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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

#71

Post by btrettel »

pixelfarmer wrote: post #69
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.

I've thought exactly the same thing before. In my view, the amount of time an examiner gets should be directly tied to the amount of prior art needed to search. And fees should automatically increase as the amount of prior art increases. There should be an inflation component to fees as well.

The USPTO seems to be doing decently over the decades in terms of increasing the number of examiners, though lately I know they've had a lot of difficulty hiring.

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

#72

Post by kasey_junk »

newaccount74 wrote: post #55
kasey_junk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those aren’t shell companies by the common definition of a shell company. Usually people talking about shell companies are referring to companies with no business interests at all or if they are bring expansive only contracts/ip agreements. A construction company is doing actual business. Land owned in a corporation has an actual asset etc. Most startups start as shell companies, you sort of can’t create a co…

Anonymous companies are bad. I think you could fix a lot of the issues by requiring that all companies must be recorded in a public registry that includes contact information, owner and executive names, as well as a list of actual physical locations where the company operates (if any -- online businesses don't need to have a physical location).

You’d need a federal level legislation to achieve that (and perhaps a constitutional amendment).

The states decide the information requirements in their jurisdictions and many have vested interests in not changing them (particularly Delaware where this case is).

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

#73

Post by pc86 »

bombcar wrote: post #63
joshspankit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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).

Or the ability to trust subject-matter experts who know better than you.

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

#74

Post by mysterydip »

btrettel wrote: post #68
joshspankit wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are synonyms not built in to the search tool itself? "car" also finding "automobile" etc?

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

#75

Post by bell-cot »

kasey_junk wrote: post #38
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But maybe a better moral would be that shell corporations (& lawyers playing shell games with them) should be outlawed. Shell companies have done more damage to the world than most tyrants ever could - enabling tax evasion, escaping responsibility for substandard construction (you close the company after completing contruction of a house) or for decommissioning toxic assets like exhausted mines or oil rigs. They ar…

Most of those aren’t shell companies by the common definition of a shell company. Usually people talking about shell companies are referring to companies with no business interests at all or if they are bring expansive only contracts/ip agreements. A construction company is doing actual business. Land owned in a corporation has an actual asset etc. Most startups start as shell companies, you sort of can’t create a co…

IANAL, and was not proposing specific legislation. I used "shell company" in colloquial sense - a token / minimal / empty legal organization, used by lawyers & their ilk for what most honest & reasonable non-lawyers would see as duplicitous or malicious purposes.

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

#76

Post by pc86 »

kochb wrote: post #42
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.

It's pretty common for judges, especially at lower levels, to have broad bi-partisan support. Lots of politicians are lawyers, and if you're well regarded by the local/state Bar Associations, you're going to have lots of friends and colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Until you start ruling on very high-profile cases, or if you have a lot of partisan scholarship, you're unlikely to alienate the folks confirming you so it largely comes down to what the opinion of you is at the Bar.

This is actually why you've started to see people nominated for high level federal posts and even SCOTUS without a lot of divisive scholarship, because they're intentionally staying away from these issues to try to maximize career growth.

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

#77

Post by tracker1 »

williamcotton wrote: post #6

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

Unfortunately, anything short of a constitutional amendment explicitly stating that corporations and other collective entities do not have $list_of_rights that one may possess as an individual would be very difficult to keep in practice. Of course, this also would have to be limited to collective representation, not a group of people in person (such as at a physical protest). It could be very messy at this point.

And it all sucks. I think tethering legislation to making corporations exempt from income taxes, and refactoring taxation on profits and loans secured against corporate ownership might be the only way to get it through.

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

#78

Post by brador »

tracker1 wrote: post #67
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.

Every patent should be automatically granted and the courts can sort out the winners if there is a dispute. That is the system we have moved to.

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

#79

Post by pxmpxm »

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 have serious doubts that more examination time is the solution here - at the end of the day, the only people that have an incentive for completely thorough search are the people filing or defending themselves against the patent. And the people filing obviously make sure their language doesn't easily bring back prior art. Meanwhile you have no skin in the game at all.

I would posit the better solution is curbing overly broad/abstract patent language that can be used to litigate anything and anywhere - and you can use patent trolls to do this work for you:

Pretty much any NPE patent portfolio will work as a great benchmark for what not to allow, as they go out of their way to acquire poorly-examined patents with the exact characteristics i mentioned.

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

#80

Post by TheAdamist »

bombcar wrote: post #65
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.

Makes me wonder if instead of settling it would be cheaper to buy the patent, knowing that the patent "owner" is only getting 5-10% of a settlement.

Presumably theres some contract with the patent "owner" preventing that, but maybe that would show they aren't really in control of the patent.

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