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Another Hotspot Redirect Patent Collection Attempt

Posted by timothy on from the skilled-in-the-art-of-fleecing dept.

Glenn Fleishman writes "Acacia Technologies is turning its sights from collecting streaming media patent fees to Wi-Fi hotspot gateway redirection, we report at Wi-Fi Networking News. The company acquired a patent that they say covers the use of technology that redirects a login attempt by an unauthenticated user to a login gateway page. They want a minimum of $1,000 per quarter in royalties. Nomadix already claims a patent on this, while we quote an early Wayport executive who says that Wayport has prior art on it. Will community hotspots using NoCatAuth fall under this patent-enforcement attempt? Too early to tell."

2 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Patent Prerequisites by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 0, Troll
    ....how could it even have been approved in the first place?
    1. 90% of USPTO examiners are stupid fscks.
    2. The 10% who know what they're doing are chronically underfunded and overworked by the corporate-run government.
    --
    "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
  2. Re:Nice price(Solution? Class action lawsuit) by jkabbe · · Score: 0, Troll

    Class action would be a way.

    Class action doesn't work that way.

    What you can do, though, when a company has a patent and is threatening to sue people is file a lawsuit seeing declaratory judgement. You're basically asking a court (it can still be a jury trial) to declare that you do not violate the patent. One outcome of this could be invalidating the patent.

    It would be perfectly acceptable in this circumstance for a large number of small businesses to join as plaintiffs in this type of action.

    Of course the downside of doing this is that you might lose. But I suppose that's no worse than just paying up for licenses (other than that you'd have to cough up some lawyers fees)

    It's the responsibility of the USPTO not to grant invalid patents.

    It would be nice if it worked that way, but it would be very inefficient to run such a system. A perfectly run USPTO would result in much fewer lawsuits, saving some money. But it would either make it prohibitively expensive to get a patent (thereby eliminating everyone except large corporations from getting one) or it would have to be paid for with taxes (everyone's favorite topic). The system we have now, with some tweaks, is a good compromise.