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Patent Troll Attacks Cable, Digital TV Standards
DavidGarganta writes "A patent troll firm in suburban Philadelphia, Rembrandt IP Management, is trying to force large cable operators and major broadcasters to pay substantial license fees on the transmission of digital TV signals and Internet services. The firm is apparently trying to get 0.5% of all revenues from services that supposedly infringe on the patents. The targeted companies include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Charter and Cablevision. According to MultiChannel News, Rembrandt's assault is especially aggressive, even for a patent troll: 'It is attacking two key technology standards used by the cable and broadcast industries, CableLabs' DOCSIS and the Advanced Television Systems Committee's digital-TV spec. "If they're successful, this could affect everything from the cost of cable service to the price of TVs," said the attorney close to the litigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.'"
Aren't patents wonderful? Spreading innovation everywhere!
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
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SCO isn't a patent troll. SCO does have a business that is not based on suing others for patent infringement, and that's why they are in so much trouble now: countersuits. A patent troll is immune to being sued because it does not distribute anything, it just makes money through royalties and lawsuits, and so can't really be sued for anything. It is actually a very dangerous entity, because it has nothing to lose.
Palm trees and 8
Sooner or later, we'll save ourselves untold trouble if we vastly scale back the notion of Intellectual (imaginary) property to something relatively sensible.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
just look at the list of companies.
they may not get along with each other, but the last thing you want to do is force them to unite against a common enemy.
i think they just opened a can of woop-ass.
While I think all this patent troll stuff is bullshit, it is worth pointing out that if I accept your last statement, patent trolls ARE providing a service. By purchasing patents, these patent trolls provide a market for patents which puts money in the hands of small time inventors, who don't have the resources to commercialize their inventions. Without a patent market, it would be more difficult for small inventors to get paid. (Inventors inside companies already have R&D resources to convert patents to products.)
The fact that these companies didn't invent the idea does not negate their claim. As long as we treat ideas as property, then people should be free to buy and sell that property. You can own your TV despite having not created it. You exchanged money for it in a mutually agreeable transaction.
The real problem is the patent itself, not the troll. The troll just highlights the underlying problem. If every patent were as efficiently enforced as the few that fall into the hands of patent trolls, commerce would grind to a halt, and we would have to do something about it.
That's an interesting take on patent trolls. But it's kind of like a guitar player selling his guitar to pay for a kick-ass amp... Whoops.
Without a patent market, it would be more difficult for small inventors to get paid.
How about this instead? Just make and sell your damn invention. If it's that good, I should think you'd have no problem. Want to sell out, but just a little? OK, how about selling exclusive licensing rights to a bigger company for royalties? I don't know. It seems to me that there are a *lot* of other ways small inventors can profit from a good idea that *don't* include selling the exclusive rights to create their widget to a company who intends to not make the widget and just sue others who do.
Maybe this is an oversimplification, but if you don't intend to make the damn thing you want to buy the patent to, you shouldn't be allowed to buy it in the first place.
It's time to kill software patents once and for all. This is not what the patent system was intended to do. There's no investment by the litigant, other than monetary. It's not like the company involved is offering any value to the TV broadcast industry. It's nothing but a tax, worse than a tax because at least your tax money has some return. What Rembrandt is doing is a legal extortion racket. In any other setting this would be a crime.
Gotcha capitalism at its finest. Sickening. Enough is enough already.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Everyone keeps talking about redesigning patent laws to stop this. The federal government has the right to take patents away for the public good. For example if there was a patent on say Flu vaccinations, and the company wasnt producing enough or charging too much. The government can take that away and have other people manufacture the vaccine. Just write your senator and representatives and have them void these patents on the grounds they infringe and hamper on a standard mandated by congress for broadcasting. Congress requires that broadcasters use this standard, it was one of several options they considered. They chose the ATSC format and therefore should convert the patents to Public Domain or take the patent away as emminent domain.
1) Make lawyers work pro-bono (as they do in many countries). That is they can only charge so much.
2) Make lawyers pay if the lawsuit fails. For example, if say somebody brought up a lawsuit where they wanted 50 billion say, "if you loose you need to come up with say 1%". That way you can still sue, but you better have a good case. Otherwise it is going to cost you quite a bit. Problem is, laws are written by lawyers, and they generally don't like to skewer their own cash cows. Patent reform, you might see. Tort reform, and/or the kind of thing you're talking about... not likely, unfortunately.
Pi Ran Out
A better example is Ford, though they have fallen on hard times of late.
The real problem, aside from patents themselves, is that patent trolls are immune to retaliation. Think about it. They have complete immunity. John W. Campbell, the editor of Analog magazine in the 1960s and 1970s had an interesting take on immunity and corruption. The old saw has it that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Campbell suggested that was wrong, that it is not power that corrupts, but immunity: "immunity corrupts and absolute immunity corrupts absolutely." If I can do anything whatsoever that comes into my head, without there being any any chance of retribution, what is there to stop me? ... Nothing. Nothing at all.
... absolute corruption.
Unless some way is found to make patent trolls seriously liable to massive (and probably personal) financial retribution, they will continue to sink further into parasitism and corruption
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Not quite. http://www.eolas.com/research.html
Dr. Michael Doyle of Eolas is actually a well-respected researcher in bioinformatics, is partnered with the University of California and demonstrated a working plug-in enabled browser at Xerox PARC in 1993. He is, incidentally, the son of a noted inventor, so the urge to create seems to run in the family. The company's other projects include SAGA, Fios, Zmap and ODIN.
In 1994, he offered to license the plug-in technology to Microsoft and was rebuffed. So, he went after them. Incidentally, Eolas' license page specifically states that Dr. Doyle is a supporter of open source and non-commercial uses covered by this so-called "906 patent" are allowed via the issuance of a royalty-free license. http://www.eolas.com/licensing.html
As much as I hate patents, Eolas isn't the patent troll that some folks make then out to be; Doyle's idea was to build a browser-centric platform for the biomedical industry, and the company actively does software research and creates actual technologies. Microsoft's violation of the "906" patent made Eolas' platform project commercially nonviable, at least in Eolas' eyes and Doyle has stated his case that there were no legal alternatives after Microsoft refused to license the technology from them in '94.
And lest anyone weep for Microsoft, this is just an example of "what goes around, comes around," as VirtualDub developer Avery Lee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualDub#Advanced_Systems_Format_support can tell you.
SCO, on the other hand, bought what they thought at the time was exclusive ownership of somebody else's (Bell Labs/AT&T, University of Ca.) technology, whole cloth, made little if any improvement to it, and attempted to use it as a patent/copyright hammer to flatten other software projects that demonstrably violated none of SCO's IP/licenses/patents. At least, none that SCO could ever prove in court. I would consider SCO much closer to a patent troll that Eolas, as they didn't invent the hammer they were attempting to wield. Eolas, at least, did design and build their own hammer.
Why cant people sue the USPTO when they screw up? What makes them exempt from having to exercise due care and responsibility to the public?
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