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IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

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Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#191

Post by kovac »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #117
choward wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as a student it's a great way to beef up your resume Really? I wouldn't view that as a positive unless we're talking about law students I guess.

That’s just a cynical response meant to devalue the OP. When people see a few patent #’s on a resume from a kid coming out of college, of course it’s a positive.

Genuinely inventing something, specially nowadays is very difficult. If a number of students start having those (especially if many of them do after an internship at IBM), it can become kind of a red flag.

Also, after talking with someone who had obtained a few patents (his work did not nearly reflect the calibre of an inventor), the expensive and convoluted process of filing for a patent means that the uniqueness of an invention may not be the most critical factor when obtaining one. I observed this when I worked at some companies hwo actively discouraged patenting because they had no resources to maintain and defend patents.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#192

Post by 1024core »

patentatt wrote: post #105
abridgett wrote: post #97

I remember when I worked at IBM Hursley research labs 20 years ago. The lab director told us all "patents are very important to IBM". I expected him to tell us that IBM made billions from licensing them. He didn't say that though. I don't think he even _mentioned_ that. Instead he stated: "It raises the entry barrier for the competition". Patents were (narrowly) created to _encourage_ the spread of knowledge. Instead…

To be fair to IBM, what your director may have been saying is that their use was primarily defensive, which it is and was for IBM. It’s not wrong for them to patent as much as they are able to, it serves an important disclosure function. When I worked at the USPTO, we used several patent databases. The US, of course, Japan, Europe, and IBM. IBM had their own database because of how significant their IP was. So while…

So while it’s unfortunate that they’ve taken the offensive in this case, historically IBM has been an important and relatively benign player in the IP landscape.

Your faith in IBM is misplaced, according to the article:

> IBM has cross-license agreements in place with the likes of Apple and Amazon and previously won $83M in a similar lawsuit against Groupon.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#193

Post by npsomaratna »

freejazz wrote: post #85
MegaButts wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Constitution requires that Congress setup laws for both copyright and patent No it doesn't, it grants them the power but it doesn't specify they have to do it. “The Congress shall have Power To…promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries….” There is a big difference between having a power…

I don't think that's a great reading of congress' enumerated powers. The shall refers to the powers being powers that can be used when appropriate, to achieve the intended goal of the power. Must language, here, would imply a constant duty to use each power. My reading is that Congress has an OBLIGATION to promote the arts and sciences, and has the power to use copyright and patent law to achieve those goals as congr…

Agree with this. In administrative law (the principles of which apply here) certain words have technical interpretations that are very different from the colloquial meaning. "Shall" is one of those words - and I too would interpret this as an obligation.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#194

Post by paulgb »

slim wrote: post #160
paulgb wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Airbnb is going to need a lot of luck with a jury to win this. As an aside, the fact that these things are decided by juries is nuts to me. Why should the average Joe who needs help installing a printer be compelled to miss work to decide multibillion dollar lawsuits that are deeply technical? I understand the right to a jury if you are accused of murder, but for patent cases it just seems asinine.

because justice must not depend on any preexisting hierarchy

This makes sense to me in the context of humans committing natural crimes, but not in the context of multinational corporations squabbling over IP. The very concept of ideas as defensible property depends on a pre-existing hierarchy.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#195

Post by bosswipe »

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…

How is that 42 year old ‘849 patent not expired?

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#196

Post by waffle_ss »

patentatt wrote: post #107
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…

Why is a software engineer’s work product any less important than a mechanical engineer’s or an electrical engineer’s?

Because code is math, and patenting math is nonsensical. Should Maxwell have been able to patent his equations? The question is ill-formed.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#197

Post by genocidicbunny »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #117
choward wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as a student it's a great way to beef up your resume Really? I wouldn't view that as a positive unless we're talking about law students I guess.

That’s just a cynical response meant to devalue the OP. When people see a few patent #’s on a resume from a kid coming out of college, of course it’s a positive.

If I see patent #'s on a resume from a college kid, I'm going to actually look up those patents.

And I'm only going to view them positively if they are genuinely novel. If I can trivially find prior art or its another of those "with a computer" software patents, it's going to be a very big red flag.

Of course, this is just my own anecdote, and you may very well be right in the broader scale.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#198

Post by jariel »

jariel wrote: post #174
Grimm1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but, it is my understanding Amazon Web Services is their biggest money maker, that's where I think that claim comes from.

'Market cap' is not the best choice of metrics here, it's really a measure of investor surpluses, ignore the rest of the equation. Wallmart, Exxon, Amazon retail revenues completely dwarf the 'tech sector' - it's just that their margins are more narrow, in most cases, surpluses to consumers are vast. Honestly 'profit to investors' should be one of the last metrics most of us care about. Most individuals should be far…

Edit: meant to write 'Apple makes hardware'.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#199

Post by JamesBarney »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #197
bluedevil2k wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just a cynical response meant to devalue the OP. When people see a few patent #’s on a resume from a kid coming out of college, of course it’s a positive.

If I see patent #'s on a resume from a college kid, I'm going to actually look up those patents. And I'm only going to view them positively if they are genuinely novel. If I can trivially find prior art or its another of those "with a computer" software patents, it's going to be a very big red flag. Of course, this is just my own anecdote, and you may very well be right in the broader scale.

You described putting in more than 100x as much work going through someone's resume as the typical company.

Also, why would it be a big red flag if you can find prior art? Whether or not there is prior art probably has very little to do with how capable of a developer the individual is.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#200

Post by ta1234567890 »

randoramax wrote: post #156
freejazz wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a litigator I do not think that is true. Facts, more than anything, dictate outcomes, generally. Though I will say that patent cases are prohibitively expensive. Though, contrary to what I would think many here assume, leaves the inventor with the short end of the stick as opposed to large IP-owning organizations like Google (that simultaneously advocate for lesser patent-rights).

As a non-litigator, i call BS. Facts don't matter much when it comes to justice. Try suing a small businesses LLC for some wrong doing: they'll file bankruptcy and you'll never see your money.

As someone who has been personally sued after my company went bankrupt, I can tell you that it is not as simple as you paint it. Although I wish it was.

Some more detail: during bankruptcy, anyone that had business with the company can either file an adversary proceeding (essentially a lawsuit within bankruptcy court), and/or can do depositions/discovery (2004 examinations). They can also buys assets of the defunct company as well as legal claims to go after the company officers. Then after bankruptcy they can try to use whatever information, assets and claims they acquired, to sue the company officials personally.

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