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IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

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Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#201

Post by mjevans »

btilly wrote: post #188
mjevans wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..…

I still believe that's wrong, but a re-do now would be pointless. I doubt anyone within the next few decades will put someone for the people, rather than for the rich people and corporations, on the supreme court. There's a lot of corruption (money/influence) everywhere that needs to be cleaned up first.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#203

Post by jldugger »

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…

I'm curious why you think revenue matters more than profits.

Take two hypothetical companies, say ebay` and amazon`. They both provide a marketplace, but slightly differently. ebay` allows manufacturers to list directly on their market for a fee. Amazon` buys from manufacturers and sells on their market for a markup equivalent to ebay's fee. Are these two companies substantially different? I don't think so but the revenue frame of reference says they are,

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#204

Post by WalterBright »

The US industrial revolution started from ignoring British patents.

Much as I admire the engineering prowess of the Wrights, their attempts to extract value via patents crippled the US aviation industry for a decade, ceding aviation dominance to Europe who ignored those patents.

Similarly, Hollywood grew out of people evading Edison's patents on motion pictures.

The notion that patents encourage innovation and progress doesn't seem to have much historical supporting evidence.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#205

Post by MegaButts »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #200
randoramax wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> 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.

What on Earth could make someone so angry to go through the hassle of doing this?

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#206

Post by rolltiide »

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…

I think the lengths is only one possible solution. The other broken part is that the inventor has one idea they want to spread the knowledge of, but their patent attorney makes it overly broad and unrecognizable. Nobody even knows what the patent is about, sparing one “embodiment” described but not even part of the important “claims”. This is a rational reaction to the only way to make royalties on a patent because everyone would prefer to circumvent them instead of utilize them. Very broken incentive model.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#207

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #204

The US industrial revolution started from ignoring British patents. Much as I admire the engineering prowess of the Wrights, their attempts to extract value via patents crippled the US aviation industry for a decade, ceding aviation dominance to Europe who ignored those patents. Similarly, Hollywood grew out of people evading Edison's patents on motion pictures. The notion that patents encourage innovation and progre…

Edison also spent much of his career in court being sued, suing, and being hired as an expert witness in patent suits. Much of his contracts were from companies trying to get around patents.

To be fair, much of his income came from exploiting patents.

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#208

Post by kelnos »

npsomaratna wrote: post #193
freejazz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But it doesn't say that "Congress shall promote the progress..." it says "Congress shall have the power to promote the progress..."

If the framers wanted to require that Congress do this stuff, why insert "have the power to" unnecessarily? There's no need for that phrase.

As another point against this being an obligation, if you look at the list of enumerated powers[0], you'll see some that are clearly not obligations. Congress doesn't have to borrow money. They don't have to maintain a navy. They didn't have to establish post offices. They didn't have to create a federal court system. (Granted, it makes a lot of sense for them to do many of these things, but it feels wrong to think that they're required to.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_Stat...

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#209

Post by bubblethink »

ska wrote: post #170
bubblethink wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are startups in this space, but there are also people who value the friction (and not all for selfish reasons).

> (and not all for selfish reasons)

Can you elaborate?

Re: IBM sues Airbnb for patent royalties

#210

Post by genocidicbunny »

JamesBarney wrote: post #199
genocidicbunny wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Certainly. It is far more time than what our recruiter would put into it; but I don't see resumes until they've at least been filtered that way, so I don't really have to deal with a deluge, just a slow trickle. We're also a relatively small company, so the number of applicants is a bit reduced by that.

If I can find prior art that is effectively their patent, it shows to me that they were engaged in patenting something that shouldn't be patented. I have strong personal feelings about that, and I do not much want to work with someone that believes that every idea that _can_ be patented _should_ be patented.

With that said, there are many other reasons I would reject a candidate before I would reject them over this. If anything, with the relatively small number of resumes that I get on a weekly basis, anyone having any patents on their resume is going to raise a red flag that I am going to poke at more. It also gives me another topic to engage the candidate on, and on one occasion that lead to a conversation that made me vote to hire the candidate.

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