Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game • Hacker News Board

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#61

Post by wand3r » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

brink wrote: post #58

oldcynic wrote: post #55

Hard to decide how I feel here. I hate software patents and patent trolls, but I also hate what f2p and premium currencies have done to gaming. Which is the lesser of these evils?

"Is murder okay, as long as you're murdering Hitler?"

People need to stop casually invoking Hitler when making serious or semi-serious arguments or analogies. Like, I hate patent trolls and think in game payments are pretty terrible. However lets put those 2 concepts in the same neighborhood. That neighborhood is nowhere near the neighborhood of the systemic annihilation of a population in as ruthless and demeaning a fashion as Hitler did. That neighborhood, to carry the analogy, is somewhere on Elon's mars colony if patent trolls & ingame payments are in Brooklyn.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#62

Post by gorbachev » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

l3 wrote: post #49

has someone tried patenting making money buy being a patent troll? that of course would make one mega patent troll to deal with.

Way too many instances of prior art. Unfortunately.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#63

Post by mchannon » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #14

jannotti wrote: post #2

Trying to find other companies under the same threat is a great approach. In a similar situation, this allowed my company to fight a patent troll and share costs, so we didn't cave under the, "It'll cost us this much in legal fees anyway" argument.

There should be some kind of patent troll clearinghouse. Companies can check it to see if other companies are reporting the same shakedown tactics for a given patent. Though, could a patent troll could get around that by spacing out the trolling? So by the time any company finds another company that's been trolled, they've already paid it up and don't have as much incentive to fight the patent troll after the fact. T…

https://trollingeffects.org

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#64

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

oldcynic wrote: post #55

Hard to decide how I feel here. I hate software patents and patent trolls, but I also hate what f2p and premium currencies have done to gaming. Which is the lesser of these evils?

[deleted]

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#65

Post by School-Cotton » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

wand3r wrote: post #61

brink wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is murder okay, as long as you're murdering Hitler?"

People need to stop casually invoking Hitler when making serious or semi-serious arguments or analogies. Like, I hate patent trolls and think in game payments are pretty terrible. However lets put those 2 concepts in the same neighborhood. That neighborhood is nowhere near the neighborhood of the systemic annihilation of a population in as ruthless and demeaning a fashion as Hitler did. That neighborhood, to carry th…

Yeah, and suing someone isn't murder.

Making an analogy doesn't imply that the things being compared are of similar magnitude. That's not even the point of analogies.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#66

Post by heroprotagonist » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

oldcynic wrote: post #55

Hard to decide how I feel here. I hate software patents and patent trolls, but I also hate what f2p and premium currencies have done to gaming. Which is the lesser of these evils?

This company actually left the F2P model for the second version:

http://www.clickerheroes2.com/paytowin.php

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#67

Post by mysterypie » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:39 PM UTC

In the PDF documents that Playsaurus has put online, the accuser's lawyers have redacted one line, and that's in the "The lawsuit they will file if we don't pay" document at the bottom, where it says:

  THE deBRUIN FIRM, LLC
  [Redacted]
  David W. deBruin (#4846)
  1201 N. Orange Street, Suite 500
  Wilmington, Delaware 19801
  Telephone: (302) 660-2744
  Facsimile: (302) 650-1574
  ddebruin@thedebruinfirm.com

  Of Counsel:
  RUBIN AND RUDMAN LLP
  Leslie L. Jacobs, Jr. (pro hac vice forthcoming)
  800 Connecticut Avenue, NW
  Washington, DC 20006
  Telephone: (240) 356-1549
  Facsimile: (202) 223-1849
  ljacobs@rubinrudman.com
  gcoman@rubinrudman.com
  Attorney for Plaintiff GTX Corp.

I was curious what was being redacted. Examining it with Acrobat Professional, I was able to discover that it says:

  /s/ David W. deBruin

So it's just a signature.

Btw, I'm pretty sure that the redaction was done by accusing lawyers and not by Playsaurus because the document author is "Leslie L. Jacobs", who is one of the accuser's lawyers.

Though it's still not clear to me why the accuser has two sets of lawyers (THE deBRUIN FIRM and RUBIN AND RUDMAN). Anyone know what might be up with that?

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#68

Post by bhargav » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:45 PM UTC

oldcynic wrote: post #55

Hard to decide how I feel here. I hate software patents and patent trolls, but I also hate what f2p and premium currencies have done to gaming. Which is the lesser of these evils?

Not sure why this is even a question. The morality of the latter is subjective while the former is not.

Have you seen the patent picture? They literally have a cell phone, connected to a cloud, and other computers. How the fuck is this approved by the patent office? That is literally how every transaction via cell phones occur.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#69

Post by williamstein » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:48 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #44

Kelbit wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it doesn't help in this case (since there is already a looming legal threat from an NPE), you can buy patent troll insurance now: https://www.rpxcorp.com/ . This covers your legal fees in the event of litigation, which can scare off a patent troll who just wants a hit-and-run settlement.

Do you know what's the ballpark cost by any chance?

I got a quote from them 2 or 3 years ago for a company and the amount was for $7K/year. RPX said they came up with the price based on the likely danger of patent trolls to this company, so I don't know if the price they would quote now or to another company would be the same.

Re: Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

#70

Post by Oblouk » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

I have a feeling the accuser simply googled "premium currency" and found the article posted by Playsaurus about abandoning F2P. They probably just took the top 10 results skimming for smaller companies that were F2P. I guess this is what you get for self publishing a game.