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US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

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Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#71

Post by Crito »

chc wrote: post #68
DougBTX wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for using the actual meaning of words. If that means it is harder to make emotional arguments, then so be it.

Words do not have an "actual" meaning. They have definitions assigned on a more or less arbitrary basis, and there may be multiple conflicting definitions for any one word†. The Greeks used to believe that foreigners were stupid because they spoke something that was not proper Greek. Nowadays we laugh at their naïveté, but then turn around and talk about the "actual meaning of words." It's just silly. † Just within E…

> Words do not have an "actual" meaning.

When they are terms of art, they frequently do.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#72

Post by chc »

Crito wrote: post #71
chc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words do not have an "actual" meaning. They have definitions assigned on a more or less arbitrary basis, and there may be multiple conflicting definitions for any one word†. The Greeks used to believe that foreigners were stupid because they spoke something that was not proper Greek. Nowadays we laugh at their naïveté, but then turn around and talk about the "actual meaning of words." It's just silly. † Just within E…

> Words do not have an "actual" meaning. When they are terms of art, they frequently do .

No, they have an accepted meaning among practicioners of that art. That meaning is not more "real" than other meanings, though is more likely to be contextually appropriate. The fact that "reduce" is a term of art in programming for "debug" does not make somebody who uses it in cooking instructions wrong.

Basically, what I'm saying is, the fact that you and your friends use a word a certain way doesn't automatically invalidate other people's usages. It is true that mattmanser's use of "steal" was not legally precise, but neither are many colloquial uses of the word ("It was such a steal at $5!", "He's stealing third", "Great artists steal", "His identity got stolen", etc.). You would be right to object if he had been raising a legal argument based around the concept of theft, but he wasn't, so it seems overly pedantic to me.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#73

Post by Crito »

chc wrote: post #72
Crito wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Words do not have an "actual" meaning. When they are terms of art, they frequently do .

No, they have an accepted meaning among practicioners of that art. That meaning is not more "real" than other meanings, though is more likely to be contextually appropriate. The fact that "reduce" is a term of art in programming for "debug" does not make somebody who uses it in cooking instructions wrong . Basically, what I'm saying is, the fact that you and your friends use a word a certain way doesn't automatically…

> No, they have an accepted meaning among practicioners of that art.

You are getting close to the point here.

Why does a term of art have a specific meaning to a practitioner of that art? Answer that, and you will have determined why words have meanings in any context.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#74

Post by rhino369 »

officemonkey wrote: post #67
ck2 wrote: post #20

What did it cost Newegg to litigate that? Does the troll have to pay legal fees? Hope Newegg can remain price competitive.

Most organizations have general counsel staff that they pay hefty six-figure salaries. They get paid whether they're in court or surfing reddit. Might as well make them work for a living.

Generally, the general counsel doesn't actually handle active trial matters. They farm it out to a law firm who specializes in the area of law the case is about.

They cannot afford to keep teams of lawyers at the ready. A case through trial is about 2-10 thousand lawyer hours.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#75

Post by [deleted] »

petermonsson wrote: post #58
Karunamon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the canonical example of a NPE is ARM. They don't fabricate their own chips, but they license out their designs.

By that definition even Qualcomm (top 5 semiconductor company) is an NPE as TSMC fabricates their chips. ARM licenses both RTL (code) and GDSII files (the files that a foundry such as TSMC uses to freate masks for fabrication) just as you would license software. They can hardly be called a NPE.

[deleted]

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#77

Post by officemonkey »

rhino369 wrote: post #74
officemonkey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most organizations have general counsel staff that they pay hefty six-figure salaries. They get paid whether they're in court or surfing reddit. Might as well make them work for a living.

Generally, the general counsel doesn't actually handle active trial matters. They farm it out to a law firm who specializes in the area of law the case is about. They cannot afford to keep teams of lawyers at the ready. A case through trial is about 2-10 thousand lawyer hours.

How much would patent licenses cost a company like Newegg annually? A couple million? There's your 2-3 litigators and 4-6 thousand lawyer hours.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#78

Post by vacri »

grellas wrote: post #43

A few thoughts: 1. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Soverain from an adverse ruling by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals that had determined the Soverain "shopping cart" patent to be invalid on grounds of obviousness. 2. The Federal Circuit's holding by a 3-judge panel had been remarkable and had shocked patent lawyers generally in that the parties before the court had not even raised the issue on a…

That is all well and good but consider this: not only had this patent passed muster as being non-obvious with the USPTO on its original filing but it had also been found to have been non-obvious on two separate patent re-examinations before that same body and by a string of U.S. district court judges before whom the issue had arisen.

Passing muster with the USPTO is not hard. I read my company's patent with them, and despite there being heaps of prior art (known to any casual web user) and me knowing exactly what the patent was referring to, I could not make heads or tails of the description. My housemate tells me of a radio interview where they read out a patent to a senior engineer, and he couldn't figure out what it was for - it was the patent for the project he'd worked on for the past 10 years. "It passed the PTO" is an absolutely meaningless statement for originality; it just means you know how to fill in paperwork.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#79

Post by vacri »

commandar wrote: post #40
dded wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I suppose "secret browsing window" is my default, and I did not notice any access restrictions.

It's probably like a lot of publishing industry paywalls. It doesn't kicked in until you've viewed X number of articles in Y time span.

Or have javascript turned off.

Re: US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll

#80

Post by vacri »

dded wrote: post #3

I'm encouraged that patent trolls are getting knocked. But my fear is that patent law will hit such a state that only large corporations can wield them. If I'm a small patent holder, and I'm liable for court costs if I lose a suit, then it becomes far too risky to defend my patent against a corporation that violates it.

It's already in that state. I used to work for a company with a $40M turnover, and our hardware had some inferior design decisions because a larger competitor held patents on obvious designs[1]. It was not viable to contest the myriad of small, obvious patents in court because of the huge expense and the non-certainty of winning.

[1]For example, our humidifier had a removable water tank held in with a flap with a clip, because the competitor held a patent on it being held in with a hinged door. Stupidly obvious, but it still means a trip to court if you want it.

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