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Patent Troll Now Armed With Thousands of Nortel Patents

dgharmon writes in with a story about the final outcome of thousands of Nortel patents that were bought last July. "You may recall last summer that Apple, Microsoft, EMC, RIM, Ericsson and Sony all teamed up to buy Nortel's patents for $4.5 billion. They beat out a team of Google and Intel who bid a bit less. While there was some antitrust scrutiny over the deal, it was dropped and the purchase went through. Apparently, the new owners picked off a bunch of patents to transfer to themselves... and then all (minus EMC, who, one hopes, was horrified by the plans) decided to support a massive new patent troll armed with the remaining 4,000 patents. The company is called Rockstar Consortium, and it's run by the folks who used to run Nortel's patent licensing program anyway — but now employs people whose job it is to just find other companies to threaten." On a semi-related note, there is a new petition to the White House to make a law that patent lawsuits that find for the defendant automatically fine the plaintiff three times the damages they were seeking."

5 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. GOOD! by spire3661 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    They are ALL going Global Thermonuclear WAR! Bring it, society will only tolerate this for so long and the call to kill all patents will begin. Its gonna be bloddy, but the time has come.

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    Good-bye
  2. Re:A Very New Petition by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Uhhh...why exactly are you bothering? After he basically said "Yeah LOL go fuck yourself" over the pot petition all should know you'd get more results by writing it on a piece of paper and promptly burning it. For all his bullshit he is just as big if not a bigger sellout that Dubya was, personally I'd say he's worse as Dubya actually believed a lot of the shit he was saying whereas this one is just cashing the checks. But if you think he is gonna give a flying shit what the "people" think I have some swampland you may be interested in. If you manage to get the requisite number all you will get is a flowery "Ur not rich so fuck off' speech, so why bother?

    As for TFA...is anybody surprised? With every move Forbes gets proved right on Ballmer being a shitty CEO, hell if the man had an original thought his head would asplode. And as for the rest of the list, Sony and Ericson are doing lousy and could probably use the cash, same with RIM, and Apple just plain old hates to have ANY competition other than MSFT. See Job's comments on how he would use his fortune to nuke Android for instance.

    So how anybody could look at THAT list of names and no figure out they were gonna do something nasty I'll never know.

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    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  3. The oldest and wisest profession by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But being a lawyer makes more money and you get to decide who you screw.

    A lot of highly paid escorts would disagree with you.

    There are lower tier escorts that might not have as much choice, but there are a lot of entry level lawyers with even less choice - and probably worse pay when you factor in takeaway after the student loan payment.

  4. Re:A Very New Petition by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Use it or loss it should be the way to go. You get granted a patent or buy it and if in say 2 years you don't have a commercially available product that uses that patient it goes into public domain. You can't sue someone unless you have an actual product that customers could have bought instead after that period. Before that period you can sue as normal since it might take a couple years to spin up production. But sitting on it and hoping someone infringes is BS.

  5. Re:Meanwhile, in California... by cboslin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ..they seem to be poor while the less honorable ones seem to profiting....

    The same can be said of politicians and pretty much any other profession. Its sad when the less honorable are rewarded for being that way. Its sad when we the sheeple, continue to support their BS by doing business with them, buying their products (gas, oil, energy, current financial system, etc...) At what point does this gravitate toward Fascism from Capitalism...is debatable, with the debate being shaped by the media and talking points utterly controlled by those same not honorable 1%. Personally I think we are already there...Fascism.

    In my mind Capitalism requires:

    1. ~ livable wages, not just minimum wage...if In-N-Out Burger can pay $10.00 per hour to a high schooler getting his first job, what is the excuse for McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King, etc... They could but they do not want too. After all you want people to be able to afford to purchase your products, right. Ford understood this back in 1914, and he was far from a humanitarian:

      In 1914 the Ford Motor Company announced that it would henceforth pay eligible workers a minimum wage of $5 a day (compared to an average of $2.34 for the industry) and would reduce the work day from nine hours to eight, thereby converting the factory to a three-shift day.

    2. ~ Healthy workers with 100% health care, its more than just a safety net, its required, if your workers are not healthy enough to work, they are not good to anyone, including themselves. And annual health costs of $18,365 - $24,965, ($8.83 – 12.00 per hour) is NOT affordable for anyone earning minimum wage. Don't think you are okay if you are working for someone else as you are paying close to 41% of your health care costs (medical care and perscriptions) which comes to $8,584 annually or $4.13 per hour. Still way too high. Regardless of who is in control, costs are only going to go up as the groups that could prevent that have been weakened by both political parties. Two-party system, what a joke...you have no choice.

      The current health care system of Dont get sick... if you get sick Die Quickly is woefully inadequate.

    3. ~ Flexible work hours, not inflexible work hours where you do not just work 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, but are considered less than perfect if you want to have time with your family instead of putting in 9, 10, or 11 hour days...unpaid hours at that. Get creative, instead of just 20% flex time, give your employees the options of working 3 X 12 hour days, 36 hours per week, get paid for 40 hours and have 4 days off. Just the savings in Gas to/from work commute alone would help your worker and their family. Might even bleed over into helping the economy both directly and indirectly.

      A month later Ford was made chief engineer at the main Detroit Edison Company plant with responsibility for maintaining electric service in the city 24 hours a day. Because he was on call at all times, he had no regular hours and could experiment to his heart's content.

    4. ~ Ability for two non-professional incomes to afford the costs of a family, all expenses including money left over to invest and save for emergencies and retirement.
    5. ~ Secure voting that is 100% verifiable in all city, county, state and