Live data from Hacker News

Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

unionsquareventures.com

41–50 of 77 posts

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#41
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good guys pay me money for insurance, I promise to release my team of ruthless lawyers on anyone that sue them, the patent trolls see my scary lawyers and don't sue. Doesn't that work?

It doesn't work with Patent Trolls (AKA Non Practicing Entities). What is the team of scary lawyers going to do? Since the trolls don't actually have a business or product, you can't sue them for patents they infringe. And their whole business is litigating patents, so tying them up in court is not exactly a deterrent. The trolls themselves are often lawyers, or just a company that employs lawyers on retainer.

> their whole business is litigating patents, so tying them up in court is not exactly a deterrent.

Lawyers can make a considerable amount of money, any disruption to the Patent Trolls' game will severely reduce their numbers. These Patent trolls, as you said, are often lawyers and by tying them up in court you are costing them profitability. Every non-settlement forces them to go to court and actually fight.

This is how the courts work: Out-of-court settlements are frequent and are preferred as it saves a Judge's time for real cases, however mass submission and withdrawal of suits are seen as a waste of the courts time and effort. A fair amount of cases end up in front of a judge before settlement, if these end up being withdrawn (and the judge will know it's withdrawn not settled) you're going to be in bad credence with a judge. Pissing off a judge is a big no-no. Patent Trolls will be pissing off multiple judges, which is like putting a shotgun in your career's mouth and pulling the trigger.

An insurance agency that fights patent trolls would be ideal. Offer $X amount of legal fee coverage for $Y a month, get a few talented lawyers and a fair amount of paralegals. Once word gets out, the majority of the work can be performed by paralegals (essentially everything up until you're standing in front of a jury-or-equivalent can be performed by paralegals) as no troll will want their time tied up. Eventually, only Trolls with a fair-case will fight, you then have 3 options to give your clients: offer them your lawyers' services/suggest settling/wish them good luck elsewhere. It would be a sort of no-case-no-extra-fee's deal.

Lawyer's typically bill by the 6-minute interval, and frequently charge 100's of dollars an hour. In fact 1-2 billed hours is typically a lawyers daily pay, and they may still have 6-8 hours on top of what they're billing clients. If you start consuming these lawyers time, their profitability drops, especially considering they require settlements for their pay. They're invested in the 'easy win', which isn't conducive to fighting a drawn out case. If companies actually start going through with the court battles, the payment is potentially delayed anywhere from 3-months to 3-years.

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#42
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think that patents hold a valuable place in certain areas of research and development, but there are also areas in which patents are crippling development. I hear people say this but they never give an example. Can you name an area of research and development where patents hold a valuable position? I myself have trouble coming up with any and I'm curious what others think.

Conventional wisdom says that pharma qualifies. Labs wouldn't spend the resources if anyone could come up with generic drugs once the hard work of finding out which drug works is done.

And yet even pharmaceutical companies are now facing problems caused by too many patents (though I'm sure none of them want to abolish patents completely the way many in software do). Michael Heller from Columbia Law School writes about new therapies that companies can't bring to market because they involve dozens or hundreds of different genes or compounds, each patented separately; he argues that this will become more common because of trends in medical science. He also cites some interesting examples like http://www.goldenrice.org/ which actually did get produced, but only because they formed a non-profit foundation and basically shamed companies into licensing their patents as charity for the developing world.

Many, many more details in Heller's book and in this Econtalk interview:

http://www.gridlockeconomy.com/

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/11/heller_on_gridl.htm...

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#43

The fundamental problem with patents is that it rewards the first person to file a patent, disregarding the possibility that two people can synchronously, or asynchronously come to the same idea independently of each other. I guess the "American" (assuming you're in America) course of action is to speak to your senator to push for reform and help evolve our government. If that fails, ditch the government altogether a…

[deleted]

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except then you're patenting math.

Something as arcane as DES is not a "natural law". Crypto algorithms aren't pre-existing (show me a naturally occuring physical process that can be described by a crypto alogrithm), they're not obvious to even experts in the field, and people spend a lot of time trying to get them right. That's the very definition of patentable. [I know DES isn't patented, and there's plenty of good reasons why you don't want a paten…

Though it seems that being a 'natural law' doesn't prevent you from getting a patent though. See the human gene/dna patents.

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#45
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think that patents hold a valuable place in certain areas of research and development, but there are also areas in which patents are crippling development. I hear people say this but they never give an example. Can you name an area of research and development where patents hold a valuable position? I myself have trouble coming up with any and I'm curious what others think.

The new Google phone's lack of software support for multi-touch is something which has come up recently.

people often cite patents as the reason for this (lack of multi-touch) but I don't think it's the real reason. For starters almost everyone else is using multi-touch, and from what I understand (I haven't any dev experience with Android) multi-touch support is built into the OS, just that the default apps don't use it

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#46
post #14

I would really like to see something along the lines of a TED talk in which the presenter stands up, spends a couple of minutes demonstrating some kind of really interesting new technology -- something that could really help people, either in their lives or in their jobs -- and then the presenter would pause for a moment and say, "...but none of you are going to get to use this", and continue the talk but on the subj…

I do think that patents hold a valuable place in certain areas of research and development, but there are also areas in which patents are crippling development. I hear people say this but they never give an example. Can you name an area of research and development where patents hold a valuable position? I myself have trouble coming up with any and I'm curious what others think.

Cars. Why spend years designing a better engine if your competitor will just copy it in six months?

Aircraft. Same.

Basically every time you need a huge assembly line or factory to produce a product that can be regularly updated.

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#47

The fundamental problem with patents is that it rewards the first person to file a patent, disregarding the possibility that two people can synchronously, or asynchronously come to the same idea independently of each other. I guess the "American" (assuming you're in America) course of action is to speak to your senator to push for reform and help evolve our government. If that fails, ditch the government altogether a…

U.S. patents go to the first inventor, regardless of filing order.

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#48
post #14

I would really like to see something along the lines of a TED talk in which the presenter stands up, spends a couple of minutes demonstrating some kind of really interesting new technology -- something that could really help people, either in their lives or in their jobs -- and then the presenter would pause for a moment and say, "...but none of you are going to get to use this", and continue the talk but on the subj…

I do think that patents hold a valuable place in certain areas of research and development, but there are also areas in which patents are crippling development. I hear people say this but they never give an example. Can you name an area of research and development where patents hold a valuable position? I myself have trouble coming up with any and I'm curious what others think.

"Can you name an area of research and development where patents hold a valuable position?"

Metallurgy, semiconductors, superconductors, ...

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#49
Check out this patent. It appears to be for storing web page state in the web page itself and transmitting that state using HTTP POST. I'm not even kidding.

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=wIEoAAAAEBAJ&dq=5...

It's especially interesting to read the "referenced by" list on that page. "Incorporating state information into a URL" ... "Method for transmitting images over a network" ... "System for tracking the purchase of a product over the internet."

Seriously, what are we going to do about this?

Re: Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.

#50
post #38
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work with Patent Trolls (AKA Non Practicing Entities). What is the team of scary lawyers going to do? Since the trolls don't actually have a business or product, you can't sue them for patents they infringe. And their whole business is litigating patents, so tying them up in court is not exactly a deterrent. The trolls themselves are often lawyers, or just a company that employs lawyers on retainer.

Part of my assumption is that if the patent should truly not have been granted, the start-up has a decent chance of winning if they have the resources to fight it. (I do know of some counter-examples, like RIM and D2L) The trolls don't want to enter a losing battle because of the cost (even if they're in the business of litigation, time spent suing one company is time that could be spent suing another). Also, losing…

In my reading, trolls rarely have just one patent. They tend to buy silly, trivial patents in bulk from wherever they can. Since a single lost lawsuit could cause the troll to lose only those patents they assert in the suit, the damage to them is minimal. I think this makes trolling even more insidious -- even if you (as a startup) win, you lose.
Post reply on HN