Slashdot Mirror
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."
...patent lawyers are rubbing their hands with glee. I should have gone to law school after all...
So a group of companies band together to buy patents and they create a single organisation to handle it. What else would they do? It is hardly likely that any company would be happy with the whole lot being overseen by one of the other member companies, and they would be in negotiation for years if they tried to split them all up.
So the question to the submitter is: what other outcome did you expect?
How long will it be before the politicians see the problem of software patents as harming their countries own industries? Guess it will never happen, as most politicians are educated as sleazy lawyers, and they are only interested in personal gain.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
"But Trolls live under bridges." Yes, but at least those trolls you can kill with a sword.
A civics lesson for you: the Whitehouse does not have the power to make laws. That is the exclusive domain of the Congress. You see, we have this little thing called "separation of powers"...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You can only get money from a patent if you actually produce something that uses that patent.
Otherwise, you can hang it on your wall and look at it.
Privacy is terrorism.
A civics lesson for you: the Whitehouse does not have the power to make laws. That is the exclusive domain of the Congress. You see, we have this little thing called "separation of powers"...
Very true ... but the devil is in the details. The White House can draft legislation that is then sponsored by a member of congress just like 100's of lobbyists do.
Right, because corporations as people isnt a silly overreaction. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Obvious and wanton abuse of the legal system for profit should be a punishable crime, severe enough to discourage others from trying it. We put people to death for less.
Good-bye
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
Stop shooting them down with little things like facts.
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.
I am not sure how someone could come to the conclusion that forcing a plaintiff to pay treble damages in the event of a loss is a good idea. Patent laws are already anti-consumer/little guy enough and there's a huge number of small-time patent holders who have been screwed out of their inventions by bigger companies. Few sue as it is and even fewer win because of the ridiculous legal fees associated. Add the risk of three-times damages, and none will. This won't hurt the big guys because often enough much more money is at stake than what they ask for in court, either because the patent they hold is valid or they simply need to try to block the other guy long enough to outsell them in product. How about a law instead to stop patent trolls ? Make it so the plaintiff either has to be the original grantee or they have had to legally acquire the patent and it has to be in active use, either in production or in provable preparation for market.
Okay, this petition is stupid and will only hurt the small guy. Say for example I work really hard on something and get a patent. Time goes on and I'm making money with the patent and all is well until a big company starts infringing on it. I could sue the company. I have the 100k it takes to even start the case. but unfortunately I my lawyers aren't as good, because I don't have the 10 lawyers they have working on it. They end up wining and it would put me out of business.
In the current setting I'd be out lawyer fees. In the new setting I'd be completely screwed even if I was seeking a reasonable amount. A reasonable amount could add up to quite a lot if the infringement is big enough. For example I'm selling my product and license out the technology for say $100 per reproduction. If they only infringed 100 times it's not that bad, but if it's mass infringement with millions of reproductions it's quite a lot, but still a fair number.
I could get behind this if there was a stipulation of "Unless you're actively using the patent in a product" or something along those lines. That would be enough to stop the trolls and not completely screw people who are using patents the way they should be.
I didn't pull the $100k number out of my ass either. I'm in the process of getting a patent on some items and I was told by more than one lawyer that's the starting fee (it varied a bit but that was the lowest figure) for litigation. I wanted to see if it was even worth pursuing, because if I can't afford to defend it what's the point in getting it? I guess I could have my name on a patent and that's pretty cool, but I don't know if it's $12k cool. I think I'm going to end up applying, because even if everything goes to heck I can always put it in my resume and it might be enough to make it standout.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
I must say I disagree with the petition too. I like the idea of trying to prevent patent trolls. Actually I'd like to prevent any case where a giant company will use the legal system to crush a small company without too much of a basis. (If Android was by small_company_inc, how do you think the Oracle vs small_company_inc would have finished? My guess it would have finished with Oracle buying small_company_inc.)
But requiring a 3 times what was asked is ridiculous. First of all, it does not cover cases where you ask for a simple shutdown of the product. Then, it will prevent small companies from asking reasonnable damages. Also, uou might sue legitimatelly and lose because of some loophole or because you were wrong.
The rotten system just got a tad more rotten. Rockstar is the king of all patent trolls, funded by the big two software IP honchos, known for their shakedown schemes and patenting the trivially obvious. The other partners are opportunists and a few badly ailing companies seeking a hail-mary pass to avoid utter extinction. It got its approval under the guise of playing by "reasonable terms", only to disobey said promise as "not applicable to the new construct" as soon as the deal went through. With a start like that, I don't have much hope left for any ethics to be involved in their way of thinking.
Rockstar has all the latest weaponry of an extremely litigious tech company, wealthy backers, plus the enormous advantage that it can't be countersued. It can start case after case without even batting an eye. The sheer amount of cases it can start can probably put a company out of business even before the first patent in play is reviewed.
If you thought Oracle vs Google was perfidious, wait until Rockstar here takes aim at Android. It's only a matter of time, and to me it seems like Android was the reason this abomination was formed. They've sealed up the LTE patents, so they'll surely squeeze them on that front, while trying keep on adding layer after layer of patent licenses, with the penultimate target of drowning it and scaring the manufacturers away.
Innovation is about to get its teeth kicked in.
I agree. This proposal would stack the court system against the little guy, which is exactly the wrong solution to the problem.
The problem is not patent law, per se, but that too many trivial patents are granted. That, and patents which describe a problem, trying to claim that all solutions must infringe.
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.
Also, uou might sue legitimatelly and lose because of some loophole or because you were wrong.
That's the glaring issue I see with this idea. It's well-meaning, but in reality it could end up screwing the little guy even more. The fact is, most of the patent trolls have access to funds that most people can only dream of, and with those funds they are able to by star legal talent, while you're stuck with Joe Schmoe the Lawyer who got his degree online because that's all you can afford.
This will have a chilling effect like you would not believe on these types of lawsuits being brought by anyone that isn't a megacorporation because even if their case has merit, the 3x the damages rules will basically destroy them financially while the thieves get to not only continue stealing their work but have one less competitor (albeit a small one) to deal with.
Not a problem. Company owns a bunch of patents as soon as it decides to go patent trolling it creates a new $2 company and shifts the trolling patent into that. If it wins the profits transfer back to the parent company, if it loses it goes belly up and the parent company loses a now worthless patent, cue, schadenfreude laughter. Fines unpaid, debts unpaid and triple damages, ohhh, yeah, make it tens times, hundreds times, even a thousand times, makes no difference not one cent paid.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
"But the reality is that if there were no bailiffs to repossess property bought on credit when you didn't pay up, then no-one would loan money."
So you support that big business should not have ANY risk then? the RISK for loaning money is that you loaned money to someone that cant pay it back, hello that is a risk of business, and problem is the credit industry has the responsibility to VET who they loan to.
If there were no baillifs or if we returned to where I could file for bankruptcy and tell the bank to stuff it in their ass. The banks would lend money smarter.
What I get from your example is that we need to remove all risk for companies, and this is completely and utterly a very dumb thing. Patents should expire quickly so that scumbag companies dont just sit on them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I like this - if a patent holding company does actually produce a token product to get around this new rule, and only sell a small small number of units, then that shows what the patent is worth, too.
One of the most objectionable things with patents is that even if you do accept that you are using patented technology, the licencing fees seem to be way out of proportion to the value of the patent. If you were to actually take any typical program that you develop apart line by line and identify all the patents it infringes, then go and seek licencing for each of those patents, I am sure the end price would be many many more times what the software could ever be sold for.
Just because you're sure you can win doesn't mean you will. Just because you're right doesn't mean you'll win. Just because you're getting screwed over and it's blatantly obvious to anyone with a brain doesn't mean you will win. I'm not exactly sure where you've been for the last 20 years, but things have changed a lot.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
During the eighteenth dynasty, the pharoah Tuthmose III gave this advice to his vizier Rekhmere regarding petitions:
Let the petitioner present his case. Act like you are listening. Then completely ignore all his suggestions and issue the judgement what you were going to issue anyway.
That was 3500 years ago. Have people still not learned their lesson?
Software needs a mechanism like that IMHO. Pricing for licensing should be in proportion to the benefit added.
I tried that once. My algorithm was O( log n log log n ^ 4/3 ) more efficient than the existing one, but their lawyers argued that that was an upper bound. On the other hand I pointed out that their cost was amortised and so arguably even my typical case would be O( log log log n ^ 2 log n ^ 1.66666689 ) more efficient. They then counterclaimed that my proof wasn't rigorous because it used infinitesimals, and then the case had to be adjourned because the judge beat himself to death with his own gavel.
so then banks did not loan any money to people 15 years ago when I could file Chapter 11 bankruptcy and cancel all debts legally and NOT have to return the car and house.
Damn, I did not know that banks and lending did not exist before 1997.
Funny thing is I have proof that it existed, as I went through it in the early 90's Kept the Car and the house, told the bank to shove it up their butt with the signature of a Judge. Their fault for lending money to a person working for a unstable company called General Motors.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Non-american speaking:
Somehow, the fact you have to refer to a previous president through the use of "Dubya" either says a lot about yourself, or the state of American politics.
Or both.
That link was posted multiple times to reddit but each link was downvoted so it never made the front page. For once slashdot's moderation system beat that of reddit, which seems to be susceptible to PR companies.
"He who shall not be named"?
I'm assuming you're talking about Obama?
No, he is "He who should not be middle-named".
Nah, the US citizens should be blamed. For allowing a political system where every four years they get to choose between two dictators. It's not what I call "democracy".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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
That's simplistic. The petition was clearly never going to get wedge issues passed, the petition system was first and foremost an attempt to get the internet generation to ACTUALLY FUCKING VOTE. A distant second goal was maybe to bring new ideas to light.
Why did Obama not legalize pot? Better question: with 74% of the nation having smoked at one point, and a majority saying pot should be legalized, why hasn't EVERY politician jumped on board with legalization? Answer: because people saying it should be legalized don't translate that into voting. Don't blame Obama, blame yourselves.