are United States Patent Nos. 7,072,849 (the ‘849 patent), 6,778,193 (the ‘193 patent), 7,631,346 (the ‘346 patent), and 6,966,038 (the ‘038 patent). The ‘849 patent was used in IBM’s development of Prodigy, a precursor to the World Wide Web, and involved taking advantage of the computing power of a user’s PC to increase response speed. The ‘193 patent involved a method to improve search results based on user context. The ‘346 patent involved improvements to single-sign-on technology for first-time users. The ‘038 patent improved navigation by using bookmarks.

These sound so generic and ubiquitous to how the internet works. The once great IBM is becoming a patent troll :(

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#183

Post by keithnz »

brenden2 wrote: post #12

The whole US patent system needs to either be scrapped or rebuilt. The purpose it was originally intended to be used for doesn't make sense in a world where most new technology is just software, and software is incredibly easy to copy and duplicate. Getting a software patent is mostly a matter of sneaking past the people at the USPTO, and making sure you're the first to file. These patent factories could just write c…

In New Zealand we got rid of software patents

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#184

Post by teddyh »

ambyra wrote: post #182

The patents involved in the case are United States Patent Nos. 7,072,849 (the ‘849 patent), 6,778,193 (the ‘193 patent), 7,631,346 (the ‘346 patent), and 6,966,038 (the ‘038 patent). The ‘849 patent was used in IBM’s development of Prodigy, a precursor to the World Wide Web, and involved taking advantage of the computing power of a user’s PC to increase response speed. The ‘193 patent involved a method to improve sea…

> The once great IBM is becoming a patent troll :(

IBM has always been a huge patent troll.

"OK," [IBM] said, [to Sun in the 1980s] "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"

After a modest bit of negotiation, Sun cut IBM a check, and the blue suits went to the next company on their hit list.

— Patently Absurd, Forbes, 2002: https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#185

Post by rhizome »

bubblethink wrote: post #154
ChuckMcM wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer, I've contributed a couple of patents to IBM's hoard of patents, but I no longer work there. #1 is fairly straight forward, a simple script that uses the USPTO search function and searches for the Assignee field being IBM and the date range being the last 30 days gives you the patents issued that month to IBM. You can do that with a simple cron script, curl, and some script code. #2 is somewhat more diffic…

Tangential question for everyone. I recently had to file a small claims case by myself (i.e., no attorney). It's still in the pipeline, but the process made me realise that the legal world is a different universe altogether. From the tech perspective, everything is stuck in the dark ages. I had to create a pdf, print it, then go to the court, only to scan it again on a windows 8 computer with silverlight that would k…

In those situations I almost always go to the "tyler technologies" site and see if they're hiring development people. They never are.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#187

Post by pyb »

jlokier wrote: post #178

I wonder how the Red Hat people, committed to open source and now IBM employees, feel about this.

Thanks to the Red Hat acquisition, IBM became a member of the anti-patent troll group, LOT Network : https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-01-14-IBM-Joins-LOT-Network-in...

The fox is in the henhouse

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#188

Post by btilly »

mjevans wrote: post #165
btilly wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like an unsubstantiated claim. It is substantiated by the text of the Constitution itself. From what I remember of other parts of the constitution and amendments offhand they generally don't include an explicit directive about why something is there. It's extremely implicit as an often obvious effect of what the law expressly allows or forbids. They generally don't. And therefore the statement of intent fo…

You cut out the very next sentence which describes the element that I am claiming is unsubstantiated. Though you do understand the further elaboration of why I too feel it is __extremely__ important that there is a clause about why this power is reserved to Congress and a described intent / limit within which that power is to be used.

Unfortunately this clause was specifically litigated and we lost.

More specifically, can Congress achieve unlimited terms with regular copyright extensions to existing copyright? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft ruled that they can. However their next attempt to extend has so far failed.

We will find out in 2024 whether they get it together, or whether Mickey Mouse enters the public domain after all...like it should have done in 1984. (That was the maximum that could have been expected when Steamboat Willie was released.)

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#189

Post by mattrp »

retSava wrote: post #112
freejazz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software patents you described are consistently knocked-out on §101 eligibility grounds for being an "abstract concept". IMO people who advocate scrapping software patents are disingenuous - look at what Google is trying to do software copyright at the same time. Essentially, if you take Google up on software patents and copyright, there will be no protection left for software.

Patents are granted, then if challenged, can be invalidated in court. It should be the other way around, they shouldn't be granted in the first case. Not all can handle being taken to court for a claimed patent infringement of a crappy patent. It's expensive, time-consuming, and difficult. Did I mention wasteful?

I’m not trying to be argumentative and someone who is a lawyer can correct me here but generally speaking a company like ibm is only going to seek licensing from a party where the commercial impact is sufficient to merit the use of their resources to secure a licensing deal. Even in the case of Airbnb, it’s clear in the article ibm is suing only after attempting to exhaust other remedies. Again, I don’t think it’s necessarily bullet proof legal policy to advise companies to fly under the radar but de facto I don’t think ibm is spending a lot of time chasing companies who can’t afford a legal defense.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#190

Post by Cyclone_ »

As a host I've always hated Airbnb,a guest overstayed and they didn't allow me to charge the guest extra even though the guest admitted to overstaying in the chat with me. Can't say I feel much pity for them, they've always had the grow at all costs mentality and have been pretty ruthless about it.
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