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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

#41

Post by commitpizza »

speeder wrote: post #13
commitpizza wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see the difference, why just software?

The purpose of patents, is incentive companies to share their secrets. For example, Coca-Cola never patended their formula. So you might think: I can copy it and sell my own right? Well, yes, legally yes, if you ever found their formula, somehow. They been successful for more than a hundred years now in hiding that formula. Thing is, software patents allowed people to actually patent ideas, concepts, stuff that is ob…

Software doesn't need to be obvious and could need the sharing aspect of it. I am thinking of all the new ML models that are up and coming for example. Not only do you require some advanced software but also a lot of hardware capabilities.

I don't really buy your argument since the same could be said for obvious stuff in the physical world as well.

I still think I am leaning towards companies keeping their secrets if patents is the only solution we can bring to the table.

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

#42

Post by kochb »

headsoup wrote: post #12

I like this judge. More of them please. Reminds me of judge Otis T. Wright ( https://floridaiptrends.com/2013/03/12/prenda-law-meet-judge... )

Nominated Delaware DA by George W. Bush. Recommended to Delaware District Court by Senators Coons and Carper. Appointed by Trump. Confirmation approved by voice vote (which generally means no Senator expressed the desire to register opposition in a recorded vote).

You know officials are doing something right when they can secure broad support like that.

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

#43

Post by Kalium »

bombcar wrote: post #36
Andrew_Russell wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have readers at the Delaware courthouse and, incredibly, the courthouse network setup blocks the site for Chrome users if I use Cloudflare. I tried for weeks to find a solution other than removing Cloudflare but nothing seemed to work, and I really want people from the courthouse to be able to read the blog!

Can you intercept their network and redirect it to a copy hosted elsewhere or on another CDN? Blocking cloudflare blocks half the internet so I presume there’s something else going on somewhere.

Generally Cloudflare is integrated as the DNS level. In most configurations that would prevent intercepting their network requests and redirecting them to a copy hosted elsewhere or on another CDN.

Pretty much every CDN works the same way or very similarly.

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

#44

Post by jason-phillips »

Andrew_Russell wrote: post #28
webartisan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What made you remove it?

We have readers at the Delaware courthouse and, incredibly, the courthouse network setup blocks the site for Chrome users if I use Cloudflare. I tried for weeks to find a solution other than removing Cloudflare but nothing seemed to work, and I really want people from the courthouse to be able to read the blog!

> the courthouse network setup blocks the site for Chrome users if I use Cloudflare

Lovely.

As my local county attorney told the court, "We will not be using the cloud because it is not secure," this doesn't surprise me. The bane of local governments strikes again.

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

#45

Post by hulitu »

speeder wrote: post #13
commitpizza wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see the difference, why just software?

The purpose of patents, is incentive companies to share their secrets. For example, Coca-Cola never patended their formula. So you might think: I can copy it and sell my own right? Well, yes, legally yes, if you ever found their formula, somehow. They been successful for more than a hundred years now in hiding that formula. Thing is, software patents allowed people to actually patent ideas, concepts, stuff that is ob…

> They been successful for more than a hundred years now in hiding that formula.

This is a legend. Coca Cola is just water with sugar. The "formula" tastes different in every country. And today's coca cola is not the same like yesterday, so they shall fill a patent every other year in every country.

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

#46

Post by brnt »

williamcotton wrote: post #6

It is too easy for people to hide behind corporate entities and to the detriment of public accountability.

This avatar-like use of Legal persons is undesirable, fully agree. A major component in international money laundering and criminal enterprises is discovering whose avatar $some_co or $my_foundation belong to. Small jurisdictions, mine included unfortunately, are easy targets for friends-of-friends-of-friends to allow such hidden ownership, and the international community should forbid it both at home and abroad.

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

#47

Post by tremon »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #19
speeder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of patents, is incentive companies to share their secrets. For example, Coca-Cola never patended their formula. So you might think: I can copy it and sell my own right? Well, yes, legally yes, if you ever found their formula, somehow. They been successful for more than a hundred years now in hiding that formula. Thing is, software patents allowed people to actually patent ideas, concepts, stuff that is ob…

> stuff that is obvious Stuff that is obvious cannot be patented, according to the law. The problem is the system's implementation of the law. Software shouldn't be patentable because math isn't patentable.

Software implementations require trade-offs. An implementation of an algorithm can be memory-hard or memory-efficient, single-threaded or multi-threaded, generic or optimized for a particular processor, constant-time or low-latency. But no implementation can be all of those at the same time.

To create a solution within the constraints given is what engineering is all about, and requires expert domain knowledge and creative thought. Software isn't just math, it operates on real processors with real limitations. I'm not arguing that software patents should be valid, but the "software is just math" argument is too weak to carry much weight.

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

#48

Post by dbfx »

commitpizza wrote: post #11
bell-cot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software patents, "better paperclips", and a lot of other "lawyers get rich, bureaucracies get bigger, little people get screwed patents? - YES. (Some sort of IP protection or reward system is still needed for real inventions - where it takes serious money, expertise, time, etc. to achieve something major.) But maybe a better moral would be that shell corporations (& lawyers playing shell games with them) should be o…

But real inventions can occur in software too? Inventions that takes serious money, expertise and so on. Some examples: - Rust memory management - New models in machine learning that enables amazing results - Protocols

I'm skeptical rust memory management is such a big invention by them and would bet some money the ownership model already existed before in papers at the very least. And even if not just imagine having to pay Dahl or Alan Kay to implement OO in your language, which was by every possible metric more innovative than rust's memory management.

Even if it would have stopped java from being a thing it's just not worth it.

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

#49

Post by nonrandomstring »

abduhl wrote: post #39
nonrandomstring wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tradition has held that these are ideas, not inventions, and thus obtain value precisely because they can and should be freely shared (which is the ultimate aim of patents anyway). Ideas may also require intellectual labour. But one may not receive the protection of the government for them to give temporary advantage over competitors. Ideas are a collaborative venture, protocols being the very epitome of this - since…

I’m interested in what “traditions” you’re talking about here? Honestly, it is not even clear to me what you’re talking about when you say “these” in your sentence. Certainly tradition hasn’t held that Rust memory management is an idea and therefore not patentable. Same with new models in ML? Maybe there is some tradition for protocols, but even those are generally patentable but required to be licensed via FRAND. Yo…

I'm sorry I can do nothing more to help with your misunderstanding of my good faith post. Please do the necessary research with regard to the history and purpose of designs and patents law.

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

#50

Post by DannyBee »

duxup wrote: post #9

Outside of the liability passed to the smaller entities, what would the advantage of this structure be legally?

I mean, given the cost of litigation, and the inability to get counter-judgement (IE attorneys fees), this is already enough "reason".

These are litigation funding exercises, so the goal is protection of the "investors".

But you'd also get things like protection against discovery (the smaller entity has nothing to give you), etc.

This is the sort of thing where they go too far, and end up in jail despite thinking they're just good at playing the system. (see, e.g., prenda law)

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