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Nokia Feeds a Patent Troll
New submitter glebovitz writes "In case anyone missed the other Nokia news: on the same day they announced the sale of Qt to Digia, they also sold 500 patents to Vringo. Vringo, a video ring tone company, recently merged with patent portfolio company Innovate/Protect which includes Donald Stout, the founder of patent holding company NTP, on its board. Forbes refers to NTP as 'a patent troll which milked Research In Motion for $612.5 million in a patent infringement settlement reached in 2006.' As Eric Savitz writes in the article, 'Vringo decided to basically turn itself into a patent troll.'"
I would be shocked if none have been filed by the end of the month.
Well products can be sold abroad, but badly issued USPTO patents, they can't be exported. So it's time to analyze how much of the US economy the USPTO had destroyed.
In its quest to become another no-name mobile phone OEM it is imperative to shut down all research and development, because the future really isn't important.
Why haven't the shareholders held a vote of no confidence in the current Nokia board?
WTF is a "video ring tone company"?
You need to pay the license fee in order to obtain the proprietary information which compromises the patented answer to that question.
As of now, it's a slang phrase for a Microsoft proxy.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Something being legal doesn't make it right.
What would be the effect of restricting a patent holder from initiating litigation to infringements made prior to the acquisition of the patent? This would leave many issues inherent in patents unsolved. But, because it's so simple, would be an easy barrier to put in place, and hopefully lower the benefit/cost of patent trolling.
This would have required Nokia to initiate litigation vs. Research in Motion prior to selling the the patent to Vringo. This would certainly affect their image. If they were not concerned about this, they might have pursued a case v. RIM themselves, or at least outsourced it.
Vringo could immediately demand that Research in Motion cease any ongoing infringement. But R.I.M could then simply cease infringement, and Vringo would get no return on their patent acquisition. Vringo could also demand liscensing fees for ongoing RIM use of the patented tech... R.I.M could decline, or contest the patent, making the prospect of buying patents for the purpose of Trolling less alluring.
We all know that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is a sockpuppet of Steve Ballmer (why the Nokia shareholders put up with this is beyond me, but it probably reflects the lack of actual control over corporate governance by the nominal owners). Now Elop is taking yet more actions that don't really help Nokia, but are calculated to hurt Google (and probably Apple as well) as much as possible. The reason is obvious: Microsoft wants these Nokia patents in the hands of patent trolls to cause trouble.
Because the entire business method of patent trolls typically include only suing others. They don't generate anything of value and will only fatten the bank accounts for themselves and their lawyer.
These aren't guys who invented something, got a patent on it and sued those trying to copy, they buy patents from others (who may not even have bothered going after the alleged infringers) and use those patents as grounds to sue. They are leeches.
We all know this is because of this F&^cked up patent system in the USA. So when are you guys trying to make some changes?
You first.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
WTF is a "video ring tone company"?
Those idiots who advertise on the 'cheap' channels, promising a free ringtone for your phone of some semi-popular quote or song if you text a certain number with your credit card info and set up a $10/mo. subscription with them.
Think of it as a company that administers a public telecom IQ test (hint: if you pass, you're not one of their customers).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Because the entire business method of patent trolls typically include only suing others. They don't generate anything of value and will only fatten the bank accounts for themselves and their lawyer.
These aren't guys who invented something, got a patent on it and sued those trying to copy, they buy patents from others (who may not even have bothered going after the alleged infringers) and use those patents as grounds to sue. They are leeches.
And that has been a business model for at least 150 years in the US. The patent system was quite literally designed for that. Patent thickets, licensing companies and the ilk were extremely common during the rise of the industrial age from things like loom technology, to sewing machines, to industrial controllers.
You may feel they're leeches (and, by the way, I agree), but the system was explicitly set up to allow for (and, frankly, encourage) things like that. It gave inventors incentive to do their inventing and get compensated for it, without having to build out a business themselves. Its a win-win for the investment community that wants to consume them and the inventors who are producing them. It absolutely has encouraged huge amounts of innovation in the last 200 years.
The bigger problem is not the fact that its legal to do that, its that there are so many lousy patents, and the litigation costs are high enough that its cheaper to settle most of the time without a jugement on the quality of the patent. If you want to fix the problem, you need to get the US government to hire ten times the number of qualified reviewers, spend the money to make it easier to trace though existing patents and solve the litation problem (mandatory licensing, mandatory arbitration, guaranteed legal fees if the patent holder loses the case, things like that...)
The ability for a particular person to be able to be compensated for their innovation without needing to start a company and begin manufacturing something is an important thing for progress in general. There's certainly a lot of evidence to suggest the spike in technological advance 200 years ago started precisely because of the rise of a patent system that encouraged inventors to do inventing as a full-time job. For that to work, you have to be able to buy and sell patents, and if you do that, you're going to get situations exactly like we have. Fix the process of issuing patents, and you'll get back to the controlled insanity of the 19th century instead of the uncontrolled insanity of the 21st.
Well, I used to use (and love) Qt as a language... I still dabble in it once in awhile.
Not sure how many patents would be attached to Qt, so I guess it'll require me to at least half-assed check before I do anything commercial with code written in it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
So, if you buy an apartment building that someone else built, you shouldn't feel right about charging rent? Or if you buy a run down building, you should be embarrassed to evict the drug dealers and gangs, and try to find legitimate tenants? Your argument is nonsense. Bad patents should be rejected by the patent office. Bad patents that are issued should be dismissed. A means of challenging bad patents that doesn't require a huge bankroll should be available. The public should perhaps be involved in ascertaining when prior art is clearly available, or the unobvious requirement isn't met. And many other reforms that I don't know about should be implemented.
None of this makes an owner of a legitimate patent, however acquired, a troll for seeking to license the rights.
No, it was not set up for that. It was designed for protecting the little guy who is inventing and producing tangible goods from big companies copying him and driving him out of business. The patent thicket you speak of hinders innovation; it does not promote development of useful arts and sciences.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It's best not to check. If you check, even if you think you're in the clear, you can be sued for triple damages for knowing infringement.
It was designed for protecting the little guy who is inventing and producing tangible goods from big companies copying him and driving him out of business.
The patent system was used by the King of England to reward his friends with monopolies. The whole "encourage innovation" and especially the whole "protect the little guy" arguments is mainly a pretty story to sell it to the masses.
I mean, just look at the arguments of patent system fans. Half the time they'll say
Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will keep everything secret and all knowledge will be lost.
The other half of the time they say
Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will immediately duplicate every innovation without the original inventor being able to get any money out of it.
While both statements can't be right at the same time, they sure can be wrong at the same time.
Donate free food here
So, if you buy an apartment building that someone else built, you shouldn't feel right about charging rent?
Analogy fail. Apartment buildings are scarce goods by their very nature. Nobody owning them or taking responsibility for them almost by definition leads to a tragedy of the commons. On the other hand, making ideas/innovations/inventions scarce goods is an artificial construct. The problems with patent thickets are known. To some extent they have been worked around in the past by the big corporations by means of cross-licensing, and by smaller players by staying under the radar of larger players. Everyone just had to waste a certain amount of their income on patent war chests and mutual assured destruction kept everyone happy (except for the money they had to waste on useless patents, of course, or when small player became a bit too big without possessing a sufficient number of patents to play the game).
With the patent trolls even that strategy doesn't work anymore and everyone just gets sucker punched. One can hope everyone will finally wake up to see that the patent system just doesn't work for today's digital economy, but of course the people making lots of money of it and basically siphoning off lots of money from the real economy will keep vehemently disagreeing with that.
Bad patents should be rejected by the patent office. Bad patents that are issued should be dismissed.
And everybody should paint rainbows and give out happy smiles and the world will be a better place. What you are saying has been said for the last 30 or 40 years already, and many reforms have been implemented. In the mean time, the cost of patent lawsuits keeps going up, the number of granted patents keeps rising and the allowed subject matter keeps expanding.
But let's just keep wasting money and opportunities by the boat load, including public money spent on all that patent reviewing and on those lawsuits. Or alternatively, let's make all patent offices self-sufficient like the European Patent Office, which leads to them granting ever more patents because it increases their income and their hence power (or simply because they don't know better, due to the hammers & nails situation).
Yes, let's all just wait for patent utopia to finally arise and make everybody happy. Amen.
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"compared to a Siberian Tiger, even the Mars Curiosity rover is nothing"
Sadly enough, no siberian tiger did appear at Mars, so the Curiosity won the "Being Something" conquest by lack of rivals.
Mars Curiosity might be something, after all.
fuck humans ... everyone should stop breeding
You know, there's a contradiction somewhere there. Just can't seem to point my finger at it.
Was there any bidding process? I assume not. Just some very shady deal in the interest of Microsoft only (FEDs should check if there are contracts saying Vringo cannot sue Microsoft, that would kind of prove that Elop still only works for Microsoft).
I think the Nokia shareholders are getting ripped off by CEO Elop and the board, I hope someone sues them soon, before it is too late. Nokia is ripped off like nobody before got ripped off. The following text shows how major decisions by Elop (ex Microsoft) are only in the interest of Microsoft and not at all in the interest of Nokia.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/07/the-sun-tzu-of-nokisoftian-microkia-mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-whose-the-baddest-of-them-all-waterloo.html
And all those saying Nokia was already dead when Elop came, you are shills or blind, read it too. E.g. start reading the first âoeREASONsâ in the link. They were still twice their competitors when Elop came, alone in China they could have as many customers as Apple has worldwide by a exclusive deal (bound to MeeGo). Distance to Apple was growing at that time. All systematically destroyed in the following months. I don't say they were super fine, but they were still a monster, the elephant in the room. No outside force could move it nearly as fast as Elop has. Now they are an empty shell.
If you have time, read this. It's very long but good (19 reasons why Elop should be fired, you can skip the intro to REASON 1 if you are lazy).
No way the CEO AND the board do not see the logic behind most of these 19 reasons. This is a scam, there must be a huge reward for most of them on some secret channel. Money? Girls? Power?
Anonymous please give us their Email and transform Elops and Balmer's phones into bugs that we can hear what they are talking in private. Jail them all.
What would be the effect of restricting a patent holder from initiating litigation to infringements made prior to the acquisition of the patent?
"Oh, hai, small inventor and patent holder. I'm a Big Corporation. I'm just going to use your idea, and if you ask me for license fees, I'll tell you to fark yourself. What are you going to do... sue me? Bwaahahaha! I'll bury you in documents and motions until you're bankrupt and beg me to let you drop the suit... I mean, where are you going to get the quarter-million dollars it'll take to litigate this?
"Back in the day, of course, you could have sold your patent to a holding company who has millions in the bank to pay for this litigation. Then, I'd be really scared, because they're more than willing to fight me all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, and I could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. You'd get a percentage of that payout with no risk on your part. That might make me actually want to buy your patent or get a license from you.
"But not anymore! Thanks to the Dmomo Screwing Small Inventors Act of 2012, I can just keep infringing your patent. If you sell it to someone who might sue me, damages reset! So, all I have to do is imply that I'll stop infringing within a few months and their potential damages would be less than that quarter million to sue me, so it's an uncomfortable risk for them, and they'll never buy your patent!
"It's a brilliant Catch-22! Thanks to Sen. Dmomo, you can't sue me, and you can't ever find a buyer who would sue me!"