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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

#61

Post by joshspankit »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #53
jason-phillips wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Aren't they correct? I would ballpark Delaware court IT security requirements as similar to DoD Secret level clearance. And as far as I understand a higher security cloud solution is usually a custom ask and really expensive at any of the major providers, simply not affordable for smaller organizations.

“There is no cloud it’s just [computers]”

Since “cloud” is actually a marketing term (usually meaning virtualized servers), any company or department who says no to any mention of using the cloud is showing willful ignorance.

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

#62

Post by jason-phillips »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #53
jason-phillips wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Aren't they correct? I would ballpark Delaware court IT security requirements as similar to DoD Secret level clearance. And as far as I understand a higher security cloud solution is usually a custom ask and really expensive at any of the major providers, simply not affordable for smaller organizations.

> Aren't they correct?

Not in my professional estimation, unless you want to reduce the argument to absurdly pedantic levels.

My quick response to the county government was for immediate effect, "The CIA uses AWS."

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

#63

Post by bombcar »

joshspankit wrote: post #61
MichaelZuo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't they correct? I would ballpark Delaware court IT security requirements as similar to DoD Secret level clearance. And as far as I understand a higher security cloud solution is usually a custom ask and really expensive at any of the major providers, simply not affordable for smaller organizations.

“There is no cloud it’s just [computers]” Since “cloud” is actually a marketing term (usually meaning virtualized servers), any company or department who says no to any mention of using the cloud is showing willful ignorance.

If you know you don’t know enough, demanding paper documents makes sense. It takes quite a bit of study and knowledge to determine that a “cloud document” cannot be changed or altered after submission (and by whom).

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

#64

Post by CoastalCoder »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #59
CoastalCoder wrote: post #5

Can someone explain the significance of the court's inquiry? I understand how it's interesting to see how one NPE structures it's relationships. But aside from the mail drop / physical location shenanigans, I can't tell if there's any legal significance to this information.

Fingers crossed that the court just says "this reeks too much like a scam to me" and summons the real owner of these patents instead of the mailbox / shell companies, under threat of dissolving the shell companies.

I still don't understand what the scam would be in this case.

IANAL, but I wouldn't think "this seems sus" to be a sufficient justification for a court to compel discovery without a clear relevance to the issues before it.

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

#65

Post by bombcar »

duxup wrote: post #9

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

At a minimum they’re doing a form of “liability insurance” by foisting 100% of the liability for 5% of the profits on a food truck owner.

That changes things beyond just liability - it also makes it appear judgement proof. And the dollar amounts indicate that companies may just settle because there’s nothing to win by a counter suit.

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

#66

Post by joshspankit »

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…

As someone who seems to have insight: Are the actual workings of the patent system (not the letter of the law, but how it’s used esp by those with money) such that the right AI could be put in place to filter out the majority of bad-faith patents?

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

#67

Post by tracker1 »

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'm honestly of the mindset that at this point, the vast majority of patents, from what I've seen, don't pass the obviousness test. At least when it comes to process and software patents, which are very arguable in the first place.

I do with the costs for a patent were a bit front-loaded where it costs even half the total amount just to (re)apply, in order to better pay for the review costs.

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

#68

Post by btrettel »

joshspankit wrote: post #66
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…

As someone who seems to have insight: Are the actual workings of the patent system (not the letter of the law, but how it’s used esp by those with money) such that the right AI could be put in place to filter out the majority of bad-faith patents?

The main problem is searching for prior art. There are AI search tools but they usually aren't good in my experience. It's rare that an AI search tool will return prior art that can be used in a rejection. Usually the prior art these tools find is related but not good enough. But sometimes (perhaps through random chance), a solid reference can be found. I found a 102 reference (the strongest kind) a few weeks ago for a recent application I worked on by using an AI search tool. I missed that reference earlier due to a text search I did missing some synonyms if I recall correctly.

Don't take my word for it... here's r/patentexaminer on the USPTO's latest internal AI search tool: https://www.reddit.com/r/patentexaminer/comments/ybbb60/is_t...

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

#69

Post by pixelfarmer »

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…

The whole process has a scaling issue build in, meaning you would need to scale both required time and people for the review process as time marches on.

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

#70

Post by tracker1 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #53
jason-phillips wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Aren't they correct? I would ballpark Delaware court IT security requirements as similar to DoD Secret level clearance. And as far as I understand a higher security cloud solution is usually a custom ask and really expensive at any of the major providers, simply not affordable for smaller organizations.

Most of the cloud providers (at least AWS/Azure) charge about 15-20% more for the "government" data centers. It's really not that much more. It's also not really much different, just slightly more auditing, if any difference at all. You also don't have to strictly be a government agency, you can also be a government contractor.

From what I understand, the infrastructure is really, technically, exactly the same, but just limited to certain customers. It's also, generally speaking going to be as, or more secure than any self-managed datacenter connected to the internet. The transparency could probably be a bit better.

note: used to work for a government contractor that received a LOT of hacking effort as a target.

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