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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.
What losses?
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.
"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."
actually it did:
"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."
"In casting such a wide net, Innovatio (it means “innovation” in Latin, McAndrews said) displays a new approach in patent enforcement. In a field where patent-holding companies often demand six- or seven-figure dollar amounts for damages, five-figure settlements are considered basement-low. By demanding a few thousand dollars, Innovatio ensures that, for many small business owners, taking up a legal defense won’t make financial sense."
They are suing when they can pursue action cheaper than the defendant can defend. If the patent were strong they'd go after big money, but the big money will fight and since the patent is weak, they will instead play spam.
Also, by suing a large number of people in diverse locations and jurisdictions they will make it difficult for defendants to defend collectively and economically.
Think of all the Jobs Being Created by the Job Creator Class, isn't it lovely?
...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...
I'd like to know what number patents Innovatio are using. The CSIRO patent (5,487,069, filed in 1992) was a pretty complete description of the 802.11 OFDM physical layer. Surely anything else has to be a minor and obvious increment? The oldest patent I can see, with inventors Meier and Mahany, is 5,394,436, filed in 1994, and it does not refer to the CSIRO patent (meaning it is open to challenge from the CSIRO patent?) 5,394,436 might apply to the MAC layer, rather than the physical layer, and it is quite vague. Defenders might want to refer to the PARROT project, which the CSIRO was running as part of its WLAN work, predating 5,394,436. PARROT was a complete WLAN MAC layer (google: csiro parrot mac layer).
There was also a PhD thesis that came out of Macquarie University in the early 1990's. The name of the author escapes me, but the supervisor was David Skellern. The thesis described a MAC layer for mobile IP, and fed heavily into the standards at the time.
Andrew Myles was the author of the thesis.
Hat Guy is in it for the movie rights.
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.
They have 34 assorted patents that they are using as an Argumentum Verbosium - Proof by intimidation. They make up hundreds of pages of legalese, there's no way a business can defend itself without spending tens of thousands on patent attorneys to examine those claims and cross-check them against the WiFi standards. Below are the 17 patents asserted against Holiday Inn, have fun. (Talk about "redundant" patents!)
6,714,559 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
7,386,002 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
7,535,921 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
7,548,553 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
5,740,366 “Communication Network Having Plurality Of Bridging Nodes Which Transmit A Beacon To Terminal Nodes In Power Saving State That It Has Messages Awaiting Delivery.”
5,940,771 “Network Supporting Roaming, Sleeping Terminals.”
6,374,311 “Communication Network Having A Plurality Of Bridging Nodes Which Transmit A Beacon To Terminal Nodes In Power Saving State That It Has Messages Awaiting Delivery.”
7,457,646 “Radio Frequency Local Area Network.”
5,546,397 “High Reliability Access Point For Wireless Local Area Network.”
5,844,893 “System For Coupling Host Computer Means With Base Transceiver Units On A Local Area Network.”
6,665,536 “Local Area Network Having Multiple Channel Wireless Access.”
6,697,415 “Spread Spectrum Transceiver Module Utilizing Multiple Mode Transmission.”
7,013,138 “Local Area Network Having Multiple Channel Wireless Access.”
7,710,907 “Local Area Network Having Multiple Channel Wireless Access.”
7,916,747 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
7,873,343 “Communication Network Terminal With Sleep Capability.”
7,536,167 “Network Supporting Roaming, Sleeping Terminals.”