Slashdot Mirror
How Newegg Saved Online Retail
bargainsale writes with an account at Ars Technica of "the inspiring story of Newegg vs the patent troll. Perhaps the system does work after all." Newegg's lawyer Lee Cheng has some choice words for the business model employed by Soverain Software, the patent troll which tried, with some success, to exact money from online retailers for using online shopping carts. Newegg has prevailed, though, and Soverain's claims are toast. From Ars: "The ruling effectively shuts down dozens of the lawsuits Soverain filed last year against Nordstrom's, Macy's, Home Depot, Radioshack, Kohl's, and many others (see our chart on page 2). All of them did nothing more than provide shoppers with basic online checkout technology. Soverain used two patents, numbers 5,715,314 and 5,909,492, to claim ownership of the "shopping carts" commonly used in online stores. In some cases, it wielded a third patent, No. 7,272,639."
Like when Samsung beat Apple in the UK, but then Apple won on the same issues in the US. Patents are granted once and valid everywhere, but must be defeated on country at a time. NewEgg saved their own country. Now someone needs to win in every nation in the rest of the world.
Long time ago, in a country fair, I saw a kid playing Whack-a-mole. That boy took the large cushioned mallet and bopped the head of the first mole that popped up. Then immediately he dropped the mallet started yelling an running around "I won! I won!! I whacked the mole!!!". It is nice to hear that boy did well, is all growned up now, becoming chief lawyer for some on line retailer. Good boy! Now go whack another mole.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You gotta make sure it takes at least 2 clicks to check out, or you're done for. I still wonder why someone doesn't patent the 2 click, 3 click... n click patent so for anyone to do business without tribute it takes 1000 clicks!
God spoke to me
A patent troll is one who files or buys overly broad patents, expressly for the purpose of not pursuing active development or marketing of their patents. A patent troll's business plan is to wait for a company to make big on something that might infringe, or buy portfolios that might be infringed on, and keep them in obscurity, till such time they can be used to sue(read: extort) a company such that proper legal defense is purposefully less than the cost to comply with their licensing agreements.
In short, a patent troll would prefer you not learn about their patent till it's too late, while a proper patent holder wants you to know of their patent so that you will license it from them for your technology.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
If I wasn't already a loyal customer, I sure would become one now.
I'm glad all my money spent at newegg has gone towards a good cause. Plus I got new stuff.
A "patent troll" is someone that takes advantage of patent law for monetary gain based on the innovation of others. Patent trolls aren't trying to claim reward for what is theirs. They simply game the system and out-maneuver the innovators such that, by legal definition (but not common sense) they are entitled to reward.
As such, it's mostly counterproductive for the purpose that the method of patenting was intended to serve. (encouraging and rewarding innovation)
Patent trolls siphon off some of the rewards of innovation through litigation and through the licensing of innovations where they themselves were not the innovator.
Fortunately, a lot of courts (at least those that'd don't directly benefit from the litigations, such as texas east district) have identified these people as taking advantage of the legal system and costing it money in exchange not for the support of innovation, but for the enrichment of the trolls and stifling of innovation, and are starting to push for change.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Is there a mod -2? Please, let there be a mod -2.
Since they died, it apparently was their time.
I worked on the Transact product at Open Market.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
the nigger in the woodpile is the word `legitimate'. in short, the legitimate point of patents is to protect the investment required to produce actual innovations. however, patents are nowadays issued much more broadly than this. just because a patent is issued, does not make it legitimate.
a patent troll is someone who either 1) patents (or acquires the patent for) something already widespread, or uses a submarine patent to accomplish the same, in order to extort $ or chill competition, or 2) patents a routine solution to a relatively trivial and routine subproblem which emerges while accomplishing the original goal, so as to set up landmines for competitors. both of these would be mitigated if the USPTO simply enforced their rules on originality, which they do not, either out of incompetence or ideology.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Patent trolls often wield bad patents. There are also companies that make things that wield bad patents. Beware of associating the bad of our patent system only with trolls -- the problem runs deeper. If all trolls disappeared tomorrow, we would still have vast minefields of bad patents and enormous, destructive patent battles.
We have just invented the greatest tool since Gutenberg for the dissemination of information. An almost incomprehensibly powerful tool for decentralizing problem solving. At the same time, we have been radically increasing the breadth and power of patents, which inhibit the decentralization of problem solving. Patents have a good mission, but their method is a hinderance to the information revolution. That conflict is inherent in patents; it does not require a troll to cause harm.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Newegg just spent a lot of money fighting a lawsuit which has now established a precedent that will make it far cheaper for the other targets of this patent troll (like Nordstrom's, Macy's, Home Depot, Radioshack, Kohl's, ... -- all companies larger than Newegg) to defend themselves. I hope Newegg at least managed to save themselves some money by doing this, otherwise they just spent a bunch of money helping their competitors (as well as other unrelated retail businesses).
" Just think about the dynamic if you're a juror. Most of the jury could be very pro defense, and think the plaintiff is full of it. But all you need is a single one who is friendly to the plaintiff and holds out on the verdict. You just need one really stubborn person—that can drive a whole jury to make a decision that swings the other way. Everyone wants to go home. It's not their money. Defense oriented jurors are more likely to compromise and say, 'Maybe we'll just split the baby. Maybe we'll just give them $2.5 million and call it a day.' When a jury rules against a defendant, even if you are 100 percent certain that prevailing case law supports an appeal where you will win completely, you have to put up a bond for the amount of the damages. That requires you to tie up that amount on your corporate balance sheet until the appeal comes through. So procedurally, defendants tend to be driven to settle."
"Reform needs to occur there. If we have to post a bond if we lose, they should have to post a bond if they win. In this case, for example, if they wanted to pursue review by an en banc panel of the Federal Circuit, they should have to post a bond."
let there %= -2;
RTFA. The patents were overly broad/obvious, and there was prior art. Other companies who were approached by Soverain settled because they didn't want to get drawn into a lengthy and expensive legal battle. Newegg stood their ground, and ultimately prevailed.
Yes, Soverain was a "legitimate patent holder" in the sense that they legitimately owned the patents in question. But the patents themselves were not legitimate (in the sense of embodying anything original or unique).
I suspect that one of the reasons Newegg stood their ground is that -- unlike most of the other companies mentioned in the article -- they are exclusively an online operation, and therefore had more at stake.
A nation of rent-seeking lunatics.
Screw them. Seriously, screw them. You can quote me on that.
In Internet vernacular: QFT—Quoted For Truth.
Thank you Mr. Lee Cheng for saying it and saying it with attitude. I'm afraid it will probably cost you in the future when judges read about it and are miffed by your attitude, but you'll probably only be seeing the same six judges for the next 20 years anyway, and they already don't like you on principle, so... full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.
That's one useless little rent-seeker squashed. Only 1000 more to go...
(Mr Lee Cheng of NewEgg has some serious job security.)
According to the article, the main prior art they found was a Compuserv checkout. I wonder if they were prepared to bring up the various bulletin board commerce solutions...surely a few of those would qualify as well. It's absurd that a company would think they could sue every company and license for a technology that's existed since at least the early nineties, but wasn't patented until the web was well under way, and had NO ties to the original software.
http://www.zdnet.com/news/amazon-pays-40-million-to-settle-patent-dispute/144171
Please stick to the subject.
Oh. I was ready to take offense, but you linked to Wikipedia, so clearly such offense would only be rooted in my own ignorance.
For your edification, the educated and/or politically correct prefer the term run silent, run deep patent.
Ummm, kudos? Seriously? He could've used another term. You're both asses.
TFA also calls Alcatel-Lucent a troll.
The company that owns Bell Labs a patent troll?
Seems odd....
And speaking of Soverain Software, their web page is responding "Service Unavailable" at the moment... Lol, and so on...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Can we please just all come together as a nation/earth and jettison patent trolls into outerspace?
Lets face facts here. If you own a patent and someone infringes on it then you by all rights SHOULD sue them. If this guy legtimately owned a patent that was misused without his permission then he has every right to protect his patent.
But people on the net love to yell patent troll anymore because its get them attention to their website because guys flood in to mindlessly start yelling about trolls when they have no legal knowledge and hell most of them dont even read the story. They want to bitch about what everyone else is bitching about because its a bandwagon mentality.
Anymore according to the internet you are automatically a patent troll if you file suit for any reason against anyone over a patent issue. It doesnt matter how right or wrong you are, if you file a suit your automatically labeled a patent troll.
oh for a moment I thought they wiped out slashdot trolls...
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
Soverain had already picked a fight with the biggest kid on the playground and won. The first company it sued was Amazon, and Soverain scored a $40 million settlement from the giant retailer back in 2005. The Gap also settled for an undisclosed sum. That was back when defendants were afraid of RIM-sized damage payouts, before eBay v. MercExchange and subsequent Supreme Court decisions started to put some limits on what do-nothing patent holders could win.
So what happens now to all that loot that these companies paid out?
As far as I'm concerned I hope Amazon can't get any back, what with their own bullshit bag of silly patents...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I refuse to buy from newegg, 15% restocking fee? No thanks.
Amazon has cheaper prices AND a better return policy.
I'm going to go right now and buy something from Newegg.. Not sure what but I'm going to buy something.
Zoid.com
Poor choice of phrase, even though it accurately connotes the situation, its so inflammatory that nobody can hear your comment, which is too bad, its a good comment. I'm a little torn by this issue, I understand the pain and anguish this language has inflicted, and that the black culture still experiences some PTSD from it and related language. That said, there is important, vital work, by people like Twain in his stories about life in slave era Missouri, that people need to understand and appreciate, and that truth plied with honest compassion and dignity invariably trumps well meaning dishonesty even when that dishonesty is easier or socially less expensive. Rewriting the works of Twain and for that matter sanitizing history, science and art for our children, so we don't have to address real problems or philosophically complex truths does no service to them or the future of our society. So I would honestly say that the parent post doesn't deserve a Flamebait rating, however, I would also say, in this era of social awareness, it behooves us all to choose our words with at least a modicum of consideration for their unintended impact.
As for the patent trolls. I want to flame them, and I don't mean over the internet. Thank you NewEgg, I've done business with you before and now I will do all my PC related business with you. You fight to keep the parasites and leaches from bleeding my world dry. This makes you heroic in my eyes, and I support your work to make this form of commerce safe from the greedy and conniving. We all suffer at the soulless ministrations of these sycophants and their legal minions. Its time to take back what it rightfully and justly ours, to stop this runaway train from sailing into the abyss, and put IP protection back to a place that serves the future rather than cannibalizing it.
At a very rough guess, for every valid patent awarded in the past thirty years, there are about five or six bullshit, worthless patents that never should have been awarded, based on prior art or obviousness.
Using those bullshit patents to shake down legitimate businesses makes one a patent troll.
It's really pretty simple. In some cases an individual patent's merits may not be simple at all - but the distinction between a patent troll and other patent holders is really very simple. Patent trolls, for the most part, have never contributed one damned thing to the technology world, to the arts, or to the crafts. The give absolutely NOTHING to society - they are parasites.
From TFA "And now, nobody has to pay Soverain jack squat for these patents."
I love it. I hope the sumbitches all choke to death on their false indignation!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
> "the inspiring story of Newegg vs the patent troll. Perhaps the system does work after all."
Unfortunately this doesn't take into accounts the costs. Newegg was lucky that they had an in-house lawyer and the original owner who was prepared to make a stand. This is rare: Conventional wisdom is to hire outside lawyers - patent specialists and all. Lawyers don't come cheap, so Patent troll victims end up owing their lawyers millions of dollars EVEN IF THEY WIN. Under the American court system usually the loser does not have to pay the winners costs, and even in countries where they do, the loser only pays a fraction of the winner's costs costs. The article also doesn't consider the incredible waste of employee time responding to a suit where they could be doing something profitable instead. It also doesn't consider the stress on the employees and the owners. No one will buy a business threatened with a patent lawsuit. Business development grinds to a halt. In theory judges are supposed to dismiss law suits without merit, but they don't - because they don't give a shit about the costs and it gives them something to do.
That the original judge fucked up does not surprise me. Forget what you see on TV about just and fair judges: In patent troll counties like the Eastern District of Texas the judges are blatantly pro-plaintiff. If they were not all the money flowing into their district would dry up, the judges and legal fraternity would be looking for a job somewhere else. The system has not worked. Newegg may have won, but the suit would have still cost them a fortune. This is a rare outcome and usually costs the trolls nothing who shrug and move on to their next victim.
I suggest a new strategy: but the judges of the Eastern District of Texas and other patent troll counties under a microscope and petition the government to remove judges who are playing sides or unfit or incompetent to serve. Did you notice the article doesn't name the original judge? Awesome job. Imagine being able to fuck up like that but everyone is so in awe of your power no one will name you. In any other profession people would be laughing at them over the water cooler.
It seems like the easy way to fix the patent troll situation is for the government to require yearly progress reports (it's not too much to ask to have the patent holder produce something that indicates actual development work is going on whether the product is complete or not). The patent should be rendered null and void if the patent holder has done nothing but sit on it; if the holder hasn't done anything then it's time to let someone else try. No more free money by gaming the system and shaking people down.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
I suspect that Newegg stood their ground because of their policy:
"For Newegg's chief legal officer Lee Cheng, it's a huge validation of the strategy the company decided to pursue back in 2007: not to settle with patent trolls. Ever."
Or, that policy could be so much bluster, and Newegg has actually settled with other patent trolls, quietly, behind the scenes.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
And also ask them whether they will support the next one.
Bezos should be ripping his legal team a new one after Newegg's victory.. Instead his lawyers probably earned bonuses for handing $40m to a patent troll so they could get off early to focus on their golf swing.
The funny thing is CDW, Zappos, Systemax, etc. are still on the hook for the money they settled for. Bet their trial lawyers are kicking themselves right now.
Stop being so retarded and learn to read. He bought the patents, he didn't invent shit. He's a waste of life that couldn't create anything if his life depended on it. People like you who refuse to even try and understand are almost as bad.
Get the fuck off my planet
offenisve to some - the guys on the corner here say it more than 10 times an hour, every day.. whats up with that?
> Perhaps the system does work after all.
Winning your 1 case, does not mean the system is working as intended, regardless of the outcome.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Non producing entity + welding patent = patent troll
producing entity + wielding bad patents = patent ogre
Silence is a state of mime.
Given that the original suit was also filed in '07, maybe the policy was actually a reaction to the situation Soverain created, rather than a standing policy that they applied to the situation when it arose?
"alligator in the swamp" is a phrase I've heard used for a similar situation.
For lawyers.
I really have little idea - I've allowed for that possibility. But, if you've read TFA, then Mr. Cheng indicates otherwise. You can take your pick - believe Mr. Cheng's statements, or assume that Newegg has settled quietly with other patent trolls. It's possible that Newegg simply believed this case was winnable, while other cases may not have been.
What I am very sure of, is that the patent office needs more funds, more personnel, and orders from congress to weed out all these submarine patents, get rid of obvious patents, and search for prior art patents. Before any of that, though, the patent system itself needs to be overhauled.
It's been noted often enough here, that companies don't WANT an "inventor" to be aware of prior art, etc. They WANT their "inventors" to submit ideas, so that the company can file the patent. They get it filed, if it gets approved, then it's valid on it's face. Better to wait for a civil suit, to have it's validity tested, when everyone can innocently claim, "Well, we did this all independently, and we had no idea that anyone else may have done it. It wasn't all that obvious, from where we were sitting, at the time!" Those, and similar arguments, might convince a jury, or they may not.
Basically, it's all a huge gamble, largely determined by the size of your legal staff - and it's so very wrong.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The point of patents is not to protect anyone's investments. The trade-off of patents is disclosure. Prior to patents, trades often kept their methods secret, and if any trades died out, so did their technologies. Patents were created to incentivize inventors to share the secrets of their invention, for the public good. A monopoly on the technology was the bargaining token to encourage them to spill the beans.
Patents systems do not care about investments, it only exists to make disclosure a more appealing option than secrecy.
I am proud of their accomplishments against the status quo of the legal system.
Special Kudos to:
Fred Chang (founder, global CEO)
Lee Cheng (Chief Legal Officer)
James Wu (Chief Technology Officer)
New Economic Perspectives
People who didn't want to appear to be complete assholes would avoid a phrase that not only used a vile racial slur, but was a metaphor suggesting that a fugitive slave was a hidden problem rather than a person to be aided by all means necessary.
In the GP post's context, such a person might say "The catch is the word `legitimate'," or "The snag is the word `legitimate'."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
1. Let there be patent exchange where patents can be bought/sold
2. Patent holder declare price of each license, number of the licenses they wish to sell in next 20 years, pay 2% of that total revenue they are going to generate from that and exchange adds that many licenses in the market.
3. Interested parties can buy the license from the exchange and once all license are sold, the patent goes to public domain.
Innovators still have 1 to 50 upside while patent trolls will go bankrupt.
Part of the problem is that many patents are so technical (or even intentionally obfuscated with technobabble), and there's so much potential prior art, that a patent examiner can't really be expected to sort things out properly. Maybe USPTO needs to have subject matter experts on retainer for all major technical fields, to assist the examiners.
That seems proper, and fitting, to me. Also, increasing the number of examiners would help. I'm half way sure that the examiners are pretty smart people. If an examiner simply could spend TIME on an application, he could probably kick out a lot of the bogus patents.
Face it - if the average slashdotter can take a casual look at a patent, think for less than ten minutes, then provide a half dozen examples of prior art, then a decent examiner could do the same. The examiner's biggest problem is probably time. The paperwork flows onto his desk at a breakneck pace, and he needs to get it off of his desk somehow. Skim it, rubber stamp it, and pass it on to the next person who rubber stamps it seems to be the most common method.
Of course, there is the possibility that half the examiners are actually idiots. I'm not in a position to address that possibility.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Why would you need to? There is no woodpile. There is no person, African or otherwise. It's just a phrase that means what the damn link it links to above says is means. There's about 17 billion different ways to say the same thing, many of which aren't needlessly jarring (and hence don't detract from the actual point being made).
It seems like the easy way to fix the patent troll situation is for the government to require yearly progress reports (it's not too much to ask to have the patent holder produce something that indicates actual development work is going on whether the product is complete or not). The patent should be rendered null and void if the patent holder has done nothing but sit on it; if the holder hasn't done anything then it's time to let someone else try. No more free money by gaming the system and shaking people down.
I completely agree. I've thought for some time that a patent holder should be given 2 years to produce and distribute a product based on the patent or lose the patent.
More to the point, while the point of patents (and other IP laws) was explicitly to incentivize innovation, patent trolls act as parasites and discouragements to innovation. They provide no new ideas or products of their own, instead litigating against and punishing those who do.
They undermine the very system they are abusing, and hurt everyone involved for their own gain.
Wait the same newegg that I believe was Hacked around Christmas time and refuses to acknowledge even though I had to call then 3 times to ask why I kept getting failed purchases to my NewEGG account for a bad CCV. But they had all my account info correct beyond that? I wouldn't buy free shit from them ever again.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
I hadn't heard that idea before. I wish I could mod you up. The innovator gets paid for their investment, and the patent ends up public domain. That's similar to a bounty for open source software, except with your idea the first X licensees pay, not just the first one.
I'm sure a couple tweaks to the idea would be needed. One tweak is that probably the price would go down with each purchase, so someone who wants to be the first to market would pay more than the last. That would almost be required since it becomes free after the last license is purchased. Noone would buy the last license unless it was really cheap. Instead they would just wait for it to be free.
If it's too difficult to evaluate, how does the patent examiner determine that it was innovative?
Reality in this case, the true patent troll is, tah dah, "THE USE GOVERNMENT".
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This sounds like a great idea but what if the technology to achieve the idea is what is lacking? Think about creating a fancy new antenna system or something else which simulates wonderfully on software, but it's small enough that the technology to actually build it is just out of reach? Should a design be invalid just because the technology to build it is just out of reach?
(note I said design, not some fluffy broad idea that qualifies as a "patent" these days, but an actual design like a patent should cover)
and hence don't detract from the actual point being made
It doesn't detract from his point to begin with. Using phrases like those is a good way to identify oversensitive imbeciles.
It's the companies asking for the government to enforce an artificial monopoly on their behalf. It's not the government telling the businesses what to do, it's the government making rules around the businesses telling the government what to do, and there already exist lots of rules.
Learn to love Alaska
Good. Maybe when enough win someone with real power will realize the system is broken.
Come on, they approved patents on a shopping cart. And they approved (but later was overturned) "put it on my tab" (calling it one-click). Put "on a computer" at the end of anything non-novel, trivial and obvious, and you will get it approved. Then the system is built broken and we'd be better off without it than in the state it's in now.
Learn to love Alaska
The examiner's biggest problem is probably time. The paperwork flows onto his desk at a breakneck pace, and he needs to get it off of his desk somehow. Skim it, rubber stamp it, and pass it on to the next person who rubber stamps it seems to be the most common method.
Well, there is also the problem that in most jobs the ones whom management considers the best workers are those who go through their work the fastest, not those who do the highest quality work.
This ad space for rent.
I get what you're saying but requiring the inventor to file progress reports/submit to inspection does not necessarily require a working implementation of the idea. We all know that progress is by no means steady. In the case of your antenna example, the incomplete prototype would be adequate evidence that the inventor is at least trying to do something with the idea instead of merely waiting to sue someone else who actually succeeds in making a working implementation that is unknowingly based on the patented idea.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
You must be kidding. Since the patent troll is enjoying a government-granted monopoly, what the troll does with that monopoly is every bit the government's business.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
offenisve to some - the guys on the corner here say it more than 10 times an hour, every day.. whats up with that?
It's ok. They have friends that are black.
I read it, and I still don't get it. Maybe it is the archaic nature of the saying, so far divorced from the original meaning that it's incomprehensible to someone like me that's never heard it before. Even reading the definition, "some fact of considerable importance that is not disclosed – something suspicious or wrong.", it doesn't make sense. How does that relate to a concealed fact, unless it specifically it means "hidden" secrets that aren't hidden, like the homosexual Republicans getting some in airport bathrooms claiming he's devoted to his family in the press conference after his arrest.
Learn to love Alaska
Not at all. They simply need to discard the concept of software patents, which would cause problems for companies that have invested heavily in them, but would eliminate a lot of very burdensome and ridiculous patents, freeing up that office for more relevant work and eliminating a tremendous legal burden for developers and companies worldwide that is otherwise wasted in expensive and unreliable legal fees.
There's a lot of colorful (no pun intended) speech from a time before the civil rights movement. My Mother used to own a nut and candy store, and old folks would come in and ask for N***** Toes, a euphemism for Brazil Nuts. There was no dark intent, no racial slur, its just what people from a certain part of the country called Brazil Nuts. This is valid speech, yet it has the burden of all these unintended consequences. I was watching a Ralphie May video, I don't know if his idea for destroying words that reflect hate is the right way to go, but I have to applaud the attempt... Gays have reclaimed "Queer", though a number of bigots still use it as an epithet, but the word most folks looking to hurt use now is "Fag" or its longer variant, because queer has lost its sting..
I was listening to Shawn Mullins' song "Shimmer" and the first verse talks about a child being born perfect and we'll teach it how to hate. But, we're born to shimmer, born to shine, born radiate, born to live and born love, and born to try not to hate. I think George Carlin had it right. There are no bad words. Those are just arbitrary noises coming out of our mouths. There are bad intentions, bad deeds, bad actions predicated on hate and ignorance. Its time to wash the words clean. Its time to end the hate and embrace our differences, celebrate our diversity.
No need for yearly progress reports, just make patents horribly expensive after the first year they are granted.
And make the patent office liable if a patent was granted that later was considered too broad.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The one reason that Newegg prevailed is because they hired a great team of lawyers.
As for the others ... Nordstrom, Macy, Home Depot, Radioshack, Kohl ... they should sack the morons who are running their respective legal department.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Just toss the patent out if it isn't clear enough, or if it doesn't list at least 5 things that the submitter thinks are the closest matches for prior art.
You know, throwing bad aplications out would also decrease the amount of bad applications that get submitted.
Sometimes I find the most annoying failures of reasoning are the ones most vague in their error. Ephemeral flaws so hard to quite clarify just bother me because I don't feel like I can really sink my logical teeth into them, so to speak.
The proposition "Perhaps the system does work after all." in the context of this article is one such example. The best way I could explain the problem is to offer a similar story and proposition. Instead of patent trolling and a judge striking one case down, consider this:
"Abusive husband refrains from beating wife this week. Perhaps the man is decent after all."
When you consider a single case of nearer to normalcy as justification for a highly destructive and evil system, you are engaging in the same kind of erroneous reasoning as the supposed argument above. If we count the absurd cost of this legal system on the productivity and creativity of innovators and thinkers, if we consider not just the court decision but all the costs involved even when the court decides in favor of sanity, when we consider the environment of litigiousness it breeds, we cannot point to one time where after a costly court battle ended in a positive ruling as grounds for validation. It would be just like ignoring all the past and likely future abuse on the part of the husband as well as the fact that even when he is not actively torturing his wife, she must still walk on egg shells around him so even on the good days it is still bad.
One example of this is our dear friends at apple; the leadership(Jobs in particular) were earlier on dismissive and opposed to patent trolling but because the courts granted free violence to anyone willing to obey its rituals, Apple was hit by a number of lawsuits and within a decade or so, it changed its tune to participate in this nonsense as a means of 'defending itself' from others who do the same. It would be like locking a bunch of kids in a room with a guy who informs them he will shoot anyone who says any word that some other kid had said first. How long would it be before they all start screaming out as many unique words as they each can so they can continue to speak?
The system is utterly evil. So unless your definition of work includes attacking innocent people who want to build phones with rounded corners, you cannot say the system works.
... a more accurate term I believe would be leech.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The patent trolls also make money by threatening to sue companies who are using intellectual property that the troll has ownership of..... http://x.co/sfEV
Seems weird to even use a jury for most civil suites. As you quote, the jury wants to go home so if it is a long trial...
As well something like a patent suite is going to take intelligent people to understand, even with good expert witnesses and the odds of one prejudiced juror seems high.
The elected judiciary also seems odd. Judges should be aiming for truth, not re-election, which basically means a bunch of common people who probably have not got all the facts second guessing judges decisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
This is just impractical. You would just get millions of bullshit reports for millions of bullshit patents. If the Patent Office is not able to examine the patent submissions properly in the first place, I doubt they would be able to examine the reports either.
There was a better suggestion involving copyrights that could apply to patents as well:
1) The patent submitter would have to set a price-tag on his patent from the get go - a license price.
2) When it is accepted, the patent holder would have to pay a yearly tax for the patent (a percentage of the price he set up for it)
3) Anyone could pay the posted license price to the patent holder to use the technology
4) If anyone is found to be infringing on a patent, he would be required to pay the patent holder a sum relative to the price tag (such as 200% of the price per year infringed)
The tax could be really small - like 1% so it would not bother real inventors while at the same time would stop patent trolls from clinging onto thousands of patents demanding unreasonable payments for the technologies.
Well then it's time to adjust the metrics. Simply add a huge negative factor for any accepted patent that was later invalidated in court for both the examiner AND his manager. It might even pay off, to offer rewards for anyone pointing prior art/obviousness, or at least have a simple appeal process.
How to pay the rewards? Require the company/person filing the patent to make a deposit. If the patent gets invalidated within one(?) year they loose the deposit and it's paid the the one pointing out the error. After the first year a patent can still be invalidated but there will be no reward.
My idea is to keep costs manageable, so even a small time inventor can still file a patent without bankrupting himself.
Nope. All that would do is produce another mountain of fake/useless bureaucracy at taxpayer expense. Patent troll are quite capable of pretending to do "research".
No sig today...
Make the patent offices liable for any patent that's later invalidated (ie. pay all the legal bills). It's the only way.
No sig today...
...or... after the second year we should limit patent damage claims to a multiple of what the licensee was paying the patent office every year to maintain that patent. A patent which is earning you millions every year is worth paying $100,000 a year to maintain, right? 5% of the patent's value feels about right.
Hang on... that might actually work.
I've just fixed the system!
No sig today...
1. Require the plaintiff in a patent suit to actually manufacture and sell a product using the patent in question. No patent holding companies putting their tax on innovation.
2. Require patents to be available under a statutory rate which must to the lowest license fee charged to any of the current licensees.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
No it wouldn't, because they're funded with public money so they have no vested interest in whether they pay out anything or not.
Now, if it involved patent examiners losing their jobs, that would be something...
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Too bad for ARM Holdings, eh?
no, we want a few thousand reports so a bunch of useless wastes of time can fuck right off.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
sure, no offence meant, however is ignorance really a get out of jail free card here?
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
This is the clearest explanation I have seen of the difference between a troll and a non-troll. Thank you for that.
A troll lurks under his bridge, the one you have crossed every day for a year, and then after you have crossed many times, maybe even built your business based around using that bridge, springs up and says, "You crossed 365 times without paying me. My bridge is critical to your livelihood - now pay me [some enormous amount] or you can not cross again!" The non-troll, on the other hand, proudly stands by the entrance to his bridge and, before you cross the very first time, says "Crossing the bridge will cost [some nominal amount] per trip. Do you wish to pay, or find another route?"
There are in fact legitimate companies whose business model is to perform research, develop new technologies, and license those new, patented, technologies to other companies who produce products using those technologies. Some companies are good at making stuff. Others are good at inventing stuff. They shouldn't necessarily have to be one and the same.
It bothers me that people want to throw all "non-practicing entities" in the same bucket as true patent trolls. Some NPE's add real value. (One example - look at the cell phone in your pocket. The fundamental technology behind that little wonder was developed 30 years ago by a company who today would be called an NPE. They still do R&D, they still actively license their patented inventions. They are the furthest thing from a troll. Google InterDigital.)
that newegg had to go to court at all indicates that "the system" is a failure. software is mathematics. mathematics is unpatentable. it was a lower-court ruling ignoring the supreme court which resulted in the mistaken impression that software can be patented: U.S. law *actually* says that only a hardware-software *combination* may be patented, i.e. something like an electronic cash register, or a calculator. if someone makes better software that runs on e.g. TI's hardware then, under U.S. Patent Law, that alternative software *cannot* be patent infringing. the problem is that it's going to take someone to stand up, just like newegg did, but this time to take it all the way through to the supreme court. and that's the problem: the cost of taking things to court. if patent litigation was zero cost to the defendant, including taking things all the way to the supreme court, *then* the system would not be unequal, and would be sorted out pretty damn fast.
That won't work. The patent troll will just do the minimum amount of 'work' to keep the patent active. "Report: prototype now uses green LEDs instead of blue ones for better readability. Still much more to be done."
Posting anonymously b/c I'm moderating. (Immerial)
Well, there is also the problem that in most jobs the ones whom management considers the best workers are those who go through their work the fastest, not those who do the highest quality work.
Well then it's time to adjust the metrics. Simply add a huge negative factor for any accepted patent that was later invalidated in court for both the examiner AND his manager.
Won't work. The patent office is considered among most of the engineers that I know "a good place to start out and get experience, but a terrible place to make a career". Examiner retention is apparently quite low.
I have never worked there, but I can easily understand the work dynamic, having worked at a company which reviewed blueprints for compliance with the law. Work packages came in, you either accepted them or rejected them. This kind of work was repetitive and tedious. Add the horror of reading patents for 8 hours a day on top of it and I don't think any sane person would last more than 1 or 2 years. By the time the patent gets appealed the examiner is probably long gone, and maybe the supervisor too.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Make the patent offices liable for any patent that's later invalidated (ie. pay all the legal bills). It's the only way.
The problem with this idea is it makes the american taxpayer ultimately liable.
The patent office is basically underfunded and simply cannot afford to fully examine every patent filed and look for prior art in every case. Funding it to this extent would probably cost billions based on the number of patents file every year.
Even if you made the people applying for a patent pay for the process if the patent was found to be not valid, this would still involve the patent office needing far more money that it currently has.
I dont read
That's kind of the point, if the jail is of our own making aren't we all responsible for getting out, first for ourselves and then for others. Freedom never comes from the outside.
Sure if you want to limit your communication and have your point side tracked go ahead and use archaic phrases like that. That the person thought they needed to link the phrase to a wikipedia entry for it pretty much shows that they expected a significant number of people to not understand it anyway, so communication wasn't the primary goal anyway.
That only one reply is actually about the meat of the comment as opposed to the archaic phrase is just further indication of the primary goal.
The system does not work at all! If the system worked the lawsuit would not even have been filed to begin with.
Sounds like something ripe for automation. Surely this could be significantly improved with an effective pattern matching algorithm (maybe its available but patent encumbered?).
You should be able to run a match against the body of the patent, have a keyword and natural language graph generated (including synonyms and partial phrase matches) and get back a list of top level prior art hits, run again against this set and get back a full set of prior art (if any). A good system would create a table of matches for an examiner to scan and flag for a second examiner to review. I can't see a system like this missing all of the obvious prior art that has come to light for many of these "patented" ideas.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
'One of its early tasks was the processing of daily orders, which were phoned in every afternoon by the tea shops and used to calculate the overnight production requirements, assembly instructions, delivery schedules, invoices, costings and management reports. '
Seems weird to even use a jury for most civil suites. As you quote, the jury wants to go home so if it is a long trial...
Unless you know that the plaintiff has filed suit in a court where the judge is blatantly supportive of the plaintiff's position. (This, of course, being one of the reasons the East Texas court in question is so popular with patent trolls.) Juries are very definitely not perfect, but they are a defense against the bias of sole judges.
Now if only they'd come off that victory and go all Walmart on OCZ's ass about their bullshit price fixing of SSDs. One mention that they'll pull their products permanently if they don't drop their prices to something more reasonable and OCZ's little agreement with all other SSD makers goes down the toilet.
Then yes, if you are patenting an imaginary invention, your patent should not be granted.
Patents show steps to implement a device so others can do it also.
The alternative is that I patent time machines, transporters, and antennas made from atoms and molecules.
The problem with that seems to be they would have to guess the commercial value of a patent in advance. If they guess too high, they end up paying large amounts of money for the privilege of a worthless patent. If they guess too low, and their patent becomes immensely valuable, other companies can license it from them at rock-bottom prices. Imagine if copyrights worked like that and you had to guess how many books you would sell before getting a copyright...
From TFA:
For Newegg's chief legal officer Lee Cheng, it's a huge validation of the strategy the company decided to pursue back in 2007: not to settle with patent trolls. Ever.
Even if it wasn't for the prices and top notch customer service, that would be enough to keep me as a Newegg customer for a very long time.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Yes.
Think about it. If you have a patent on say a new type of electric car. Other companies may not try to produce their electric car. They may/can infringe on your patent and they do not want to have to pay you (license or by getting sued) for making an electric car. If the patent holder has done nothing in 5+ years except to hold the patent, that patent should be null and void. If said company released a product then fine there is a product out. No product and no progress that patent should be terminated.
Then you don't get a fucking patent. Boo hoo.
Don't Feed the Trolls.
I worked for a major online brokerage, and we got hit by these bastards. A private equity firm bought a group of patents relating to the "control of online charts with HTML form elements". They were from the early days, maybe 97/98 and super broad. They threatened 17 companies with infringement and of course were willing to settle out of court. They got about 500K from us, and who knows how much else from the others. They buy them from dying startups that are trying to cover their debts. And how they ever become patents is beyond me. They were stupidly general. Like patenting "the wheel". It is a very smarmy business. IMO patents shouldn't be able to be sold. They can follow the product, but thats where I draw the line. It is an exploit of our legal system and the regulation of capitalism.
Also, keep in mind that it takes several years to get a patent because the office is understaffed (and many patent officers are not very technical).
There's a lot of engineers in the examiner pool, but the bias towards physical engineers is HUGE. A lot of them don't know software or the internet. They aren't neededly idiots, but they are outside of their area of expertise.
The patent office would not need to inspect the reports, just file them. The reports would be inspected as a part of the legal case brought against the offenders. If they lie, then they pay all court costs and hopefully get thrown in jail.
(Warning -- un-asterisked use of racial slur ahead.)
When I was a boy, we called the prank of knocking on someone's door and then running away, "nigger knocking." There was no bad intent, it's just what we called it.
Somewhere around the age of eight, however, I found out what the word meant and stopped using it in that context because I didn't want to be an asshole.
Yes, there are no bad words (which is why I'm use the word itself rather than "the N word" or such) -- but there are patterns of use of words that indicate that the person using them is an asshole. Anyone who came into your mother's store and said "Gimme some nigger toes" was saying either "I am so damned ignorant that I can't be responsible for what I say" or "I don't give a damn about the feelings of African Americans."
Now I'll support their legal right to say any damn thing they want; but celebrating diversity doesn't mean celebrating asshole behavior.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Nope. That way just opens the door to creating new ways to beat the system.
I think letting patent holders choose how much to pay the patent office, then limiting their damage claims to a multiple of that amount is the way. In that world nobody could afford to sit on a stack of patents in the hope of suing somebody for big money. The only patents being actively maintained would be patents that were earning real money.
No sig today...
Okay, you come up with a patented idea that will be worth tens or hundreds of millions, once it's up and going. Since you're trying to implement it, or something, you can only pay $5K. Big Company, Inc. copies everything, makes tens or hundreds of millions, pays you $100K.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Licensing should fulfill that requirement as well, as long as the licensee is producing and distributing the product.
I have no problem with a company whose whole business is coming up with great ideas, patenting them, and letting others do the work of making it an actual product. A time limit like you suggested should still prevent patent trolls who flip this pattern backwards (others make the product and then you extract the licensing fees).
Hmm the price should be dependent on the R&D cost and the relative benefit to other people. Not based on the amount the market would bear and could be taxed. Remember patents are there to ensure publication of what would otherwise be a trade secret of something that was difficult to invent or discover. For doing this society gives you an exclusivity right.
The problem today is that things that could early have been independently developed by those skilled in the art are able to obtain this privilege.
Why would you want to increase the workload of the USPTO when they clearly can't handle their current one? You can accomplish the exact same thing by requiring yearly, notarized reports to be presented by the plaintiff as evidence in the patent suit.
Why waste time accepting and filing documentation that probably never be used? By switching to a JIT validation of the report you take the load off the USPTO and put it onto the courts where it receives more scrutiny.
The biggest stuff comes from institutions of science; especially the government ones. More people being educated so they can put together ideas in new ways (and not necessarily impressive in nature) than in the past. In addition, there are more people in the world. Governments and universities with money to "waste" on research with no obvious economic benefits that end up discovering things that end up having massive unforeseen benefits and many times a bunch of minor patents with no substantial innovation.
Some people are of the opinion that war creates the most progress/innovation, because a lot of things are done during those times with all the government research and funding-- as well as companies and people trying to get contracts as well as maybe helping out the war effort. Those things didn't need any patents to happen either.
So, if you come up with a cool novel product. Design it, prototype it, then license it to someone else (someone with the money to actually produce it)... you should lose your patent?
I suspect that one of the reasons Newegg stood their ground is that -- unlike most of the other companies mentioned in the article -- they are exclusively an online operation, and therefore had more at stake.
Yeah, Amazon has its line of Brick and Mortar stores...
Newegg stood its ground, because they are badasses
"We basically took a look at this situation and said, 'This is bullshit,'" said Cheng in an interview with Ars.
At district court, the judge hadn't even let those invalidity arguments go to the jury, stating there wasn't "sufficient testimony" on obviousness, and that it would be "very confusing" to them.
This sounds like the judge saying 'Oh lets not let facts get in the way, that can be very confusing."
I said "most" specifically because of Amazon. There were a lot of other companies mentioned which have a large B&M presence.
I have a solution: the patent office should do a thorough examination of every patent application, in the order that they are received. If that makes the process too slow, then maybe the big dogs with their gigantic patent warchests should try paying their fucking taxes so we can afford to hire more patent examiners!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I have a solution: the patent office should do a thorough examination of every patent application, in the order that they are received. If that makes the process too slow, then maybe the big dogs with their gigantic patent warchests should try paying their fucking taxes so we can afford to hire more patent examiners!
I love the idea, but there is unfortunately bugger all hope of them playing ball. it's cheaper for them to buy a politician or two than it is to pay tax.
I dont read
...or... after the second year we should limit patent damage claims to a multiple of what the licensee was paying the patent office every year to maintain that patent. A patent which is earning you millions every year is worth paying $100,000 a year to maintain, right? 5% of the patent's value feels about right.
Hang on... that might actually work.
I've just fixed the system!
Not a bad idea, but I want to take it a few steps further. I think patents should work this way: once it's patented, then anyone (or any company) can license your patent at the same price. No special deals for anyone. (I don't have any great ideas on how to set price, but your suggestion obviously touches upon it.) It lasts for 10 years, then the patent enters free domain and anyone can use it after that for nothing -- it's free to use. If the patent office needs to skim a little off the top for the first 10 years to help pay for the processing, I don't see a problem doing that. Oh... and if you file a patent, there is a non-refundable processing fee. If that idea you have is already prior art or obvious, (whether it is in the free domain or not), you don't get that fee back. That should deter patent trolls from filing frivolous patents.
Mixing some aspects of your idea with mine is an interesting notion that I'll have to think about.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I saw your sig and thought "No, that can't be..." You see, I work for the Redundant Department of Redundancy. You don't think that maybe these two are related, do you?
the first guy to buy the patent would be a real sucker if the price went down.
As a business owner, I strongly disagree. Being the first to market with something cool is a huge advantage. If you're a tech geek, consider the early versions of Java. It was HORRIBLE. Because it was conceived, designed, implemented, "tested" and sent to market in about a year, it was perhaps the worst programming language ever. There's a reason they wanted it out in a year, though - to be the first browser app language available. Do you remember the competing languages that came out in the months to follow, between 1996 and 1999? Neither does anyone else. Java was first to market and that pretty much solidified their dominance for the next fifteen years. So buying the first license for say $50,000 would be much smarter than waiting a month and paying $49,000, sometimes.