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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."
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?
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.
But being a lawyer makes more money and you get to decide who you screw.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Until Europe, India and China overtake the US.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
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.
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.
..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:
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.
The current health care system of Dont get sick... if you get sick Die Quickly is woefully inadequate.
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.