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US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

inc.com

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Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#31

Post by Karunamon »

vanderZwan wrote: post #28

Good news, but the last sentence of the article made me curious: > The total median awards to trolls is now nearly twice as high as those to legitimate patent holders, whose median reward fell about 30 percent to $4 billion, according to a 2013 report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. I was wondering how they estimated this, so I checked out the report: > We collect information about patent holder success rates, time-to-tri…

I think the canonical example of a NPE is ARM. They don't fabricate their own chips, but they license out their designs.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#33

Post by dded »

jaynos wrote: post #25
dded wrote: post #3

I'm encouraged that patent trolls are getting knocked. But my fear is that patent law will hit such a state that only large corporations can wield them. If I'm a small patent holder, and I'm liable for court costs if I lose a suit, then it becomes far too risky to defend my patent against a corporation that violates it.

If you have a serious (winnable) claim, there is surely a law firm that will take your case for a percentage of the final settlement.

Sure. But I doubt that said law firm would agree to cover GiantCorp's legal costs should we lose.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#34

Post by dded »

revelation wrote: post #26

I guess this is why HN mods edit titles on submissions (although the original title is just as terrible). The Supreme Court did not side with anyone; they denied a petition to the court, which is the case for the vast majority of petitions. If they did accept this particular petition, this would not mean that the Supreme Court sides with the patent troll and the world is doomed; it simply means that the case deals wi…

I cut-and-pasted the original title, which now appears to have changed.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#35

Post by acjohnson55 »

Karunamon wrote: post #31
vanderZwan wrote: post #28

Good news, but the last sentence of the article made me curious: > The total median awards to trolls is now nearly twice as high as those to legitimate patent holders, whose median reward fell about 30 percent to $4 billion, according to a 2013 report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. I was wondering how they estimated this, so I checked out the report: > We collect information about patent holder success rates, time-to-tri…

I think the canonical example of a NPE is ARM. They don't fabricate their own chips, but they license out their designs.

That's true, but I think you can also differentiate between ARM and the more trolly NPEs in the basis of how much ongoing original work they do. Not all trolls are NPEs either. Look at Apple. I wouldn't say the whole company is a troll, by any means, but they've certainly done some trolling.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#36

Post by rayiner »

vanderZwan wrote: post #28

Good news, but the last sentence of the article made me curious: > The total median awards to trolls is now nearly twice as high as those to legitimate patent holders, whose median reward fell about 30 percent to $4 billion, according to a 2013 report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. I was wondering how they estimated this, so I checked out the report: > We collect information about patent holder success rates, time-to-tri…

> So, just to play the devil's advocate: are NPEs by definition patent trolls? I can't think of a counterargument, but maybe someone else can?

There are lots of counter-examples. E.g. Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Aerospace_Ventures. It's the patent-holding company that owns all the patents for Spaceship One. It's a vehicle to intermediate between the major investor, Paul Allen, the inventor, Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites, and the various companies that will be commercializing the technology, namely the Virgin Group and any special-purpose joint-venture entities created by it.

MAV (and ARM, mentioned in a sibling comment), is a great example of why NPEs exist.[1] There is a lot of value in being able to take the products of expensive R&D, like the Spaceship One effort that won the X Prize, and being able to package that into a set of property rights owned by a holding company that can transact in those rights. It allows a division of labor that's very hard to achieve otherwise. And division of labor is a good thing, because it allows everyone to focus on their core competency.

For example, in the case of Mojave, you have the separation between the people doing the R&D (Scaled Composites), the people bankrolling the effort (Paul Allen and other investors), and the people doing the commercialization (Virgin, etc). In the case of ARM, you have a separation between the people doing the R&D (ARM), the people making SOCs using the basic cores (NVIDIA, TI, AMD), the people manufacturing the chips (Samsung, TSMC, GF), and the people using the chips in finished products. It's economically valuable to facilitate this sort of separation.

[1] Indeed, MAV is a better example than ARM, because it's purely a holding company. It does neither the research nor the commercialization, but rather exists to facilitate the involvement of the independent investor in the whole process.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#37

Post by kalleboo »

mattmanser wrote: post #10
kalleboo wrote: post #8

I had to use a secret browsing window to read this without signing up, so here it is for anyone else who has trouble loading the page: -------- Chalk one up for the enemies of patent trolls: The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a request for trial from alleged patent troll Soverain Software. The case, called Soverain Software LLC. v. Newegg Inc., is one of three such cases the Supreme Court is expected to consider t…

So you'd thought you'd break the law and steal their content?

Yes.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#38

Post by rayiner »

marcosdumay wrote: post #16
lostcolony wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like currently it's far too risky to fight a troll in court even for a corporation, since treble damages means that if the jury (because 12 random people from the streets clearly know enough about technology, or can understand it well enough when it's explained to them, to pass a fair judgement) decides you're guilty, you're paying through the nose. The comparatively small amount demanded by the patent troll to…

The result is that only big companies can be patent trolls. It's still an improvement, but I'm quite sure it's not the intented one. By the way, small companies were never able to defend their patents anyway. That does not change.

I don't know how you define "small" but ARM certainly manages to defend its patents against companies that are many times larger (Samsung is a couple of hundred times bigger both in revenues and number of employees).

Patent litigation is expensive, but it's not that expensive for even relatively small corporations. Apple spent about $60 million in legal fees in its battle with Samsung in California (which resulted in the $1 billion verdict): http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/12/apple-demands-15-million-.... That case ran for two and a half years, involved a trial, an appeal, and a retrial.

$60 million over 2-3 years is expensive, but it's not intractably expensive for a moderately sized company, especially if the patents are critical to the business and adequate litigation financing is available. And $60 million is for a blockbuster, "we're taking it personally" grudge match like the one Apple waged. A more typical patent lawsuit might cost $5-10 million. And if the plaintiff's case is strong, it might cost nothing for a firm to take it on contingency.

Every year in the U.S. about 150-250 companies hit $100 million in revenues per year, about 20 of which are technology companies: http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2013/06/number-of-us-compan.... These all have the resources to defend their patents against even a fairly large company.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#39

Post by brubaker »

Nutella4 wrote: post #23
ck2 wrote: post #20

What did it cost Newegg to litigate that? Does the troll have to pay legal fees? Hope Newegg can remain price competitive.

And I hope the many companies that caved to this patent troll and paid it millions for claiming it owned the shopping cart now go after it to get all those millions back. With interest.

Except they made a private agreement to license the patent. That was their choice and they are stuck with it.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#40

Post by commandar »

dded wrote: post #13
kalleboo wrote: post #8

I had to use a secret browsing window to read this without signing up, so here it is for anyone else who has trouble loading the page: -------- Chalk one up for the enemies of patent trolls: The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a request for trial from alleged patent troll Soverain Software. The case, called Soverain Software LLC. v. Newegg Inc., is one of three such cases the Supreme Court is expected to consider t…

Sorry, I suppose "secret browsing window" is my default, and I did not notice any access restrictions.

It's probably like a lot of publishing industry paywalls. It doesn't kicked in until you've viewed X number of articles in Y time span.
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