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World's Largest Patent Troll Fires First Salvo
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Yesterday the biggest software patent troll of all finally woke from its slumbers: Intellectual Ventures filed patent infringement complaints in the US District Court of Delaware against companies in the software security, DRAM and Flash memory, and field-programmable gate array industries. Intellectual Ventures was co-founded by Microsoft's former CTO Nathan Myhrvold, with others from Intel and a Seattle-based law firm." We discussed IV's potential for patent trollery last spring.
Good, I think. Hopefully this will finally cause big companies to fight to get rid of software patents and patent troll companies as a whole.
You've been troll'd!
You've been troll'd!
Have a nice day!
Troll'd
They'll "let" other people use them.... and then sue them. Without even looking at it, I'm sure some of the patents are so broad I'm violating one by breathing.
Well, the original Slashdot article linked in TFS indicates that "it doesn't actually use these patents – except to threaten people with. In other words, Intellectual Ventures is a patent troll". They only license their patent portfolio. Expect this to basically be a shakedown.
Man, I hate that a company can exist just to own patents and sue people.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, it's not good directly, but if the big companies start getting hit by patent attacks, then we might soon see absurd patent laws and approvals get an overdue overhaul. Previously, they've seemed like an advantage to the big players because they form a barrier to entry that keeps out new competition. The big players have armouries of patents and, much like nuclear weapons are supposed to protect through a principle of MAD, they didn't use them on each other much. But it seems there is rampant proliferation and we're seeing patent fights between big players erupt despite this (e.g. Nokia and Apple). So maybe disillusionment with them will creep in. And unlike nuclear weapons, disarmament is simple - big companies can't advocate for a change in the laws of Physics, but changes in the laws of the land, they can do.
Maybe it's optimistic. Maybe it will all settle down into a cartel and the patent threat to small players will remain. But if the patent trolls are greedy enough to really take a bite out of the hand that feeds them, perhaps not.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
this is the first time they've actually made *themselves* vulnerable.
going through subsidiaries is one thing but the end result here is that IV might get screwed (hopefully).
Will IV allow licensing of their patent portfolio, or will they do like a lot of companies, just get patents so nobody else can use them?
Well, from their their website they list all their "products" and services:
The first bullet appears to answer your question that yes, they do. But when you say "patent portfolio" I don't think you'll find anyone with enough cash to access to the whole portfolio, most likely it's one license to one patent at a time. I think their big "product" is providing a service to liquidate your patent very easily (like a pawn shop for patents) so far. This salvo may change that.
My work here is dung.
Corporate leeches like this are why American capitalism is in the toilet.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
these Intellectual Vulture Overlords.
< / s a r c a s m >
Good, I think. Hopefully this will finally cause big companies to fight to get rid of software patents and patent troll companies as a whole.
Actually, the response has not been to rid the world of software patents as you so hoped and the threat of Intellectual Ventures has long been affecting companies. From the article:
The threat posed by Intellectual Ventures helped prompt the rise of firms like RPX Corp. It is paid by companies to buy up potentially threatening patents; the companies receive licenses to those patents, and RPX pledges never to sue over them.
Think about that for a second. The system for software patents is so screwed up and backwards that it's cheaper to pay someone to buy up a patent and promise to never sue over it than it is for you to build a patent war chest and wait for the big one to hit. It's like patent insurance. Easily the most interesting thing in the article to me. Unfortunately this shows tolerance and a way to move forward.
My work here is dung.
My biggest gripe about patents is that they're kind of like legal blackmail. "Pay me money or I'll ruin your company in a large number of frivolous lawsuits." Patents were originally intended to protect inventors, but companies like IV have provided an evil twist.
I thought the justification for continuing tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans was that it would help the economy, because investment would trickle down through innovation / job creation. Here is a wonderful counter point to that argument.
If we want to entice the wealthy to use money to create jobs, why don't tie their rewards directly to job creation? These people are actually killing the economy and making people poor by creating a money-sink in the economy where no value is added. They are not only hurting these big companies with their greed, they are helping to force a divide in wealth distribution and indirectly making real people go hungry.
Someone should patent being a patent troll and then troll all these fucks.
Should I not have the right to sell my patent? If I sell my patent to a holding that chooses to license the patent to other manufacturers, but also sue infringers... Is that trolling?
I genuinely would like to know what /. thinks the correct answers are to these two questions.
*posting as AC to protect my karma*
The article states that Intel is one of the investors of Intellectual Ventures. The article also says that one of the lawsuits was filed against McAfee, which Intel recently bought. So in this case, Intel is hiring someone else to sue itself - it would be much easier to hold an employee venting day if that's all they wanted to do.
Good! The sooner these patent trolls starts swarming the courtrooms, the sooner the absurdity of software patents become obvious. Let's all hope this is the beginning of the end of software patents as well as patents that are so vague and broad as to be meaningless.
Abuses of the law lead to reform.
Wait, I'm confused ... the one link the summary mentions nothing about subsidiaries, so I don't understand ... how might they be making themselves vulnerable?
Sorry if that's a thick sounding question, not done my first coffee yet. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
They only license their patent portfolio.
Oh, how I wish that was all that they did. As you can see from their site:
Intellectual Ventures has been actively inventing since August 2003. The company has filed thousands of patent applications in more than 50 technology areas and has thousands of ideas under consideration.
Since 2003 they have been gumming up the USPTO as well. Note that they've filed thousands of patent applications. No mention of how many were issued. It's entirely possible that they were issued to the actual people working at IV and not to IV but a search shows nine patents issued to IV on the USPTO.
So remember the TED Laser Mosquito/Malaria technology? That's just a patent waiting to be issued then licensed but until then I wouldn't recommend building any.
My work here is dung.
Intellectual Vultures more like.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
They don't do any good anymore. Little inventors cannot even hope to sue a company like Intellectual Ventures unless they can find a lawyer willing--and able--to last years of litigation against the kind of legal resources such a company can focus on them. God help the poor SoB if IV retaliates by claiming infringement on half a dozen of its patents in the process of creating your own patent.
The reason people still support them is "fairness." It's not "fair" that people have great ideas but someone else monetizes them in a better way. Then someone says "they worked so hard and then someone stole the idea." All the hard work (misdirected or that produces nothing of value) in the world and a $1.50 still won't buy you a latte at Starbucks. As it shouldn't!
And ironically, all this system creates is one that is often unjust. Some poor guy who thinks he may become the next Bill Gates will probably have IV nuke him from orbit with a patent lawsuit right as he gets big enough that he's worth having Guido and Vinny, J.D. show up at his office with an offer he can't refuse ("hey, great idea you got going, it would be a shame if anything happened to it...")
Suing in Delaware is a good thing.
The courts are fairly reasonable (in my personal experience watching things go on in person), and the rulings hold peer pressure weight in business matters in other areas, even when they are non-binding.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Imaginary property like patents and copyright always consolidates power over information into the hands of the few. They do not protect the creators, they make ideas a commodity to be traded.
Great Intellect...
It's obvious what their company theme song should be: Never Gonna Give You Up
I am officially gone from
Below are links to background info, but keep in mind that trolls create a tax, but they're not the big problem. They're generally not the patent holders that break standards or exclude free software projects. They're just after money, so they are parasites to the rich. The MPEG-LA patents, for example, are much more harmful (they blocked HTML5 from including a standard video format) and are held by "real" software companies.
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help welcome.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Go easy on the guy- Nathan doesn't have enough money or power... He NEEDs to troll patents to make the voices go away.
And even if you aren't, you just gave someone a foul idea.
Man, I hate that a company can exist just to own patents and sue people.
You do realize that category includes a large number of universities and colleges, right? And publicly funded research labs?
What about companies that received a patent but decided not to pursue the technology themselves? Do they just have to eat the cost of the R&D? Or investors in a company that went bankrupt? They can't recoup any of their investment through the sale of the patent portfolio? Those scenarios are two major sources of IV's patent portfolio, including many of the patents involved in these lawsuits.
That policy would put an enormous chill on research & development investment.
I have no problem with what IBM does. They are a practicing entity which is directly opposite of what IV does. The difference is that a high rate of IBM's patents are granted. This is proper use of the patent system because IBM then makes those products.
I suspect Intellectual Ventures spends a nice chunk of it's money on forcing patents through the system. Thousands of patents that evidently have little business being patents. But their legion of lawyers persists pushing these patents and revisioning them. Yes, they pay thousands of dollars on each patent to do this but this is an abuse of the patent system if they do this just because they have money.
Imagine if this first salvo results in hundreds of millions of dollars going to IV. Then what? Then that money goes into putting more strain on the USPTO and more lawyers are hired to push unwarranted patents through the system. Then those win more suits and more lawyers are hired in a classic breeder model of lawyer propagation. If my calculations are correct, by the year 2054 the Earth will be a mass of patent lawyers expanding outward at the speed of light only to eventually collapse back in on itself causing a "Big Crunch" and ending the universe until the next big bang. Intellectual Ventures must be stopped (with apologies to Stanislaw Lem).
But seriously, the two are totally different in that one produces and one sues.
My work here is dung.
yeah - I saw Delaware and was thinking the same - Patent Trolls file in eastern Texas where the judge just hands the trolls money without any real fight.
Maybe they think they have a strong case, and a winning in DE will make going forward a lot easier.
It could be true too unfortunately (the strong case part). I'd feel better if it was in Delaware Chancellery Court, as the chancellors don't take BS, and rule smart.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Again the difference is in the production. Universities, colleges and research labs still produce things. IV does not. They file patents based on "ideas' (as opposed to something they've developed - which makes me wonder if every patent they file shouldn't violate the whole "you can't patent obvious things" rule) and sit on patents they've purchased. No original research and development goes on there - they are lawyers, not creators.
As for your questions - yes, companies that develop something and choose not to pursue the technology have to eat the cost of R&D. Alternatively they can attempt to sell it to another company which will use it to defray the costs, but they key test, in my mind, should be active usage of the patent. If you patent something which is completely useless but which someone takes and makes obscenely useful and profitable ten years down the road I have no moral objection to saying nuts to you. Same goes for bankrupt companies. If someone purchases it with the intent of using it within the next - lets say five years - then that's fine. But to purchase and sit on it until someone else makes a killing off it? Nope - sorry, you had your chance. Now its someone else's turn.
She's already been reported to Anonymous as the lead prosecutor in the Assange case. She will feel my love yet.
My work here is dung.
Man, I hate that a company can exist just to own patents and sue people.
Under the current patent system, this company type is likely to be the most profitable. By not actually utilising any patents, they are free from any claims of patent infringement. This means that all of those companies which have built up huge patent war chests with the aim of a "mutually assured destruction" if they are ever sued suddenly become vulnerable. There is no "patent war" defense against a company that doesn't make anything. If you don't make anything, you can't be countersued. From a business perspective it's an awesome idea. If Nokia were to set up an independent legal entity and assign ownership of their patents to that entity, that legal entity could then sue Apple without any fear of being countersued. Apple could do the same. I'm surprised we haven't seen any large companies doing this earlier, but if IV is successful, I bet we'll see a lot more of this company type in the future.
If any entities deserve some punitive taxation, these people and their lawyers should be it. They produce nothing and simply suck capital from the producers. How about a 90% tax rate on lawyer fees from lawsuits. Let's see how long the lawyers stick around. Oh wait - lawyers write the tax code, shit.
Conservative, mod down for violating
I'm not sure. I just read SuperFreakonomics and IV is featured (quite positively, I might add) in the book.
According to the authors, IV exists to provide a mass market for IP by acting as a clearinghouse. They purchase patents (from anyone, but that does include small-time engineers/inventors without the capital to develop their creation) and solicit other companies to license them. They also do a fair bit of inventing themselves (including some awesome environmental engineering devices intended to stop global warming and reduce the effects of hurricanes!) so it's not clear to me that they exist *only* to troll.
That being said, it *is* clear that their primary source of income is the licenses from their patents and it's *not* clear what percentage of their profitable patents are things invented in house or externally.
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
>File Patent Infringement Claims
>You were eaten by a Grue!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Better to nuke the whole site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I have a patent on sperm production. I found a violator and told him that he couldn't afford my licensing fee. But his wife could.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Isn't there a rule that you have to inform people about your patents, so it doesn't become like a trap/landmine? "Letting" people invest in the technology first violates this rule.
Permit me to play devil's advocate here.
Let's say you're an inventor. You're great at understanding mechanical problems from angles other haven't thought of. But you don't know anything about finance, managing suppliers, running a factory, marketing or selling. So what you do is you license your patents to people who do know those things. Because you do have common sense you form a corporation to handle the licensing in order to limit your liabilities.
Are you a patent troll because you don't *make* anything? No. You perform an important service to society, namely inventing, and you get paid for it.
So far you've taken all those tasks you don't know about and probably wouldn't be good at (e.g. marketing) off your plate so you can concentrate on what you are good at (inventing). Let's take that a step further. You're still mucking around with non-inventing stuff. You're running an invention company, which involves a lot of non-inventing nonsense that's not your cup of tea. So let's say you sell your patent to a company that will manage the licensing for you. After all, that's what you've done *legally* in the first scenario; the rights to the patent are transferred from one person (you) to another person (your corporation). The only difference is that you don't own or run the recipient.
Is the company you sell your patent do *necessarily* a patent troll? After all they are doing *you* the inventor a useful service by keeping you chained to your magical inventing anvil. Making something is enough to absolve a company of being a patent troll, but not making something isn't enough to convict it. So what is?
I believe that the essential condition for patent trolling is this: a patent troll's business model consists of ambushing companies that inadvertently and independently come up with things that infringe patents it holds. The problem with the patent troll business model is that it actually works best with relatively weak patents. Those are the techniques most likely to be independently arrived at, providing the patent troll with an involuntary "sale".
A true patent troll is a parasite that rather than promoting technological advancement, predates on it by attaching itself to hosts that are going about business as usual. Where the host is financially weak, the parasite drains it dry. Where the host is strong, the parasite does not attack unless the cost of the host defending itself and risking disruption to its profitable businesses exceeds a payoff that looks to the parasite like a good payday.
What I think is that a patent holder ought to be obligated not just to react to patent infringers, but to actually promote the adoption of of its IP, either by making something or marketing the invention to companies that do. If you don't at least market the invention, the patent expires. If you *do* market the invention, until you make one non-ambush sale your damages are limited to something like 5x your promotion costs. That's still a good ROI, just not enough of a pot of gold to start prospecting for crappy patents.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Maybe they should sue Rambus, who from what I can hear is suing everybody again.... seems like their patents might infringe on some of these patents.
Make America grate again!
Intellectual Vultures
Universities, colleges and research labs still produce things. IV does not
You are aware that the patents at issue in these suits were mostly acquired from companies that produce products, right? That these are mostly not IV's own patents?
No original research and development goes on there - they are lawyers, not creators.
This is plainly false. IV employs quite a few creative people. Just check their job listings. I see positions for scientific modelers, computational scientists, fuel performance analysts, fuel mechanical design engineers, and other inventive workers.
the key test, in my mind, should be active usage of the patent.
This is not an original idea. Many countries have 'working requirements' (India and Turkey are two examples). In practice they do not work because there are many, many reasons why a patented invention may not be on the market. It may need regulatory clearance (e.g. a drug), it may depend on other technologies not yet fully developed or commercially practical, it may be too expensive, it may require infrastructure that isn't in place, the company may be waiting on venture capital or waiting out a recession, etc, etc, etc.
If you can come up with an effective, practical working requirement scheme, there's a publishable law review article in it for you as well as some members of Congress that would probably like to hear from you.
There probably isn't but there should be. That's really how these trolls get their abilities.
I think I would like to see some sort of compulsory licensing scheme to avoid patent litigation in which after X many years, any patent holder would have to license their patent out for some standard fee that would change depending on if they produced anything the patent covered or not.
Well, we need more than that, but starting with an anti-troll law would be a great start. Such law might go something like this:
The Jeff Foxworthy "You might be a Patent Troll"
1. If you own a patent and have no intention of actually making something with it, ... ... ...?
2. If you have a bunch of patents and are trying to extract a bunch of money from a bunch of companies,
3. If you
Okay very simply, you cannot transfer patents except in extremely narrow views.
Husband to wife, Company purchase of another company, and internal company.
Thus you cannot buy up patents without buying up companies. It will also help patent holders retain rights and make more money.
Is this not done now?
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
So they are suing three of the four main FPGA vendors (Altera, Actel/Microsemi and Lattice) but not the big one, Xilinx. So did Xilinx settle with IV, and if so, for how much?
Wrong! Retarded patent troll suits are to be filed in East Texas. What kind of noob is this guy?
The simplest way to reform the patent system is to require a patent holder to produce a saleable product based on their patents. If they don't produce a saleable item the patent shold be null and void.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
"investor" == blackmailed victim. Simple double speak.
Patent troll? More like a patent Mofia. ("You usea my IP, I breaka you face")
I don't think he was griping about the patents themselves, mostly. He was simply heaping scorn on a business model whose only income streams are patent licensing and lawsuits, and whose only product is patent applications.
The normal practice in these sorts of things is to "sell" the asset off into a shell company which racks up the lawyer debt, if they win they pay some insane percentage to the parent company as residuals, if they lose there are no assets to come back on for the counter party lawyers fees or any countersuit.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Well now that you've said that you've acknowledged that you know of their claim, and I presume you've continued to breathe. So when the lawsuit comes you'll be liable for triple damages.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Even if there is, do you go to the patent office every time you do something obvious just to check whether the idiots granted a patent on it without having a clue just that they just patented the equivalent of the wheel?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So what they do is prevent anyone from ever doing anything without paying rent. Lovely.
"Nice company you have there. Say, did you know that it's cheaper to hire someone to liquidate you and your company than to pay for your patents?"
Remember kids, when you blackmail and extort, don't charge more than the killer costs to get rid of you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One of the first things out of the mouth of the presiding judge was a statement to the effect of
with photos of the plaintiff's legal team's facial expressions then printed in major publications and websites.
(Yeah... I know it's probably not in the judge's power to look at the patent cases in that way -- at least according to the letter of the law -- but in the spirit of the law, when it was written, you'd think that sort of way of looking at a patent suit would be a given.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
We have seen it. It is ACACIA, they have been doing it for years.
They'll "let" other people use them.... and then sue them. Without even looking at it, I'm sure some of the patents are so broad I'm violating one by breathing.
Exactly... consider that the state of California is known to contain chemicals known to produce cancer.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
What you are thinking of is called Estoppel but thanks to submarine patents which were only ended in 2000 you're screwed until 2017 just on those. That of course don't count all the patents given to tiny companies that end up tits up or selling out to trolls like Intellectual Vultures. And if you actually do a search even if you don't find squat they could claim willful infringement and get treble damages because they could claim "well he searched so he MUST have come across ours". Yeah the whole thing stinks.
Really this whole damned landmine that is patents and copyrights need to be straightened out ASAP, or we might as well just stop producing squat and turn the whole country into a *.A.A trolling group. Because China and India aren't gonna play our little artificial scarcity games and will be happy to build innovations on top of our "IP" while our companies can't take a breath without tripping over someone's patent for "method of oxygen locomotion" and getting bit in the ass. Patents and copyrights were originally envisioned to protect the little guy from being robbed by the big guys, who could just steal their ideas and crush them in the market. But now that legal fees can easily end up in the tens of millions it is nothing but a tool for the megacorps to print money and for trolls like Intellectual Vultures to leech off production without actually having to produce anything.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.