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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.'"
Not sure if you are joking, but for anyone who is wondering what a patent troll is, it is a company that makes money simply by suing other companies for patent infringement. This is different from a company like Microsoft, that creates and sells other products, and is therefore stuck in a mutually-assured-destruction situation that prevents them from suing others for key patents. The problem with patent trolls is that they add absolutely nothing to society; most don't even invent the patented idea, they just buy it from someone else.
Palm trees and 8
Aren't patents wonderful? Spreading innovation everywhere!
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
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
In their careers section they have the following description.
http://www.rembrandtip.com/careers.html
"
Analyze markets and companies to assess IP commercialization opportunities
Develop and model business cases and royalty analysis for specific licensing opportunities or industries
Perform competitive analysis breakdown and strategic direction of leading industry companies
Supporting analysis for new business opportunities around targeted patent acquisitions
"
Give me a freaken break! This company goes out looks at what are up and coming industries. Then it "creates" ideas and patents the heck out of them so that they can license and throttle an up and coming industry.
This is not even funny. Imagine coming up with some really cool idea, but to have it patented away from you. This is how industries are broken. Part of the problem with this is that lawyers can sue without restrictions. Lawyers can go fishing in the industry. They can patent, sue and see what sticks.
To make that go away, you can do the following:
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.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The concept is called adverse possession. In real property someone can aquire possesion of abandoned property
by open and continous use. Now you wouldnt want someone becoming the new patent/copyright holder but the negative part
"extinguishing the rights of the prior holder" would make perfect sense and help deal with both the problems
of patent trolls and abandoned copyrights as well as legalizing abandonware.
If a reasonable person knows or should have known their patent or copyright was being infringed on and takes
no action within say 3 years, their patent or copyright becomes null and void. Also a system could be set up
to allow "notices of intended infringement" to be filed with the copyright office, if the copyright or patent
holder does not respond within the required time then the copyright or patent would lapse and the work
would go into the public domain.
I knew this girl from my college that worked at Rembrandt.
She explained that the way that these operations work is they hire students with slightly above rudimentary technical skills from the local universities in technical courses of study. Their "discovery" process simply entails these students trying to reverse engineer the mechanisms that they hold patents for. However, since they're not trying to actually build the device, they usually stop when they have a guess that suits their needs.
To put it bluntly, they do not really know; it is a wild guess, and hope that they can litigate it successfully.
I agree. What makes this troll particularly disgusting (for the benefit of the non-RTFA'ers) is that it is based upon patents originally owned by AT&T which had agreed to license the patents to all for Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The patents got bought up by this troll company which is now refusing to honor those terms. If this is allowed to stand, then no company can ever rely on FRAND as a business assurance. Any patented process could get sold to an IP management company and be fair game for extortion.
I propose two short-term fixes.
First, FRAND terms should be able to be added to the patent itself, either originally or through some amendment process. That way, if it gets bought or sold, the IP holding compnay has to adhere to the original terms.
Second, companies that are developing open standards should be allowed some kind of superpatent, where (presumably for higher fees) there is a public hearing at which the final standard is vetted, and challengers are given sufficient time to come forward with their own patents which may encumber upon the proposed open standard, and they can negotiate whatever terms are in their best interest, without restriction. Afterwards, though, if the superpatent is granted, no more challenges will be entertained. Anyone who finds a prior patent in their closet or falling out of their portfolio five or ten years hence will be out of luck.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
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.
I do not know what their patent is, but the ideas from the DOCSIS MAC layer are also used in all 802.11 standards as well as satellite modem standards. The MAP metod to mix CSMA-CD and mandatory transmit opportunities is the de-facto method for managing Layer2 QoS in all subscriber oriented tech that has hit the market for the last 10 years. There are other places where other network standards have heavily borrowed from DOCSIS.
So if their patents are anywhere close this it will get extremely entertaining...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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