Slashdot Mirror
Patent Troll Says Anyone Using Wi-Fi Infringes
akahige sends this excerpt from an article at TechDirt:
"The Patent Examiner blog has the incredible story of Innovatio IP, a patent troll that recently acquired a portfolio of patents that its lawyers (what, you think there are any employees?) appear to believe cover pretty much any Wi-Fi implementation. They've been suing coffee shops, grocery stores, restaurants and hotels first — including Caribou Coffee, Cosi, Panera Bread Co, certain Marriotts, Best Westerns, Comfort Inns and more. ... The lawyer representing the company, Matthew McAndrews, seems to imply that the company believes the patents cover everyone who has a home Wi-Fi setup, but they don't plan to go after such folks right now, for 'strategic' reasons."
So, I guess amateur radio operators have been infringing since, what... the early 1900's? Voice is just data, right..?
--- no sig to see here... move along.
At some point its just cheaper to pay someone to take a hit out on a troll like this. Maybe invite him out on your new yacht and have a little accident...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
what, avoiding a lynch mob?
Kill them with fire.
Ok. This is classic patent trolling. They aren't going after the Wi-Fi manufacturers who have the resources to possibly fight this in court but rather going against the little people. There's an obvious fix for this. Force people to sue the companies that make potentially infringing technologies rather than the people who buy them until there's a precedent with the company that the tech is infringing. Unfortunately, with the grab-bag of junk that is America Invents now done, everyone is going to avoid serious patent reform for another decade. So this isn't getting fixed for a while. Then we'll probably get some other terrible mix of good and bad stuff in some new law and the whole process will repeat itself. Good for the lawyers. Not very good for everyone else.
They could not recoup their losses going after home users the way they can with business users.
Palm trees and 8
Thats funny I thought that the CSIRO owned the patent on WIFI http://www.itnews.com.au/News/158194,csiros-wi-fi-patent-victory-earns-200m-and-counting.aspx
Anonymous HELP!
The page linked to by this summary did not explain why the patent trolls are going after the users of WiFi devices, rather than vendors. This seems like a notable change from the usual strategy of patent holders; after all the places mentioned are making little - if any - money off of their use of WiFi devices.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Or at the very least, declare this kind of trolling behavior to be unethical and find a way to start disbarring them.
I'm sure part of their strategy is to target small companies and attempt to bully them in paying a few grand to "license" the technology. I would imagine that these guys know this case will be thrown out once a defendant with resources goes to court. I'm not going to claim to be a patent expert, but I do know a couple of things: 1) The patent has to be actively protected. So if it was filed in the 90s and not enforced until today, from my understanding they essentially forfeit the right to later lay claims to the patent. 2) If it is known to "someone skilled in the art of" as the next logical step, then the patent is null. I obviously have no clue what all of those patents exactly cover, but I'm going to run that with prior art in wireless transmission in radio and television that there is a precedent that data transmission via an industry standard would be a next logical step. These asshats need to be nuked with a low orbit ion cannon.
Good for the lawyers. Not very good for everyone else.
That's what we get for making so many lawyers in this country. People bitch about how med schools and dental schools "don't make enough doctors/dentists". Law schools make absurd surpluses of lawyers and now we see what happens when we have too many of them. The lawyers aren't getting enough business from people, so they have to find new ways to keep themselves busy by suing each other.
Not to say that we couldn't use more medical and dental professionals, but we sure as hell don't need any more lawyers. Somewhere in between there should be a happy medium.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"The Patent Examiner blog has the incredible story of Innovatio IP..." the only thing incredible about this story is that this company isn't instantly obliterated by some kind of sane patent law (oxymoron?)
This solves one problem only once. Then the portfolios passes to the next person and the problem repeats itself.
To solve the general problem, we need to encourage more ridiculous patent trolls. This needs to get to a critical threshold where the entire system is brought on trial and exposed for the absolute absurdity that it is.
Some brave(r) HW manufacturer or service provider needs to act as an indemnifier and take up the fight on behalf of their customers...
Of course this would only fight off the current troll and would then make them a stalking horse for whatever crocodiles hold more potent submarine patents...possibly large competitors of theirs..
-I'm just sayin'
...the western world's economy is collapsing. When you make ideas property, everyone gets hurt, even the big guys (but more so, the little guys). We already have patents and copyright strangling the market and preventing innovation, and now we're seeing more and more their use to undermine technology that is already a basis part of out society.
This is just another example in an infinitely long chain of abuses, and still there is essentially no proof that either patents or copyright actually encourage much of anything. So, are we going to abolish imaginary property, or fade into legally enforced obscurity? Because I know China won't give a crap about our patents once they no longer need to sell us cheap junk. If all we export is old ideas and lawsuits, there will reach a point when other powerful countries just shut down that trade all together.
Wake up, people, now is the time to elect people who are going to do something about this untenable situation. You aren't going to get another chance.
Great Intellect...
But but.. how are they going to find a judge who doesn't use wireless technology? The entire system is against them! Oh, the poor trolls!
Seriously though, maybe this one.
I once had an bet with another character to see who could perform the most evil act.
My character found a bunch of trolls and chopped them up into 1" cubes and froze them solid. He then walked all around town tossing a cube or two into all the alleyways, under porches, into the trash bins, and so on. A week later the town was gone.
Didn't win the bet, though...
I just feel sorry for the people that are going to get hurt with these frivolous lawsuits
They go after home users before they go after ISP's because their so strategic reasoning is that home users will be less likely to fight them than an ISP would.
Why hasn't anyone set up a website to help people fight these patent trolls? Don't look at me, I am broke right now.
Would I be infringing the patent if I used WaveLAN? Its wireless networking developed in the 80's according to Wikipedia. No patent relating to that should still be valid.
What if I bought a broadcom product covered by the broadcom owned patents before they were sold to this troll?
You shouldn't be able to buy an unenforced patent that is in wide use then sue everyone infringing it.
Selling a product covered by your patents without requiring a license to use it should implicitly grant any use of that product an irrevokable license to the patent. Therefore any product sold before the patents were sold to the troll should already have an indefinite license. Any thing sold after should force the troll to first sue the company still selling the product.
Extending that common sense further, any other company who produced these infringing products should be granted the right to continue to produce the products and to grant the same rights to the use of the product.
Regardless of all that common sense this is a patent covering a technology based on an IEEE standard that has been in common use since 1999.
it would likely lead to patent reform. I wish him luck
Wifi was invented in Australia by CSIRO I think who make millions from company's who use wifi on things like mobile phones. Don't understand how a patent troll is suing people in America for using wifi. Seams dodgy to me
Curious to hear from any lawyers here. If these guys are truly abusing the court system with frivolous lawsuits, can't they be disciplined by the bar association or by the courts themselves?
I hold a patent on the process of buying patents from other companies and then suing people who it might be argued are using something vaguely related to my patents and who are wealthy enough to pay me off but not wealthy enough to defend themselves legally.
These bastards owe me money!
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Let's pretend for a moment, that these people aren't just trolls looking for quick settlements. Difficult, I know.
But in what universe does it make sense for a patent holder to sue the end user? That would be like Apple suing a consumer for buying a Samsung tablet.
I would like to see one of the troll victims post an open letter that says something along the lines of, "Go away or prepare to be counter-sued into oblivion." Alas, TFA makes it sound like someone could try that and still lose. :(
Good luck trying to find an impartial Judge to rule on that one....
WHEN PATENTS ATTACK!
------->http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack
Pretty good story on Patent Trolls and the like if you want some more examples of this type of robbery.
Sign it...
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-patent-office-cease-issuing-software-patents/vvNslSTq
The mature and dignified response is to take a page directly from Cave Johnson. Burn down their houses with lemons.
Yea right the patent system is not broken ...
Just quick question hove can I infringe. I did not steal the patent. Should the manufacturer not be responsible ?
I didn't find any information about the patents themselves, just that they'd been acquired from Broadcom.
How can we properly rant about "obvious" and "prior art" if we don't know what the patents entail?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
My opponent polymorphed himself [alter self] into an image of the [other] town's mayor, then went to the biggest orc camp he could find.
He killed their spiritual leader and raped the leader's woman in full view of the assembled horde, then gave a rather insulting speech about manhood, fighting capability, and followed it up with demands that they leave the area before his "town" came out and took them all into slavery.
Then he "flew" away.
A week or so later, just about the entire orc nation descended on the (unawares & unwarned) town. They killed the men, burned the buildings to the ground, and took the women and children as slaves.
The judge [of the bet] deemed that both towns had been destroyed, but the 2nd action caused more suffering.
Alas.
They're not going after home users yet but they never will. They may try to make it sound like there is a persuasive reason for end users to buy a license or something but taking a non-commercial entity to court over using an unlicensed or infringing device is asking for it to be thrown out with prejudice. End users are not selling equipment or services. Anyone could build, from scratch, a device that infringes on every patent every filed and, unless they tried to sell it, no one can say a damned thing about it. Do your best to get this slapped down now, but don't fret about millions of home router users getting named in an RIAA/MPAA style lawsuit.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
About as often as police get disciplined for overstepping their authority. (basically never)
Say you invent the "automatic wood-chopper". You patent it, perhaps even charge someone for the right to built it. That's fine.
Then John Doe gets the idea to speed up the job of cutting down the tree in his backyard by strapping axes to the blades of his ride on lawnmower*. He has never heard of your "automatic wood-chopper", and probably doesn't even fully understand what a patent is. Even if axe+lownmower is exactly what is written on your patent you have no right to sue him. He built this item himself and for personal use, not commercial or for sharing. Same for a home wifi setup, it is available for personal use within the limits of the access point.
Hotels are a little different. but its easy enough to say they covered their asses when they paid for the hardware and associated firmware. What they do with a product once they have it is their business.
*don't try this at home
Isn't there *something* that can be done about this?
We've got a fair number of layers on this site. Can't someone come up with an innovative chess-move style action that would hurt these guys?
Maybe getting all the sued companies to file a class-action suit against the router manufacturers, in order to bring big guns into the fight?
Maybe sue the troll for barratry or something? Some procedural complaint about the practice?
This is the sort of thing that encourages Lulzsec behaviour. What can we suggest that would be a better solution?
I am so sick of hearing all about these things.....wish I could have the IP to the right to sue!
....Just by being themselves.
I've never been a fan of government regulation because they also tend to over-reach and worse, they strip people of liberty. However, every single business regulation can be traced back to someone, or group of someones, who obnoxiously pushed enough people to the edge. We had robber-baron railroad operators. That brought the common-carrier regulations. We had dangerous work conditions and awful long (non-voluntary) work hours. Along came labor regulations and OSHA. A lake burned in the midwest and that gave us the God-forsaken EPA.
These guys are no different. The patent trolls will continue to make public asses of themselves to the point where eventually, some politician will say "ENOUGH!" and give them the spanking they deserve. Sadly, I don't see how the private sector can do anything about it on it's own. It's not like we can just take our business elsewhere.
So while I sigh when I read about the new troll of the week on /., I also look forward to the day when they reap the real fruit of their "labor". Unfortunately, there will likely be unintended consequences that harm innocent people and businesses in the process, as regulation always does.
Make patent ownership non-transferable, or only transferable once from a person to a corporation (to benefit individual inventors who may need to sell their patents in order to bring inventions to market).
And have they considered such wireless packet data prior art as AlohaNet?
Smart move though, going after a bunch of small users for a couple of K$ each. Not enough to justify mounting a defense and too much trouble for defense attorneys to put together a class action defense (if such a thing exists).
I don't care if they have the worlds most valid patent, just the fact that they admit intentionally go for a lump sum slightly below the cost of challenging it should be enough to throw them in jail for blackmailing or worse
This is but one example of how horribly broken our patent system is. What a shame.
This will very likely blow over. Cisco and Motorola have brought a suit against Innovatio alleging that all the manufacturers of wifi equipment that they use in their products had licenses from Broadcomm, and Innovatio gave a license to Broadcom. So why exactly is Innovatio attacking the little guys? One can only suppose that they don't fancy their chances against the big guys. So far that strategy has paid off, but for how much longer? Only problem is that the complaint says "on information and belief" for every allegation about the licenses. So the truth will come out in the wash sometime.
Innovatio (it means “innovation” in Latin, McAndrews said)
Innovatio. And you can leave off the last N - That's the N for savings!
There's a homeless guy on the street who says all the lamps are spying on him. I fail to see much difference between the two. They're both threatening in their own ways.
No incentive is needed. The vast bulk of things that are patented are stupidly easy to "invent", so anyone can do so without incentive, and if one company won't, another one will.
It's only dumbass lawyers who have never had a novel idea in their lives who don't understand that techies come up with 20 new ideas before breakfast. Ideas are cheap and plentiful.
Patents are completely unnecessary in the majority of fields today. If you can't create something and manufacture it without the protectionism of patents, you don't deserve incentive, you deserve to go out of business.
Back when manufacturing was hard there was some reason for giving manufacturers the encouragement of a limited monopoly, but that is no longer the case. In today's world, patents just chill manufacturing instead of encouraging it.
Not that I think this would solve the problem; but at some point a motel owner might think, "wait, they sold me something and didn't warn me that I had to get a license?".
The next step is a class action against the manufacturer of the router, suing for whatever they paid the troll, damages, etc.
Then the troll and the manufacturer's lawyers can go off and circle jerk someplace. That way all the insanity is shoved back into the corporate arena. At some point, the corporations might even realize that it's just like a tax. Then they'll figure out how not to pay it.
Yeah I know it probably wouldn't work; but it would be nice to turn the absurdity back in on itself.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I wonder how the Australian Government feels about this? After all, the CSIRO (Aus gov research division) holds the recognised patent on 802.11 technology: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/04/23/2550483.htm.
Some one has to say it.
these guys are wrong the CSIRO hold these patents...
Come after me, please do!
It took a lake catching on fire to warrant preventing corporations from poisoning us.
Looks like it's going to take the equivalent to make the government step up and prevent this crap.
Hat Guy is in it for the movie rights.
Some one has to say it.
No, no they don't. They really don't.
#DeleteChrome
One small problem, the Australian research organisation know as the CSIRO owns the patents covering most of the functionality of WiFI
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/CSIRO_wifi_patent
Please, these cockroaches can surely survive a nuclear blast.
No, there's only one way to be sure, though regrettably the innocent must die with the guilty.
EXTERMINATUS! IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR!
Patents have nothing to do with it because it's the SYSTEM that forces you to respect the patents of another no-matter how unrelated or obtrusive they may be.
I wonder who has the patent of a REPUBLIC that has been forcing us into slavery and sues us for trespassing onto their registered REPUBLIC patenting. We aren't allowed to use anytihng REPUBLIC oriented, so we're expected to use a Democracy, but even that too we are denied the benefits of it.
For all intensive purposes...
Try "For all intents and purposes".
Since clearly the government is on the payroll of these fools, I think it's time we started defending ourselves. The public needs its own patent portfolio, that can be used by anyone to go after patent trolls.
We, patent trolls inc, request that /. immediately remove all references to our trademark "Patent Troll".
Failure to do so will result in litigation.
I think everyone should direct their concerns to the law firm. Just make an honest inquiry about avoiding the infringement and litigation. Maybe offer them some free network testing in exchange for not getting sued. Maybe do some testing first as a show of good faith.
Contact the law firm (Niro,Haller and Niro):
Telephone: (312) 236-0733
Facsimile: (312) 236-3137
The people of the United States own the air waves, that's why there is a FCC to manage it.
Sounds to me like the FCC needs to fine the patent owner for unlicensed resale of airwaves since it is a one time fee.
So lets just say there's 100 million devices * $10,000 per day (a generous fine from the FCC) * last 10 years.
I think $3.6 quadrillion might make the patent trolls stop and think about what they are doing when they decides to go on a rampage. Oh and there really isn't a way around an FCC fine...
As a young lawyer representing slaves and former slaves ? In a hundred years people may look back and think many things, that doesn't make any of them accurate.
The patent troll lawyers are actually helping the cause of getting patent reform. Without their antics, there would be nothing to illustrate how broken the system is.
I would have thought that Starbucks (the largest coffee chain in the USA and possibly the entire world) would have been a target since WiFi has been a huge part of their business lately.
Or McDonalds (the largest fast food joint on the planet with over 11,500 WiFi locations in the US alone)
There is an easy fix for this. Make patents non-transferable. Whomever invents something can claim a patent on the invention and reap the benefits for a limited time. Once the inventor dies, or the company folds or gets bought, the invention becomes public domain.
The real problem is that patents or no longer a means, they are the end.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
I'm using WiFi right now, in deliberate violation of Innovatio IP 's patents, and I don't care, because it's only a USA patent, and USA patents have NO CREDIBILITY ANYMORE. Nowadays, I simply laugh when I see that a thing has a USA patent, and immediately go about "violating" it.
In any case, CSIRO owns the WiFi technology patents.
There was this tv comedy series called, what was it again? Ah yes, Just Shoot Me. After all, there has to be some copies of Guns and Ammo in your rented office space.
The company is demanding a one-time lump sum licensing payment between $2,300 and $5,000 from each of the several hundred defendants targeted in its lawsuits, McAndrews said. Some of the defendants have already settled, he added. [...] “This is not a seat-of-the-pants, fly-by-night shakedown.
Law school probably offers an entire range of courses teaching their students how to keep a straight face.
On August 11, 1942, US Patent 2,292,387 was granted to George Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey", Heddy Lamarr's married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. It was never implemented at the time. Perhaps owing to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution. Lamarr and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Wi-Fi. Antheil was pianist who wrote some Hollywood film music and performed. He was one brick short of a load and was known to come out to perform and lay a pistol on the piano implying that he would shoot anyone who disturbed the performance. In 1933 Heddy Lamarr became famous (or infamous) for making the film "Ecstasy" in which she appeared nude and was depicted having an orgasm. It was banned pretty much everywhere. When promoting war bonds she offered to kiss any man who bought at least $250K. She raised $7 million in one night. President Obama has ordered an overhaul of the patent system. Currently 500,000 patent applications haven't even been opened. I'm personally considering a patent on "selling things for money". If you have an algorithm you want to patent, consider programming that piece of code into an FPGA using VHDL and patent the circuit. Patents on circuits hold up very well in court.
Well, the public (most /.-ers are more enlightened despite all their failings, first!!!) gets what they want. I'm not sure that characterizing an upstanding company that specializes in deriving value from patents as a troll is correct, I mean they just do what the system is setup to allow them to do. That's what you get if you allow to monopolize even the most trivial thoughts. (And you thought that your thoughts are free, lucky for you there is not yet a way to extract them, hence it's hard to prove that you are infringing, ....)
Complaining about undesirable results of a system that is clearly setup to favour these results sounds somehow stupid:
-) The PO basically issues patents for anything. Wonder if they would even detect it if someone would try to submit a filing done mostly by a clever text generator.
-) There is no incentive for the PO to generally control the quality of patents, they get their fees, and any fallout from stupid patents is paid by somebody else. Doing their job correctly actually would lower their "ROI". (And even being a public office, I think that many administrators would like to be able to point out that they did not use tax money, they could finance themselves from their fees, right?)
-) The fees of the PO are big enough that a private person might have troubles creating patents on the fly, but for many corporations, these costs are trivial.
-) The cost of invalidating a blatantly bad patent is paid by the defendants. The owner/filer of a fraudulent patent has basically no liability, the worst that can happen is that their patent gets invalidated. With the costs associated with the legal system, for many defendants, no matter if they infringe, or if the patent is obviously wrong, it's economically cheaper to pay highwaymen than to fight them.
To summarize, "patent trolls" are inherent in the patent system as practiced in the US. Given the conditions it's a low cost, no liability way to generate potentially huge windfalls. The lawyers trolling can point out that they are no experts in the subject matter, and they bought the "IP" in good faith. And the inventors can point to the official PO approval. And the PO, when confronted with an invalidated patent, can point out that this only proves that the system works as intended, ...
Don't they?
With due reverence to the film
'They shoot horses don't they'...
Maybe someone needs to go after them in a somewhat more persuasive manner know what i mean and yes before the PFK clan pipe up yes i do condone the use of baseball bats lenghts of gas pipe or steam pipe but leave the shooters at home they just need education not deleteing know what i mean . Ask the local car thieves what happens when i catch them you'll get the idea..
No, we leave it up to the patent office to invalidate any prior art. No matter how much of it exists.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
There is no hell deep enough.
I just hope they can shut down all Wi-Fi because the Wi-Fi infringes on a patent that a bunch of lawyers bought (over a Wi-Fi connection). It would be perfect irony, and hopefully it would wake up someone in Washington to do something about the patent laws.
Leaving out prehistoric times, we (i.e. the majority of our ancestors) first were "peons". Then we became "citizens", and after that "consumers". Now we are all "infringers".
Say, did I just hear something go " WHOOOOOOOOOSH!!! "?
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
...when you need them?
they offered a free license to 'their' 'technology' i would refuse to accept it, returning all correspondence in a traceable manner, and make it damn clear that their patent has zero merit
I know that there are probably issues with this, but could the bulk of patent problems be solved if we simply made them non-transferable?
-Styopa
This is the american way, it always has been. The land of opportunities... of being sued just for breathing
This patent for instance clearly states 'redundant': http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=33&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=6714559&OS=6714559&RS=6714559 What about sites with only one wap? There are so many loopholes with this....it's ridiculous. Broadcom themselves never even claimed to own the only rights to wifi back when they had this paltry array of patents, let alone all of the others that they posses. Then I came across this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/50324501/Innovatio-IP-Ventures-v-ABP-et-al "JURY TRIAL DEMANDED" Good luck, assholes.
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
I feel this is a threat to my personal liberty and lawfullness. As such, I should have a legal recourse to address the concern. "WiFi users violate our patent and are 'stealing' from our property'". I am a WiFi user. :. I am stealing from this company. I do not think this libellous accusation should be allowed to stand. There is a class of people who would share in this concern.
Is it possible to initiate a class action leverage pre-empting enforcement of the patent, or better the patent itself, based on such published insinuation and lack of evidenciary support or forum?
IANAL
he says rhetorically
Need to acquire the patent for pitchforks first and shutdown all manufactures.
If I were in the business where my attornies were just sitting idly by, like a McDonalds, Starbucks, or another business that can see this thing snowball, I would sic them on these slimetards and tangle up this operation from thousands of different POVs. What this patent troll is collecting is just to bank their attack on the big boys. Don't need a crystal ball for this!
I would say Wifi is a technology that has been Genericized like the refrigerator for the automobile.
If the last five Presidents have taught us anything, it's that our problems can be solved with violence.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The author pretty much tells us why we can believe this patent troll is working for Broadcom. These are probably real patents then. But they're using troll tactics to keep them out of a bigger more expensive fight. Pretty nasty.
//TODO: signature
How about trolling the current patent system out of existence...
There is practically no court here where this style of court could been even started.
Owner of technology is not responsible for patent infringement caused by the device manufacturers. Simplest solution would have to been to sue the manufacturers that basically sold you stolen goods. That's illegal when an individual does it.
But people puss-out when it comes to litigation. I've been in and out of court so many times throughout my life (civil and criminal), I should have been a lawyer. Arrested 3 times. Justice system is just a silly game, and there is no need to be worked up about it.
My (ex)wife owed some loan shark car dealership that preys on the financially inept. She owed about $3000 on it. They repossessed it after not making some payments and claimed she owed them about $40000. They want to charge her the remaining $3000, the cost to reposes it, the lost revenue for not being able to resell it while she had it, etc. Classic case of using the legal system to bully someone.
So she goes to court without any representation (I wasn't about to foot a bill for a lawyer on this no-win case). She tells the court that she will not pay it. Period. The judge scolds her and she says she's not paying it. They turn around and sue me (her husband) for the money.
They thought they were being clever. My wife and I filed for a quick, no-contest divorce. I went to court (without representation) for my suit on the $40000. I asked how I could be liable for her debt when I'm not married to her and wasn't married to her when she accumulated the debt. I showed them my divorce papers.
To say the judge was PISSED is an understatement. He told me that if he could, he'd hold me in contempt of court for obvious abuses of the legal system and for demeaning the institution of marriage. I told him that he doesn't deserve his seat on the bench, and that I would do everything I could to see that he doesn't get re-elected. I didn't actually waste my time with it.
My (ex)wife and I are still "married". Just not on paper.
Point is, people take this shit way too seriously and there is always a clever way out of this civil shit. Next time, sue the device manufacturer for selling you stolen goods and you being held liable.
This is very clearly a case of extortion, defined as, "the practice of obtaining something, esp. money, through force or threats." Bullying the user of the infringing technology instead of the company that made it is NOT okay. I hope a criminal investigation is opened against them because seems to me to be a clear case of illegal extortion. All of these companies should send something to the FTC, US Attorney General, State Attorney General, and anyone else they can think of.
Should probably be done strictly by Wifi from coffee shops and hotels, as just a minor statement.
We should pool some money, and file for a Trade Mark on the name "Innovatio IP Ventures" (which they do not have/own or filed) Then we can sue them for millions in damages, and or obtain their patents. Lets go dudes! Someone with cut throat Lawyer balls contact me and will get this going! All proceeds will go to our schools of choice!
Heddy was a cutie. Interesting note; The seven million that she raised in one night for offering a kiss is worth $116,599,299.52 in 2010 dollars...
Yeah. Having a few thousand angry defendants show up on his doorstep and lynching him would PROBABLY put a crimp in his plans.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
someone needs get a patent on patent trolling.
This is just more proof that IP trolls are on drugs. Because no one in their right mind would consider these claims valid. Oh please. pfffftttt.
I'm old, not dead. Well that's my 2 cents worth, your mileage may vary. I say what I think, not what you want to hear.
No, this is NOT the patent system. Not at all. This is a shakedown under the guise of 'patent' violations.
You go after the manufacture of devices that violate patents, not the end users. It's like PS 3 users getting sued becasue Sony violated a patent in makes the PS3.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
These trolls ask for it. Tar them, toss some chicken feathers over 'm and kick 'm out of their suits. I meant their offices. This scum tries to hold us hostage, why should we meekly submit?
I'm serious. Tar and feathers. I've seen worse proposals, but that goes to far so I'd go for the tar. And feathers, of course.
--frank[at]unternet.org
During the period of time that these patents were filed (i.e. until about last week, or whenever the recent patent law change takes effect), the US was a First-to-Invent country. But even besides that, if there's published prior art, you don't get to claim patent protection on that part, only on the work you've done that was novel and non-obvious. First-to-file means you've got an incentive to keep your stuff secret until you're ready to file a patent, and an incentive to file your patent as soon as possible to prevent somebody else from patenting something similar first, and if we're lucky the new patent law will make submarine patents harder rather than easier. And of course the Patent Office is much better about "prior art" that's part of a filed patent that's referenced by the new patent's applicant than they are about prior art that was well-known in the public literature.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So, you go to Fry's, buy a WiFi router and a WiFi laptop or whatever, and set them up at home or at work. Must we conclude that it is not obvious to anyone "skilled in the art" that you can use the WiFi router to connect your laptop to a network? What are patents for again?
Almost every past civilization has fallen due to poor maintenance on the infrastructure, we seem to be faring pretty well with keeping it going just enough while slipping in hints of innovation here and there. But damnit, I don't want to be part of the civilization that goes down in history as "collapsed arguing over who owned what parts of the infrastructure".
TFA gives a URL for the lawsuit, and the lawsuit lists the patents (they're supposedly attached, but you have to play games to make that work - easier to get them from Google.) I converted them to text - here's the list. It's interesting to look at the dates - most of them were issued in the late 2000s, though of course you'd have to read the actual patents to find out when they were filed, but coffeeshops offering Wifi had become routine long before that.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Thanks for posting something not only actually informative, but also insightful. Also, unless the Trolls have done careful review of their targets, they'd have to assert that the targets were using equipment whose manufacturers did not license use of the patented technologies. (Perhaps they've done that, or perhaps they know that _nobody_ has a license for their patents.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes! This is the natural result of large corporations effectively doing the same thing: buy a patent that they had no hand in crafting & sue the pants off anyone using that technology. I only hope the justices in these court cases see the futility of this modern corporate strategy and determine that, despite all the money being moved around by this ridiculous practice, this will require a paradigm shift in how we address information and new technology. Surely the fine readers at slashdot are not the only minds with enough common sense to realize that if the folks who created the technologies we all use daily had only been "in it for profit" that most of them would have scarcely seen the light of day.
Business method patents pretty much do that - they're not patenting the technology itself (connect wire A to CPU B at 3.3v, etc.), they're patenting uses of the technology, and there were a lot of patents about "Do [some common business practice] on the Internetz!" that got approved in spite of ridiculousity. But even in more direct technology patents, way too many of them didn't add anything novel or non-obvious, they just used the computer technology of the time to implement some previously known process.
On the other hand, "non-obvious" may be easy to argue about at the time of the patent, if the patent examiners are diligent enough to locate experts in the field during the examination process (which they almost never are), but it can be surprisingly hard to decide whether something was obvious 5-10 years ago after the process has been out in the field. When did we really learn to do x?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There is an easy fix for this. Make patents non-transferable. Whomever invents something can claim a patent on the invention and reap the benefits for a limited time. Once the inventor dies, or the company folds or gets bought, the invention becomes public domain.
The real problem is that patents or no longer a means, they are the end.
Agreed that patents should be non-transferrable.
However, there is also another solution - define the patent life-time by the time it takes to recoupe investment + a given percentage of profit (less that 50%, probably 10-20% of the investment), and have a branch of the USPTO be setup to review business plans both with patent applications (does it meet the criteria; is the time-line reasonable; is the price reasonable; etc.) and with granted patents (performance progress). Some things that may be patentable will payoff quickly (investment+profit) before the patent could be granted and thereby it would quickly enter into the public domain; however, things that are not of much interest to the world may take a long time to payoff and have a longer life. The cost of the bureaucracy to support this is simply the cost of supporting patents, and it would let the markets truly decide the life of the patent grant on a per-patent, per-industry, etc. basis. Sadly, the entrenched players will not let it happen since most patents would probably pay out before a grant would/could be given, and many things (like software) would simply not be worth it to patent as a result - an automatic check & balance in the approach.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
And that's the argument for the death penalty I guess. It's a deterrent, right? And now we see why that won't work, because some other wiseass will think he can do it right and avoid the mistakes of the last fella. Death won't deter morons, and it'll kill the chance to improve and redeem, and even change the minds of potential dumbasses.
Infringement is matter of the object which gave rise to the claim of infringement and the ownership interest in the object claimed to have been infringed?
In a monopolist viewpoint, the object of infringement is "exclusive commercial exploitative use" to owners or denial of use to users.
In a humanist viewpoint, the object of infringement is "pursuit of happiness" as described in the U. S. declaration of independence.
The Declaration of Independence exposed basic human rights, after 200,000 years, to be the inalienable human rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
The laws of nations cannot infringe those human rights. Don't human rights trump commercial rights?
It was Donaldson v. Beckett, in 1774, which overturned The London Book sellers claim that copyrights were perpetual. This decision ended the lawsuits threatened by booksellers and writers against printers, and publishers, but then as now, the publishers restricted their trade to protect what they claimed was a vested interest in works they owned.
Hasn't anyone ever heard of good faith? I know it's been a long time since I've taken my one course on business law but I seem to remember a little think called good faith. That is to say, when you negotiate a business transaction with a merchant you are doing so in good faith. Which is to say that you the consumer is shielded from any wrong doing provided that you are purchasing from a valid and reputable merchant. And a consumer is anyone that purchases goods or services from a merchant, there is also the warranty of merchantability which should also protect the consumer from such things. While the idea of nuking from orbit sounds appealing in a sick perverted sort of way, there is a more realistic and effective way of handling a patent troll. You burn their damn house down. If that doesn't work you go after their liars, I mean lawyers and burn their houses down. Hack into their computers and download kiddy porn and other sick stuff like that.
A.k.a. the lawyers for this company. I assume 'strategic reasons' are also why they don't go after big players who use Wi-Fi (every single Fortune 500 company in existence, e.g.).
Have to have their wireless electrical meters installed! ;-)