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Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

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Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#261

Post by pclmulqdq »

AlbertCory wrote: post #256
pclmulqdq wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on Alice ? I thought that precluded most software patents from being valid. It is a fairly recent precedent, though, so the common knowledge about software patents is still very much about the pre-Alice world.

> What are your thoughts on Alice? SCOTUS keeps slapping down the CAFC, and the CAFC just keeps weaseling their way out of it. It will take clear legislative direction to slay this dragon once and for all.

Personally, I was looking forward to American Axle, but they didn't want to hear that one.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#262

Post by amelius »

btrettel wrote: post #60

Current USPTO patent examiner here. The most effective way to eliminate bad patents would be to give examiners more time, say double the time across the board to start. If an examiner can't find prior art in the little time they're given, and they have no other reasons to reject the application, they'll have to grant it. The amount of time was (basically) set in the 1970s based on data from the 1960s. There have been…

What do you think about the idea of having a "challenge period", i.e. a time where other parties than the applicant can come up with solutions to the problem stated in the patent (or with prior art)? I bet there is an army of volunteers that would want to help fight illegitimate patents. Also, if $BIGCORP tries to file a patent application, then why can't $SMALL_COMPETITOR contest it during such a challenge period without going through a court of law?

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#263

Post by kirrent »

btrettel wrote: post #60

Current USPTO patent examiner here. The most effective way to eliminate bad patents would be to give examiners more time, say double the time across the board to start. If an examiner can't find prior art in the little time they're given, and they have no other reasons to reject the application, they'll have to grant it. The amount of time was (basically) set in the 1970s based on data from the 1960s. There have been…

I hope you don't mind if I ask a few nosy questions.

1. How much time do you get given to perform a search? How comprehensive is searching (and how much time is given) if PCT or EP searches have already been performed?

2. Given existing citations (e.g. from a US PCT search), how long do you get to perform examination? How long do you get given for later reports?

3. How common is searching following amendments and how long do you get given?

4. How much time do you get given for further reports?

5. Do examiners do classification as an additional duty? If so, how much time do you get?

6. Have you Epoque (the EPO's search software)? If so, how does it compare to the tools you use?

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#264

Post by AlbertCory »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #261
AlbertCory wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are your thoughts on Alice? SCOTUS keeps slapping down the CAFC, and the CAFC just keeps weaseling their way out of it. It will take clear legislative direction to slay this dragon once and for all.

Personally, I was looking forward to American Axle, but they didn't want to hear that one.

Wow. Complicated. It wasn't about software, though. Maybe that's what they're waiting for.

https://www.bakerbotts.com/thought-leadership/publications/2...

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#265

Post by closeparen »

snarf21 wrote: post #187
wellbehaved wrote: post #183

Patents are just inherently bad. There is no way to morally/ethically justify them nor to "fix" the inherently broken system. This is just one of those unquestioned relics from the past that clutches at shackling the youth for the sake of the old entrenched powers, and thus holds back humanity. https://reasonandliberty.com/articles/patents

Serious Question: Do you think that all software should have to be completely and constantly open-sourced? Do you think that all blueprints must be made public? Do you think that all recipes for food must be made public? Creation is hard and should have some potential for rewards. I think we need software patents (especially) to be shorter lived and non-transferable. They can only be licensed and the licensing schedu…

The potential for reward in creating useful software is licensing the software. It shouldn't be in extracting rents from others whose own software is too similar.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#266

Post by mring33621 »

nostrebored wrote: post #255
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3) reduced cost From what I've always heard, of all the benefits the cloud has, reduced cost is not one of them unless your compute need is exceptionally small (ie, you only need a few t3.* instances).

That’s because nobody who cut costs feels compelled to go out and proselytize about it. At the start of the pandemic I helped dozens of customers cut their spending to $XX pm as they were inherently crippled during COVID (think travel, hospitality). My management team at AWS supported this effort. It was actually one of our strategic goals. Anti cloud zealots are having their time just like pro cloud zealots did. You…

"You have to understand your workloads and cloud offerings to see if it’s right for you."

Yes

This is hard to do.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#267

Post by mring33621 »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #233
mring33621 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"move to the cloud" is a top strategic objective in my org I have explained why it should not be, but Mgmt does not care. Everyone's doing it. We NEED to do it. I believe we are in a mix of FOMO, resume-driven development and empire-building. Ok, I can tell that you want me to expand. Here goes: Cloud may offer: 1) improved scalability (both horizontal and vertical) 2) improved availability 3) reduced cost None of th…

how does improved scalability, improved availability, and reduced cost help the patent examiners make more reliable decisions? It doesn't, that's the point, you're adding to the same noise everyone else is.

You're right. It's just a random side convo that came out of the main thread.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#268

Post by bombcar »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #137
temporallobe wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do contracting for USPTO and have another perspective as an insider to their technology and internal processes (not legal), who works very closely with examiners and other stakeholders. The tools that patent examiners use is quite awful. Like many other government agencies, it’s embedded with legacy tools that are extremely obtuse, difficult to use, and time consuming. Many of these tools are decades old, unreliabl…

what does the cloud have to do with the tools being old and creaky? Is there some magic sauce that makes the search suddenly useful once it's sitting in AWS? I ask because I see this ALL the time. technical people abusing business ignorance by using initiatives to improve tools to "move to the cloud". Unless you're telling me the problem you're solving has to do with elastic demand or too much costs maintaining infra…

The only benefit I've seen to "move to the cloud" without a full re-write is you can now double the performance of your cloud server without a full reinstall. Sometimes.

And end up with not much gain. :(

    You pack your bags And you move to the cloud
    There's somethin' missin' here at home

    When you, you gonna move to the cloud?
    Into the cloud where it all began

    I'm always buyin' With the local and the junkies
    This cloud life is one big pain!
    But you, you had to move to the cloud
    Into the cloud where it all began

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#269

Post by oogali »

pj_mukh wrote: post #259
oogali wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or an actual registered agent. Again, the registered agent does not have to be the address of any of the principals of the business. But it must be a place that is open during standard business hours and accept process notices or legal correspondence upon behalf of the business. https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-is-a-registered-agen...

Yes, and again, a business with a PO Box and a registered agent will be deemed "sketchy" by this judge, and more generally by the judicial system and in some cases the IRS as well. I realize a lot of business do this, and have survived fine, but that's not the point I'm making.

I think you’re now conflating the principal place of business activity with a mailing address.

The principal place of business has to be an address where actual business activity takes place. That establishes your business nexus and which states/agencies have jurisdiction over your business.

It doesn’t matter if it seems “fine” to put down a virtual address in the principal location field, it’s not sketchy — it’s simply not allowed. The state can revoke your business registration for doing so. (And if you look at the terms and conditions for your bank and/or credit cards, they can close your accounts for doing so as well)

In the context of business formation, it is entirely legal for a business to have three different addresses for the three different address roles (principal place of activity, mailing address, and registered agent) provided those are real addresses.

Every secretary of state (or division of corporations, if it’s called that in your target state) that handles business formation allows for this. Sometimes the principal location is public data, sometimes it’s not. The registered agent is always public data.

The original comment I responded to was in regards to your stated requirement of the CEO receiving mail for the company — that is the role of a mailing address. The address to where the business can be served notices, subpoenas, etc, that is the role of the registered agent address. In the context of a remote-first business, you can choose to put your home address here or you can put in legal substitutes.

With regards to your last comment, the judicial system uses your principal address for determining jurisdiction and your registered agent address for delivering notices. If you are providing a virtual address when they go looking for any of these two address roles, you have screwed the pooch.

In the new context you’ve raised regarding tax authorities such as the IRS, when you are filling out said registration paperwork or change of address forms, you are explicitly asked to give the physical address where your records are kept which introduces a fourth address role — that again does not have to be your house, but it does need to be a real, legal place.

Re: Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls

#270

Post by erik_seaberg »

kag0 wrote: post #201
AlbertCory wrote: post #171

I'm a patent agent and I worked in Google's Patent Litigation department. This is a slight hyperbole, but only slight: I can bust any software patent. I found the prior art that prevented Google Maps from being shut down in Germany: https://www.themarysue.com/google-maps-facing-german-ban/ @btrettel is right that examiners need more time, but that would mean the PTO would have to hire a lot more of them. A better sol…

> change patentable subject matter to (effectively) exclude computer software I don't necessarily disagree with you, but what makes software unique in that it would be effectively excluded by changes while other subject matter (presumably) wouldn't be affected?

We’re still in the first decades of the profession. You should get a patent for describing a solution that would have gone unknown for twenty-ish years, not a land grab on the easy problems we haven’t looked at yet (or weren’t worth writing down).
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