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."

Comments

That was too good...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just let loose all sorts of sticky goodies into a small child's asshole. I'm coming after your children now!

Re:That was too good...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the Jews did this.

Re:That was too good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a mod -2? Please, let there be a mod -2.

Re:That was too good...

[omfgnosis]

let there %= -2;

Just in the USA right?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Just in the USA right?

[julesh]

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.

My suspicion is that you'll find that only the USPTO was stupid enough to issue patents for these "inventions".

Re:Just in the USA right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents ar only valid in those countries where you want to patent them (and only if the local patent office gives you the patent, naturally).

You can patent them in usa, but not apply for a patent elsewhere, so the patent is only valid in usa. You can't however make the product elsewhere, where there's no patent protection, and then bring the product to usa, because then it infridges the patent in usa.You can keep manufacturing the product outside of usa and sell it outside of usa.

Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is a legitimate patent holder a 'patent troll'? This seems like an arbitrary distinction. Why are these people scoffed at for standing up for the right to have what is theirs?

Re:Patent troll?

[Umuri]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please pray for those who were lost this weekend in Brazil. Over 200 souls were taken before their time.

Re:Patent troll?

[v1]

Since when is a legitimate patent holder a 'patent troll'?

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they died, it apparently was their time.

Re:Patent troll?

[retchdog]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[SternisheFan]

From the linked article's interview of Lee Cheng, Newegg's Chief Legal Officer:

" 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."

Re:Patent troll?

[Just Brew It!]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok I'll pra-nvm it's just brs

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, I never thought I'd see that phrase in print. I was just musing about n-word phrases, because there was a NYT crossword clue a few weeks ago whose answer was "ding dong ditch". I had never heard that phrase, and I realized that I did not know any way to describe the phenomenon that wasn't prosaic ("knock and run") or horribly offensive ("nigger knocking"). Kudos to you for your boldness.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stick to the subject.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, kudos? Seriously? He could've used another term. You're both asses.

Re:Patent troll?

[Genda]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Runaway1956]

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!

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Distinct from an internet troll, like the AC you just replied to...

Re:Patent troll?

[pwizard2]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Runaway1956]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

offenisve to some - the guys on the corner here say it more than 10 times an hour, every day.. whats up with that?

Re:Patent troll?

[Just Brew It!]

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?

Re:Patent troll?

[Runaway1956]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Whatsisname]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Just Brew It!]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Runaway1956]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[LordLimecat]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[noh8rz9]

how many patents are currently active? 2 million? more? you want 2 million reports describing how a patent has been developed each year, and if a patent is sitting in a drawer, so wat? use it or lose it? well, i prefer to live in the US of A where governemtn doesnt tell businesses and people what to do. maybe in europe you think its different.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's too difficult to evaluate, how does the patent examiner determine that it was innovative?

Re:Patent troll?

[rtb61]

Reality in this case, the true patent troll is, tah dah, "THE USE GOVERNMENT".

Re:Patent troll?

[thegarbz]

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)

Re:Patent troll?

[AK Marc]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[AK Marc]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[cjsm]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[pwizard2]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[pwizard2]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Z00L00K]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, throwing bad aplications out would also decrease the amount of bad applications that get submitted.

Re:Patent troll?

[safrinanoor8]

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

Re:Patent troll?

[dryeo]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[wienerschnizzel]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[azalin]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Joce640k]

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".

Re:Patent troll?

[Joce640k]

Make the patent offices liable for any patent that's later invalidated (ie. pay all the legal bills). It's the only way.

Re:Patent troll?

[Joce640k]

...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!

Re:Patent troll?

[bl968]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Fjandr]

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...

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad for ARM Holdings, eh?

Re:Patent troll?

[kiddygrinder]

no, we want a few thousand reports so a bunch of useless wastes of time can fuck right off.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Patent troll?

[dj245]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Ash Vince]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[foniksonik]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[LaggedOnUser]

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...

Re:Patent troll?

[BlackSnake112]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you don't get a fucking patent. Boo hoo.

Re:Patent troll?

[eek_the_kat]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[frosty_tsm]

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).

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[AveryRegier]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Joce640k]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[david_thornley]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[c 0xFF]

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).

Re:Patent troll?

[OdinOdin_]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[chrismcb]

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?

Re:Patent troll?

[chrismcb]

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

Re:Patent troll?

[Just Brew It!]

I said "most" specifically because of Amazon. There were a lot of other companies mentioned which have a large B&M presence.

Re:Patent troll?

[MrResistor]

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!

Re:Patent troll?

[Ash Vince]

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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Common Joe]

...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.

Re:Patent troll?

[Common Joe]

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?

I knew that kid!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

Re:I knew that kid!

[Areyoukiddingme]

The sarcasm was fun, but if you RTFA, you'll discover this isn't the lone mole. He's been at it for six years, and this is at least the 5th mole. So no, he hasn't Won the Game, but he's a lot farther in than one mole and he still has his mallet in his hand. More to the point, he has NewEgg executives and NewEgg's money behind him, so it's a pretty large and well-funded mallet.

NewEgg's executives should be inordinately pleased with themselves. Their strategy just paid for itself. All the money they sank into this defense will be paid back and then some by not having to pay a tax on every transaction to these stuffed shirts for the next 10 years. (Or 30 years, if they had filed an amended patent that magically re-ups the expiration term.) (Or 50 years. Or forever.)

Meanwhile, there's a laundry list of other retailers with an online presence who either knuckled under or fought just a little bit, then knuckled under. Ask yourself why. The answer starts with "cr-" and rhythms with brony....

Re:I knew that kid!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

yeah, I know, I know. I felt a twinge of regret when I hit the submit button. I was being grossly unfair. Sorry about that.

Re:I knew that kid!

[Runaway1956]

If there were any justice in the justice system, the patent trolls would be paying Newegg. Not just paying for Newegg's legal fees, etc, but actually paying Newegg.

Those bogus patents pulled from their "portfolio", and given to Newegg, along with a few dozen more patents. They might actually own a valid patent that could prove valuable to Newegg.

Re:I knew that kid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I read about Newegg, I feel good that I make almost all of my computer purchases through them, even if it is like $3 more expensive.

Re:I knew that kid!

[L4t3r4lu5]

he hasn't Won the Game

Nor have I. I have lost The Game.

Damn you.

Re:I knew that kid!

[Anonymous Coward]

If there were any justice in the justice system, [...] Those bogus patents pulled from their "portfolio", and given to Newegg,

They did better than that.... from the article: "Newegg and its lawyers, who won an appeal ruling [PDF] that invalidates the three patents Soverain used to spark a vast patent war."

Try reading the article next time. Really, it's not that hard, and Ars is a decent tech news site.

Re:I knew that kid!

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of that a 'dont mess with us' message sent loud and clear. However, that could backfire. If you can take down newegg you have a solid patent...

Re:I knew that kid!

[Golddess]

Try reading the article next time. Really, it's not that hard

Considering how you couldn't even bother reading Runaway1956 entire sentence, I'm not sure you're really in a position to be criticizing anyone.

Here, I'll highlight the part you skipped.

Those bogus patents pulled from their "portfolio", and given to Newegg, along with a few dozen more patents. They might actually own a valid patent that could prove valuable to Newegg.

Now if you actually did read that, but still consider what happened to be "better", I think Newegg would disagree. From Newegg's perspective, being granted a patent which can then be wielded against others is likely a far better result than having a patent invalidated such that everyone and their dog now benefits from their legal battle without having spent one single penny.

It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

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!

Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as

[Anonymous Coward]

You gotta make sure it takes at least 2 clicks to check out,

AT LEAST TWO. three or four is no big deal. amazon's one-click shit is scary -- and some functions @ amazon require it enabled.

solution: don't use amazon. hello, mr barnes and mr noble.

Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's changed, but B&N prices were much worse than Amazon's back in the early days of the web, even with a membership -- and I really despise the practice of national chains with that type of "no point except to bilk people of more money" memberships. If I'm going to pay too excess money for books, I'd rather shop independent stores.

Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as

[Anonymous Coward]

It's changed. Their prices are very competitive even without membership. With a $25 membership you get 10% on pretty much everything, a $25 coupon towards a nook (not sure if this is a one-time thing, a yearly thing or what - didn't even know about it until I bought a nook for my kid), and free two-day shipping. The only books I buy from Amazon are the ones B&N doesn't sell because they are rare or out-of-print (and even Amazon doesn't usually sell them, it's the affiliates); or the occasional textbook, which are generally cheaper at B&N. I also have the B&N mastercard, which gets me 5% back on my B&N purchases (plus like 1% back in the form of B&N gift cards, but I rarely use it anywhere other than B&N).

I frequent Amazon too, and have a Prime membership (which is kind of expensive for what you get, I think, but it saves me $$ on shipping). Usually buy "everything else" at Amazon, but like I said, for books, I go B&N.

Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as

[tlhIngan]

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!

Actually, around the time Amazon was suing people for one-click, notably their competitor B&N, B&N actually implemented "two click" check out. I think they simply asked "are you sure you wanted to order this item?" which gives you one last chance in case it was a mis-click.

Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as

[anagama]

And two-clicks is actually more user friendly because then you don't have to go through a dozen clicks to cancel the order you accidentally placed.

Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as

[Anonymous Coward]

I counter by patenting the 1-keypress shopping cart.

Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as

[Jafafa Hots]

exactly. I have always had 1 click disabled at Amazon... it does nothing to help me, it's there only to help Amazon.

Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon one click orders can be canceled with a single click from the same page for up to 30 minutes should you accidentally order something. You also have to have turned on the one click functionality, it's not on by default.

Thanks, NewEgg

[sunderland56]

If I wasn't already a loyal customer, I sure would become one now.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[anagama]

I think I'll use this as an excuse to buy something I don't need, but would like to have.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

Good a time as any to rebuild my desktop, I'd say...

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Just Brew It!]

What is this strange phrase you use, "don't need"? There's always something any self-respecting geek needs from Newegg!

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

no newegg is terrible. 15% restocking fee. No thanks.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

Me, I'm just gunna clear out my Desktop Crap folder. Been done 6 whole months since I last did'er, and by fuck is she right some messy. Thur be lots a me installers, and them photographs I never filed? Not to mention all them attachments I just plum threw on the ol desktop to save five seconds. Guess it just goes to show, y'don't get no crops unless you plow y'r field. (I'd say somethin bout my wife, but that'd just git her fumin at me).

Like I says, though, just a hour or two clearin' out my Desktop Crap folder. Not that I don appreciate what NewEgg done did, but shucks, I got all the computer bits and parts I need, last thing I really needed was a USB mouse? An that I got fer christmas from Peggy-Sue. Anyway, I doubt those high-flautin' UPS folk wouldn't come my way anyhow.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

no newegg is terrible. 15% restocking fee. No thanks.

Are you that asshole who used to keep 'buying' our cards from retailers, then sending them back so we had to resell them at a discount as 'refurbished' because we were never allowed to resell them as new after you'd had your sticky hands on them?

If so, I'm glad they at least make you pay for it now.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[ithaiminh.vn]

me too http://ithaiminh.vn/

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

What's strange is your conflation of want and need.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Just Brew It!]

Have you checked the settings on your humor detection meter lately?

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

Just be careful about returning motherboards and them claiming you bent pins. Take a photo first......

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone uses the word 'need' in place of 'want,' it usually just means that they want something really, really bad. No need to be pedantic.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[L4t3r4lu5]

There's always something any self-respecting geek needs from Newegg!

Cheap international shipping and an exemption from customs duties.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[azalin]

maybe he needs to buy a new one from newegg

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking Americans.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[WilyCoder]

You're thinking of Brazzers. This is Slashdot.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

What's strange is how often the word conflation is misused.

Re:Thanks, NewEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation Provided:
 
  Geek On

Money well spent.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad all my money spent at newegg has gone towards a good cause. Plus I got new stuff.

Blast from the past

[Stirling Newberry]

I worked on the Transact product at Open Market.

The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Bob9113]

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.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Eskarel]

I think you're just using too narrow a definition of "patent troll". Patents are designed to foster innovation. They give an idea value so that people will take the risk of investing in that idea whatever the scale of the inventor. If all ideas are trivially copied once their details are known then either the ideas have no value so no one invests in them or the ideas get kept secret and we don't get to know about them and build on them. Good patents provide this functionality, they temporarily stifle competition in order to foster innovation.

Bad patents on the other hand merely stifle innovation. Patents can be bad for any number of reasons(the patent holder has no intention of seeking investment for them, the idea itself is trivial(a hard one since the whole idea of patents is that once someone shows you an idea it usually seems trivial), or the patent should not belong to the holder. Essentially these are patents with no upside for the community.

If you wield a bad patent you're a patent troll be you some little company with no assets or the latest do no wrong tech firm, if you use a good patent you're not.

This still leaves us with working out how the hell to determine things like triviality and prior art, but at least we don't have to try and determine intent. Patents, like copyrights and all sorts of other intellectual property, are a necessary evil, they always have downsides, but they're supposed to have upsides.When they don't, the holder is a troll.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[demonlapin]

We have just invented the greatest tool since Gutenberg for the dissemination of information. An almost incomprehensibly powerful tool for decentralizing problem solving.

And the reason it has worked is that we have not let governments kill it. Regardless of how you may feel about politics in every other area of life, please leave the Internet the fuck out of it. The Internet is the greatest accomplishment of humankind to date IMHO, and has transformed my life in ways I could never have imagined. I'm about the same age as the personal computer - born in the mid 70s - and I never even imagined any of this would be possible even when I was 12 and got my first modem.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Good patents provide this functionality, they temporarily stifle competition in order to foster innovation.

As well as infringe upon property rights and create government-enforced monopolies. That automatically makes them evil. We need to get rid of them (along with copyright). Freedom is far, far more important than innovation, and if you can't find a workable business model then don't whine when you go under. Got an objection? I think I know what it is, so let me direct you back to... "Freedom is far, far more important than innovation."

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Drishmung]

...

If you wield a bad patent you're a patent troll be you some little company with no assets or the latest do no wrong tech firm, if you use a good patent you're not.

...

I think the term Patent Troll is more exactly defined than that, and divorced from the subjective judgment of "Good" or "Bad" patent. A Patent Troll is a non-practicing entity (NPE). The sole aim of a patent is to encourage the creation of new inventions. The mechanism to do that involves remuneration, but that's not the aim. A NPE doesn't produce anything, so it doesn't encourage the creation of new inventions. It sure encourages the creation of new patents, but is doesn't encourage the creation of new 'things'.

You might argue over the goodness/badness of Amazon's 1-click patent, but Amazon at least provides a useful service using the process for which they hold a patent and isn't, in my opinion, a patent troll.

Patents, like copyrights and all sorts of other intellectual property, are a necessary evil, they always have downsides, but they're supposed to have upsides.When they don't, the holder is a troll.

I disagree with you only over the term 'troll'. Otherwise, you've got to the nub. Patents and copyright exist only to benefit society. "We, the people" created them solely to benefit us. If the economic burden of the current copyright and patent system outweighs its economic benefit—which numerous studies have indicated is so—we need to uncreate them

That may seem naive, but OTOH, simply nuking software and business patents would go a huge way to fixing this, and that does seem to be the worldwide trend.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[steelfood]

I think your scope is a bit too narrow. All "intellectual property" has this effect. All of it needs reform (sans trademark, which is more for consumer protection than a piece of "property").

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Part of the problem is that patents are too long. In the 18th century having patents last as long as they do made sense as the pace of innovation wasn't that quick. Not like it is today.

I think we need a patent system, last thing I want to do is come up with some clever algorithm that solves a novel problem and only to be undercut by someone with far more resources and market presence that didn't have to do the work of actually implementing or even thinking up that idea. On the other hand I don't want to be cut out of the market because I infringed on someone else's bullshit patent.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately it seems that in the last few years we've cut back a lot of that patent overreach. For instance, the decision in this appeal cites 2008's Muniauction case. Until this case, a patent that literally did nothing but add "on the web" to existing art was a valid patent:

During cross examination, Muniauction’s expert conceded that two of the claims were the same as the prior art Parity system, except for the use of a web browser to access the auction.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

patents are designed to foster innovation

Yes, they foster innovation in the regions where patents are not enforced. All major human advancements would be butchered dead in their tracks if there were patents to fight over. Just check why Hollywood was created where it was. If you want to innovate these days go to some place like China...

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[martin-boundary]

Patents are designed to foster innovation. They give an idea value so that people will take the risk of investing in that idea whatever the scale of the inventor. If all ideas are trivially copied once their details are known then either the ideas have no value so no one invests in them or the ideas get kept secret and we don't get to know about them and build on them. Good patents provide this functionality, they temporarily stifle competition in order to foster innovation.

Yeah, patents are designed to foster innovation like my kid's bee costume is designed to let him fly.... badly.

Patents don't give an idea value. They give a piece of paper value. That creates an economy based on pieces of paper, and to prevent those pieces of paper from losing their artificial value, you need to enforce restrictions on people, ie take away some of their freedom.

But actually, all you *really* need for people to invest in an idea is lots of them. The more people you have, the more likely you'll find one willing to invest in an idea. It's that simple. That's how it's always worked before patents even existed.

Here's another secret: all you need for lots of inventions is lots and lots of inventors: educated people with time to tinker. We have those, more than we ever had in the history of the world. Ideas get rediscovered *all*the*time*.

We really don't need silly pieces of paper that are collected by a bunch of rich corporations so they can stop other people from actually inventing new things. And we don't need US courts to tell us we should pay a ransom to the owners of those pieces of paper, just because they paid the USPTO a fee for the privilege of demanding our money.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents can be bad for any number of reasons(the patent holder has no intention of seeking investment for them, the idea itself is trivial(a hard one since the whole idea of patents is that once someone shows you an idea it usually seems trivial), or the patent should not belong to the holder.

That's why you should not be able to patent ideas. One-click-checkout is an idea, implementation isn't. Automatically opening umbrella is an idea, the thing that makes it happen isn't. Don't patent ideas. Patent smart solutions to those ideas. Let others use other solutions, or pay the patent wielder to skip R&D.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents are designed to foster innovation.

Unfortunately patents are not "designed" to do anything. They are mainly a historical artifact with only a tenuous connection with the real world.

Until they are designed for, and don't simply ignore; independent reinvention, ideas whose time has come, ideas that cannot be kept secret to be used, ideas that cost nothing to come up with, standards (patents are directly incompatible with standards), naming (patents are forever confusing different words with different ideas e.g. database v. file system), whether ideas are the same or different (they just hand wave) and many other factors patents are just largely unmitigated nonsense that are horrendously unfair and a major tax on innovation. Large areas of technology, business and the arts have no patents and do far better than the patent system is doing at the moment.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Eskarel]

Except that before patents, we had mostly trade and guild secrets enforced by beating the living daylights out of each other, frequent loss of critical knowledge and intermittent dark ages and after patents are put into place we have the greatest period of innovation in human history. I know correlation is not causation, but when you're arguing that there is a causal relationship between patents and the opposite of what happened, correlation is enough to disprove you.

Sure, developing nations steal the ideas, as they always have, including the US when it was a developing nation, but that's really beside the point as it's never really been a problem and still isn't. When developing nations become sufficiently developed that they want to interact more fully with the rest of the world (ie sell some of the stuff they ignored the patents for) they start following the rules, as even China is starting to do, and before that point, they aren't really a trade influencing factor.

There are a lot of issues with the current patent landscape, but we've seen far more innovation since patents were introduced than we ever did before and a lot less knowledge has been lost.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

But actually, all you *really* need for people to invest in an idea is lots of them. The more people you have, the more likely you'll find one willing to invest in an idea. It's that simple. That's how it's always worked before patents even existed.

The history of trade guilds would like to differ with you.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[martin-boundary]

Actually, the negative aspects of guilds can be directly attributed to the primitive patents and royally granted perpetual monopolies that made their existence both possible and tolerated.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[kiddygrinder]

is there any real evidence that patents increase innovation? i would have thought that being able to rip someone off and add your own bells and whistles would provide the most useful end product to the end consumer.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, patents are designed to foster innovation like my kid's bee costume is designed to let him fly.... badly.

No, patents really are intended to foster innovation. Imagine you're a company/individual that's developed some wicked new technology. Maybe you've spent 5-10 years tuning this process/product to the point where it works and you're ready to sell it to the public. You have two choices: keep the actual process and details secret so no one can copy it, or disclose the details in exchange for a finite monopoly privilege.

Let's try an example: you've developed some chemistry that allows extremely high detail, realistic color photographs. Now, if you sell the film and chemicals, any bozo can analyze and replicate the chemistry, and your development work is up in smoke. So, if you want to keep it secret, you have to keep the developer secret and in-house. Force customers to buy sealed cameras and ship them back to the factory for developing and printing. This might still be better than contemporary technology, but you have to admit it's inconvenient.
The other alternative is to take patent protection on the formula, maybe even sell/license the developing process to smaller chemists, and sell replaceable-film cameras that people can have developed locally. Much better for the customer. A side benefit (to society) of this is that by disclosing the details of the manufacturing process, some other guy can look at those details, find places to improve, and sell consumers even better cameras. The new guy will owe you some royalty for your contribution to his camera, but he ought still be able to make a profit - he has a better product - any you get compensated for your lost sales.

Or maybe you're a small-time inventor without the resources to build a prototype. If you tell some unethical company about your invention, they'll be able to copy it easily. Maybe be liable for breaching an NDA, if you were clever enough to write a really good one. If you have patent protection, then you can at least farm your idea around to manufacturers with less fear of being undercut.

Sadly, patents seem to have diverged from protecting actual ideas and products and moved on to trivialities like one-click, like computer analogies of every conceivable physical process, and "business methods." If the patent office could be more clear about what is actually patentable, and more stringent in their application of "obvious," then patents could return to benefiting developers more than lawyers.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Eskarel]

What is most useful for the consumer is for other people to know how you did what you did. Before patents that kind of stuff was kept secret and lots of technologies were lost either completely or for a significant period of time(Damascus steel being a specific example). That's been part of patent law since the 14th century. In exchange for a period of protection you had to explain how you did it.

Sure, theoretically having every idea free and open from day one would be even better, but it has never worked that way. Inventions are only valuable if no one can copy them more cheaply and the kinds of companies which can copy them most cheaply tend not to be particularly innovative unless pushed.

People really have no idea how simple it would be to create perfect knockoffs at a lower price, particularly if the inventor is an individual.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[TheLink]

Patents are designed to foster innovation. They give an idea value so that people will take the risk of investing in that idea whatever the scale of the inventor.

They are poorly designed then.
1) A lot of really innovative stuff only gets big after many years - takes a lot to get the market ready for your stuff. See Douglas Engelbart and the Mother of all Demos. Whereas Amazon etc get lots of money and leverage from stuff like one-click and "Shopping Cart (Web Edition)".
2) An overworked patent examiner can't tell how innovative something really is in zillions of different fields, and may not have enough to time to look for prior art by comparing broad vague claims with thousands of other broad vague claims. Might as well do a brief look, find nothing, then approve it and let the courts deal with the mess.
3) The US patent system seems to protect vague ideas more than the actual implementations. Real innovators will tell you that ideas are easy, getting the ideas into the market is the hard part. Many innovative people have more ideas than they can ever implement in their lifetime. It's the non-innovative people who only have one great idea in their lifetime and think the patent system should be a way for them to cash in on it. If you think ideas are hard and implementation is easy, you might be PHB material.

You want to encourage innovators try stuff like awarding Prizes for Innovation for various fields, with one category awarded by "Experts in the Field" and another by "Members of the Public". Hindsight is usually more accurate than foresight.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[drinkypoo]

"The problem is Nazism, not Nazis"

Fail, fail

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[drinkypoo]

When developing nations become sufficiently developed that they want to interact more fully with the rest of the world (ie sell some of the stuff they ignored the patents for) they start following the rules, as even China is starting to do, and before that point, they aren't really a trade influencing factor.

I read this again and again and it still doesn't make sense to me. Which rules? Certainly not the ones on slavery, which China engages in, yet is certainly a "trade influencing factor" — indeed, as a direct result their influence is increased, by getting the labor cheaper. Well, it's pretty much free if you're willing to imprison people for crimes like Christianity, and feed them gruel. By not providing health care and simply discarding workers when the cease functioning they get them for the price of gruel and transportation to the work camp. As a side benefit they are also used for the entertainment of the work camp guards, by being raped. Yes, China is certainly following the rules: you can get away with anything if enough people are making a profit from your bad behavior.

Note I don't think the USA is a paragon of virtue. We don't put a "slavery tariff" on goods produced in countries which still have state-sponsored slavery, so we are every bit as guilty as China is for these offenses. As well, we still have forms of slavery for profit in our own country, notably a criminal "justice" system which penalizes nonviolent and even victimless crime, and a "corrections" system which amounts to a series of rape factories designed to produce hardened criminals and thus increase recidivism.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[martin-boundary]

No, patents really are intended to foster innovation.

Intention does not make reality.

Imagine you're a company/individual that's developed some wicked new technology. Maybe you've spent 5-10 years tuning this process/product to the point where it works and you're ready to sell it to the public. You have two choices: keep the actual process and details secret so no one can copy it, or disclose the details in exchange for a finite monopoly privilege.

The monopoly privilege directly harms innovation by third parties. The least destructive option is therefore trade secrets. I have no problem with that, because it allows others to come up with inventions independently.

Let's try an example: you've developed some chemistry that allows extremely high detail, realistic color photographs. Now, if you sell the film and chemicals, any bozo can analyze and replicate the chemistry, and your development work is up in smoke.

As it should be, for if I come up with something that other chemists can duplicate, there's no reason to give me a monopoly. I would only be setting back the scientific advances by a generation.

So, if you want to keep it secret, you have to keep the developer secret and in-house. Force customers to buy sealed cameras and ship them back to the factory for developing and printing. This might still be better than contemporary technology, but you have to admit it's inconvenient.

Nobody said life shouldn't be inconvenient, except those arguing for patents. And they conveniently forget how inconvenient they make life for everybody else, since that is the price for making life convenient for just one.

Suppose you invent an airplane, and patent it. You'll prevent innovation ands stifle your local industry , while in other parts of the world people who are just as smart as you will make huge progress.

That said, you still aren't forced to make sealed cameras, you can sell unsealed cameras that people can tinker with. If your cameras are good, you will still make a nice living from them. And if you get competitors, then the market will grow, and you'll sell more units.

The other alternative is to take patent protection on the formula, maybe even sell/license the developing process to smaller chemists, and sell replaceable-film cameras that people can have developed locally. Much better for the customer.

This is not better. You're monopolizing the process, thereby preventing others from improving "your" idea, expect rent from everyone and cause the idea to be shunned by the vast majority of potential inventors until your patent expires. This is not better for the customer, who could be having a full ecosystem of alternatives and modifications.

A side benefit (to society) of this is that by disclosing the details of the manufacturing process, some other guy can look at those details, find places to improve, and sell consumers even better cameras. The new guy will owe you some royalty for your contribution to his camera, but he ought still be able to make a profit - he has a better product - any you get compensated for your lost sales.

That is pure fantasy. Have you even read a single patent? They are totally unsuitable for learning a process. Nobody reads patents to learn a competitor's secrets, they just look at the other guy's products, and think through the problem or reverse engineer. Granted, this requires other people with the same basic knowledge and intelligence as the inventor. There are plenty of those in the world.

Finally, I don't believe the claim that everybody is better off if the new guy has to pay royalties. In the absence of patents, the new guy can just reinvent his own version of the product, and price it competitively (you don't believe tha

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Eskarel]

1. The patent system doesn't and shouldn't "guarantee" you success. It gives you 10 years to succeed, can't get it done in 10 years, tough luck.
2. The patent office is most certainly overworked and underfunded, but you won't solve that by screaming "eliminate patents", and Slashdot's definition of novelty is incredibly narrow(if it's not something out of star trek it's not novel) while their definition of prior art is incredibly broad(if star trek did it with a prop there's prior art). There are certainly bullshit patents out there, and there will probably always be bullshit patents out there, fortunately they only last 10 years so we only have to get better, not perfect.
3. Again this is somewhat of a Slashdot bias, companies certainly seem to trying to weasel out of their disclosure requirements and some amorphous patents have been approved, but it probably isn't as bad as we'd like to believe(most of us want every patent we don't like to be invalid). Once again though, we won't fix this problem by eliminating patents, we'll fix it by doing patents right. Given how important getting the patent system right is for everyone it's probably a department we ought to spend a bit more money on.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[stymy]

Actually, the real (supposed) reason for patents is so that companies make their own findings public, in exchange for being granted a limited monopoly on them. That way, after a few years (patents luckily have not seen insane increases in duration yet, unlike copyrights), other people will be able to both use that invention freely, and then develop new technology off of it. I think that the current problems with patents are two-fold. Firstly, the standards for granting them have fallen precipitously lately. This has been discussed to death on /., so I won't elaborate. But secondly, there should perhaps be different durations on patents for different fields. 20 years is a very long time for computing-related things, and by then applications using something have long been made obsolete. A simple reduction in patent duration for some fields would greatly reduce the number of patent trolls and place more pressure on patent-holders to monetize and thus release to the public their new technology quickly, before they lose their monopoly.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Raenex]

A Patent Troll is a non-practicing entity (NPE). The sole aim of a patent is to encourage the creation of new inventions. The mechanism to do that involves remuneration, but that's not the aim. A NPE doesn't produce anything, so it doesn't encourage the creation of new inventions. It sure encourages the creation of new patents, but is doesn't encourage the creation of new 'things'.

You've got a contradiction in your logic there. The "NPE" is also known as an inventor. The patent system was created to separate the roles of invention from the roles of production. The troll, or NPE, has already done their part by creating the invention and gets paid for it via licensing fees, as intended. Even if the invention is sold by the original inventor to another NPE, the patent system still served the function for providing a market for inventions.

Now personally I hate all the bad patents floating around, and seriously question if the patent system isn't doing more harm than good anyways, even if only "good" patents were allowed, but the "troll" patent owner, as defined, is what patents are essentially there for.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Drishmung]

You've got a contradiction in your logic there. The "NPE" is also known as an inventor. The patent system was created to separate the roles of invention from the roles of production.

To be pedantic, the patent system was created to encourage the production of more useful stuff. As I said, it's the production bit that's important, otherwise there is no point. A patent for an invention that is never produced is, by definition, useless. So a patent that prevents a useful thing being produced is worse than useless.

A consequence of the patent system was that it tended to encourage (but did not enforce) a separation between invention and production, but that was not the intent.

The troll, or NPE, has already done their part by creating the invention and gets paid for it via licensing fees, as intended. Even if the invention is sold by the original inventor to another NPE, the patent system still served the function for providing a market for inventions.

Now personally I hate all the bad patents floating around, and seriously question if the patent system isn't doing more harm than good anyways, even if only "good" patents were allowed, but the "troll" patent owner, as defined, is what patents are essentially there for.

Yes, markets are often a good thing. However, back to trolls. In practice trolls don't actually produce anything. A NPE doesn't seek to make the invention. The troll doesn't seek to sell the invention to someone to have it made. The troll waits under its bridge until someone tries to to make something useful and then slithers out and demands protection money.

We can look at that and decide that trolls are bad, but as you say, they are just a consequence of the rules we made. We can try to create anti-troll regulations—which just evolves smarter, tougher trolls—or we can go back to first principles and try a different way.

Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls

[Raenex]

To be pedantic, the patent system was created to encourage the production of more useful stuff.

Well yes, but by encouraging invention. You can't produce what hasn't been invented yet.

In practice trolls don't actually produce anything. A NPE doesn't seek to make the invention. The troll doesn't seek to sell the invention to someone to have it made. The troll waits under its bridge until someone tries to to make something useful and then slithers out and demands protection money.

This hints at bad patents. Otherwise the patent should be useful without any need to "slither out". Many patent holders have the opposite problem -- they can't get anybody to produce what they invented!

So in other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:So in other words...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Thankfully, the competitors you mention are all dubiously competent, so this is unlikely to be Newegg's death-by-good-intentions.

Re:So in other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't worried about it being Newegg's death or anything, just lamenting that they probably ended up spending a bunch of money that will only help their competitors and not themselves. Another shitty aspect of the American legal system.

Re:So in other words...

[Just Brew It!]

Those other companies may be larger in total sales, but they have a smaller online presence; Newegg is currently the 13th largest online retailer. Probably explains why the other companies settled rather than go to trial; online sales likely weren't enough of a priority to them.

Re:So in other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this is Newegg's long term strategy to minimise the damage caused to them by that particular shitty aspect of the US justice system. This is the fifth time they've nuked a patent troll, strongly devaluing the trolls property. Eventually even patent trolls will get the message that Newegg does not fold, and will pick easier targets. Eventually the other companies will have to follow suite, or be slowly bled to death.

Re:So in other words...

[Miamicanes]

> Newegg just spent a lot of money fighting a lawsuit which has now established a precedent

This is actually an extraordinarily rare event, which is why it's being so rightfully celebrated. Patent trolls almost NEVER allow their cases to move all the way to final judgment... they either get the other party to settle for undisclosed terms, or they themselves withdraw the suit. If they settle for undisclosed terms, the court never actually rules upon whether or not the patent is valid, so they can keep using it against others. If they drop the case, the court won't allow them to pursue it again against the same defendants, but they can keep doing it to other people.

Re:So in other words...

[Bigby]

True. The likely result from this will be that Newegg won't be getting so many lawsuits. When a company that holds a patent that all retailers could be infringing, they will sue everyone but Newegg. Suing Newegg will be a risk to their asset.

The United States

[Anonymous Coward]

A nation of rent-seeking lunatics.

From TFA:

[Areyoukiddingme]

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.)

Re:From TFA:

[Just Brew It!]

I don't think the judges will give a flying fuck about the colorful language. It was in an interview for a tech news site, not something he said under oath in a courtroom.

Re:From TFA:

[jonadab]

The thing is, this ruling in Newegg's favor didn't just invalidate Soverain's $2.5 million case against Newegg. By going for the validity jugular and winning, they managed to invalidate Soverain's patents and cost them the hundreds of thousands in settlements they otherwise would have had from all the big retailers who wouldn't have taken it to court. The defendants in all the other pending cases can now point to this verdict. (In layman's terms, the argument goes along the lines of "Soverain is suing us because they say we violated their shopping cart patents, but now that those have been ruled invalid, nothing meaningful can be accomplished by allowing this suit to continue. By not withdrawing it, they are now just wasting the court's time.")

In other words, Newegg killed Soverain's entire business plan with fire.

They aren't going to have to do that a thousand times. If they can manage it two or three times, and get nice big public stories about it featured in the news, future patent trolls will conveniently forget to sue Newegg in favor of going after everyone else and collecting settlements that don't endanger their existence.

Re:From TFA:

[Areyoukiddingme]

They aren't going to have to do that a thousand times. If they can manage it two or three times, and get nice big public stories about it featured in the news, future patent trolls will conveniently forget to sue Newegg in favor of going after everyone else and collecting settlements that don't endanger their existence.

Sadly, you are correct. Now that you mention it, I think you overestimate the number of times NewEgg will get a chance to defend against a troll. This may be the very last time. NewEgg's lawyer will be reduced to filing amicus briefs on those cases from which NewEgg was omitted.

I do have one question for our lurking lawyers. Does this mean other companies who have previously settled automatically get their settlements refunded? Does Victoria's Secret get their $18 million back? I would assume it's not automatic, so my real question is can they file something and get it back? Or once you've settled, is your money gone forever? That's something I haven't seen addressed in the numerous Slashdot patent threads.

Re:From TFA:

[nedlohs]

It's part of the gambit. They have to generate as much publicity as possible so that other patent trolls see it.

It's the same technique as "we don't negotiate with terrorists". It doesn't work if no one knows it's what you do. The idea is that patent trolls won't bother going after them because the patent trolls want the settlement option, they don't want it to end up in court and certainly don't want the patents themselves challenged.

Re:From TFA:

[edb]

Most settlements are self-contained, and are not affected by outside events or court judgments. A settlement by definition is a short-cut to circumvent going to trial; that pretty much limits its scope in both directions. The settlement does not affect other litigation (outbound effect = 0) nor is it affected by other litigation (inbound effect = 0).

If other parties to other lawsuits which have settled agree to reopen those settled (i.e. closed) suits, then they are open game. Otherwise, them's the rules of the game.

The incentive to settle is both to reduce the current thread and also to avoid future exposure. Every settlement includes language to include both past and possible future liability.

The extent of that agreement is the question.

Re:From TFA:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I do have one question for our lurking lawyers. Does this mean other companies who have previously settled automatically get their settlements refunded? Does Victoria's Secret get their $18 million back?

IANAL although my GF loves it. Anyways... the way it works is that any settlements are subject to the terms of the settlement which could be anything - so it could go either way, usually it goes the way of the troll getting to keep the money. Any court rulings are based on the validity of the patents, so those go away when the patent goes away,

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

I do have one question for our lurking lawyers. Does this mean other companies who have previously settled automatically get their settlements refunded? Does Victoria's Secret get their $18 million back? I would assume it's not automatic, so my real question is can they file something and get it back? Or once you've settled, is your money gone forever? That's something I haven't seen addressed in the numerous Slashdot patent threads.

(posting anonymously to preserve mods/pts)

IANAL, but I believe that if a court ordered the settlements as a result of a trial and judicial decision, then the award is probably reversible because the premise of or basis for that decision has been undermined. An application to a court for a review of the decision would likely be necessary.

OTOH, if the settlement was made out of court as the result of a negotiation and licensing agreement between a corporation and the patent troll, then the terms of that agreement remain unchanged and the money is unlikely to be recoverable. Sadly.

Re:From TFA:

[speedplane]

It will most certainly show up in the next court case. The simple sound bite makes Lee appear to be obstinate and unreasonable, something most judges don't like.

Re:From TFA:

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

They can probably renege on the settlement based on the fact that they were based on fraudulent claims.

Prior Art

[Gary Perkins]

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.

Re:Prior Art

[chrismcb]

Even better from TFA:

Just saying "do it on the Internet" isn't a novel invention, the appeals court ruled

We've been saying that for ages. Great to see it in print.

Amazon paid 40 million$ to Soverain

[Frankie70]

http://www.zdnet.com/news/amazon-pays-40-million-to-settle-patent-dispute/144171

Alcatel-Lucent

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA also calls Alcatel-Lucent a troll.

The company that owns Bell Labs a patent troll?

Seems odd....

Re:Alcatel-Lucent

[mcohrs]

TFA also calls Alcatel-Lucent a troll.

The company that owns Bell Labs a patent troll?

Seems odd....

they are the descendants of a great intellectual power house, unfortunately they seem to exist solely on the past excretions of those endeavors - or have they actually come up with uswful things like the transistor?

Re:Alcatel-Lucent

[Just Brew It!]

As they say in financial services ads, "past performance is not indicative of future results". While they were once a powerhouse of technical innovation, Bell Labs' day in the sun has come and gone. They've been in decline for many years, and the bursting of the dot-com bubble (in which Lucent was heavily invested) pretty much finished them off.

I do agree, calling them a "patent troll" is a bit harsh though; at least they were great in the past, and produced (and continue to produce) actual products. But as far as current operations go, the best thing you can say about them is probably "Hey, they out-lasted Nortel!"

Re:Alcatel-Lucent

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that odd... NE won a verdict against them. An analogy:
I've been a law-abiding citizen my entire life thus far. If I robbed a bank tomorrow, what would I be?

Re:Alcatel-Lucent

[jonadab]

Alcatel-Lucent is a real company that provides real services. Thus they are not a patent troll under the most narrow definition (a company that exists for no other purpose than to buy up stupid patents and file lawsuits based on them).

As for Bell Labs, that name is historically important, but "owning Bell Labs" at this point basically just means having bought up some leftover intellectual property that is no longer commercially viable. (The fact that the current owner is doing new R&D under the Bell Labs name has basically nothing to do with the old AT&T Bell Labs intellectual property portfolio, which has been effectively vacuous since the BSD verdict in the early nineties.)

Re:Alcatel-Lucent

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a law-abiding citizen my entire life thus far. If I robbed a bank tomorrow, what would I be?

Wealthy?

Re:Alcatel-Lucent

[perryizgr8]

he says alcatel-lucent had become a troll by the end of 2011, which seems to be quite true.

Service Unavailable

[Frosty Piss]

And speaking of Soverain Software, their web page is responding "Service Unavailable" at the moment... Lol, and so on...

Re:Service Unavailable

[anagama]

Drat -- it's back up. Where is that much vaunted slashdot effect?

Chinese Culture FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

Stand up to the American (Jewish) bullies/lawyers like the boxer rebellion. Time to tell them go to hell with their Talmud.

Can we..

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please just all come together as a nation/earth and jettison patent trolls into outerspace?

How is he a patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:How is he a patent troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

patent filed in 94, takes action in 2012-2013

sorry, fail enforce it or loose it

Re:How is he a patent troll?

[Just Brew It!]

Under the current system, a lot of people own patents on things they shouldn't have been allowed to patent in the first place. That's the crux of the issue. I've got no problem with people enforcing patents on things that are truly innovative. But too many patents these days are for concepts which already existed prior to the filing of the patent and/or are clearly obvious.

Re:How is he a patent troll?

[Just Brew It!]

Patents weren't granted until '98/'99, and Newegg was sued in '07. It's still an 8-year gap, but hey... get your facts straight.

Re:How is he a patent troll?

[Cwix]

Ahh, there are always assholes who defend trolls.
Go read the article, it was clearly trollish

Patent trolls?

[freeasinrealale]

oh for a moment I thought they wiped out slashdot trolls...

Re:Patent trolls?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you misspelled that, we're patient trolls.

What Now For Amazon and the Others?

[Frosty Piss]

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...

Re:What Now For Amazon and the Others?

[nomadic]

They're out of luck; once you settle you're done, you can't get the money back unless you can show some sort of fraud in the settlement itself. It doesn't matter what happened with the underlying claims later on, the whole point of settlement is to avoid risking an even worse outcome.

Re:What Now For Amazon and the Others?

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think Amazon wants any money back? These other companies, such as Newegg, are competitors of Amazon. Amazon 'settles' for $40 million with patent troll Soverain who then takes the $40 million and proceeds to sue all of those other companies. Another way of looking at it would be that Amazon was financing litigation against its competitors.

Re:What Now For Amazon and the Others?

[Bigby]

That is correct. However, I think Amazon can stop making payments of 1% of revenue day forward.

Re:What Now For Amazon and the Others?

[Frosty Piss]

If it was part of a settlment, maybe not?

Re:What Now For Amazon and the Others?

[Frosty Piss]

I always assume that "Anonymous Coward" posts are people that have very small penises.

newegg is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to buy from newegg, 15% restocking fee? No thanks.

Amazon has cheaper prices AND a better return policy.

Re:newegg is crap

[Rhys]

And Amazon has a comment system filled with vastly more morons, and the search and description of parts is horrible compared to newegg. Maybe worth it if you're buying something like a laptop, but if you're buying parts... newegg all the way. With the possible exceptoin of cases, because they are often so bloody heavy and expensive to ship, it can be cheaper to pick them up from the local computer shops instead -- assuming you have a good one.

I get that 15% restocking is annoying (like, when Asus tech support lied about their motherboard being VT-D capable, so I bought one and then ta-da it isn't! Bought an intel like I should have and was just going to craigslist 50% writeoff the other until it ended up being a new PC for the wife instead). That said in 8 years of buys from Newegg this is the first time -ever- I've thought about returning a part, and I've bought plenty from them -- both for myself and proxy via friends who also buy parts for new systems there.

Also, they aren't a patent troll (Amazon sure is) and didn't cave in to the patent troll (Amazon did). That's enough reason to buy from them by itself.

Re:newegg is crap

[Just Brew It!]

Their product listings are generally detailed and accurate enough that the restocking fee is largely irrelevant. As long as you do your homework, you will rarely (if ever) need to return anything for a refund. Over the past decade, between home and work, I've probably ordered upwards of $50K worth of computer hardware from them, and I have never paid a restocking fee.

I'm going to go...

[zoid.com]

I'm going to go right now and buy something from Newegg.. Not sure what but I'm going to buy something.

Re:I'm going to go...

[WhatAreYouDoingHere]

Funny thing is, I just finished ordering some cables from Newegg before visiting slashdot tonight...

A game where winner still pays the price

[CuteSteveJobs]

> "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.

Re:A game where winner still pays the price

[nomadic]

"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. "

They did hire an outside law firm, Weil Gotshal, which is one of the top firms in the country.

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.

Absolutely wrong, judges love dismissing cases, particularly complex cases like patent actions, because they don't want their docket to get overloaded. Judges make incorrect holdings of fact and law all the time; that's the whole point behind appeal courts. It's usually not out of malice or incompetence, despite perennial slashdot anger at what is perceived as to the contrary. Speaking as someone who used to litigate in federal courts, the majority of judges just don't care on a personal level about the parties before them, they just want to get the cases moved through their court. The only personal investment most judges have in the cases is they don't want them to be reversed because they consider it as a hit on their reputation.

Re:A game where winner still pays the price

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think the 5th circuit is wrong in a generally pro-patent way? Are there a couple old 5th Cir. clunkers that shape written opinions, or is it a less specific (legal or general) cultural thing?

Re:A game where winner still pays the price

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends entirely upon the judge. I imagine some are perfectly happy to let their dockets get walloped - it incentivizes those involved to seek a settlement, which, guess what - favours the plaintiff, because that way the plaintiff always gets something, even if their claims are absolute horsexxxx. It's only when they refuse to settle (and show me a plaintiff who'll settle for just going away) that it goes to trial, and even *then* they're wildly for the plaintiff.

So yes, some judges have quite a lot of incentive to let their dockets get stuffed, if they want to favour the plaintiff, which in East Texas, according to the rumours, they do.

AC

Re:A game where winner still pays the price

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

US District Judge Leonard Davis, who had overseen the case, awarded Soverain an ongoing royalty as well as an additional damages-only trial on a third patent. (That extra trial won't happen now that Soverain's patents are dead on appeal.)

Re:A game where winner still pays the price

[nomadic]

I am not a patent lawyer so I have no special expertise on the subject, but generally different appeals courts develop different approaches to certain laws which stick around for years due to inertia. Appellate panels are randomly picked for each appeal, so if you get three judges together who by chance happen to be strongly pro-patent in an early case could set the agenda for the next decade. Subsequent panels are expected to follow the rulings set down under what's called the doctrine of interpanel accord, where a panel can't be overruled by a later panel, you'd need the entire circuit sitting en banc (all the judges at once) to overrule the first panel.

Re:A game where winner still pays the price

[drinkypoo]

Absolutely wrong, judges love dismissing cases, particularly complex cases like patent actions, because they don't want their docket to get overloaded

That's how it is supposed to work. It's not how it works in Texas, where they see litigation as a profit center. This is a step towards evil from every other state (except the few like Florida which work on the same plan) where the laws are the profit center, not the courts themselves. There's a difference in that most people who are being milked show up in court knowing they are being milked. They've been popped for some minor traffic violation that didn't endanger anyone and that they likely didn't actually make.

Re:A game where winner still pays the price

[rcw-home]

the majority of judges just don't care on a personal level about the parties before them, they just want to get the cases moved through their court

What do you think explains the jurisdiction shopping that lead to a large increase of these cases being pursued in East Texas?

Re:A game where winner still pays the price

[darkmeridian]

Judge Davis, the judge on this case, gave a speech where he made the very interesting claim that most Texans are familiar with licenses and abstract intellectual property rights because many of them are landowners who have licensed out oilfields to big companies and are aware of the concepts. I thought, well, if you have a jury pool made up of people who think that they're akin to patent owners, or at least, a judge who thinks that way, then jesus, no wonder you're going to have a pro-patent mindset when approaching these cases.

Fugitive in the woodpile

[tepples]

Poor choice of phrase, even though it accurately connotes the situation

For the record, what more polite term would you suggest to replace "person of subsaharan African descent in the woodpile"? Would "fugitive in the woodpile" work as well?

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[suutar]

"alligator in the swamp" is a phrase I've heard used for a similar situation.

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[Anonymous Coward]

Nigger in a pile of fags, duh.

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[Mr. Slippery]

For the record, what more polite term would you suggest to replace "person of subsaharan African descent in the woodpile"? Would "fugitive in the woodpile" work as well?

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'."

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[nedlohs]

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).

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[AK Marc]

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.

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[Genda]

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.

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[kiddygrinder]

sure, no offence meant, however is ignorance really a get out of jail free card here?

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[Genda]

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.

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[nedlohs]

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.

Re:Fugitive in the woodpile

[Mr. Slippery]

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.

(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.

Ask Amazon why they supported a patent troll

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

hmm

[nomadic]

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.

This is the same stupidity, in another form

[Jack9]

> Perhaps the system does work after all.

Winning your 1 case, does not mean the system is working as intended, regardless of the outcome.

I propose new terminology

[wbr1]

Non producing entity + welding patent = patent troll
producing entity + wielding bad patents = patent ogre

Re:I propose new terminology

[Anonymous Coward]

Non producing entity + welding patent = patent troll

Non producing entity + soldering patent = patent goblin?

Re:I propose new terminology

[tchdab1]

Patent zombies?
Patent dragons?
Patent vampires?

Patently boundless.

This system works.

[Anonymous Coward]

For lawyers.

As a Chinese-American

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

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)

Patent situation can be fixed easily

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patent situation can be fixed easily

[Pete (big-pete)]

I have my own ideas about patents, I think there should be categories, rather than all patents being valid for the same term.

Patent duration should be related to the amount of R&D needed to develop and turn into a meaningful product, so if we absolutely have to have software patents, then they should have a duration of 1 or maybe 2 years - but a pharmacutical patent with a long development process and high costs can have the full existing term.

This would maintain the purpose of patents to allow the "inventor" to control their product within a reasonable time, but it would not stifle innovation where other new developments are trapped by a massive maze of existing patents in a fast moving field.

-- Pete.

I don't trust new egg anymore

[AgNO3]

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.

Re:I don't trust new egg anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever consider the possibility that Newegg wasn't hacked, that the would-be thief got your credit card and billing info from somewhere else? How do you know--beyond any shadow of a doubt--that Newegg was hacked? In fact, if Newegg were hacked, I'd bet that the would-be thief would have your info to use on other sites. Sounds to me more like someone compromised a browser cooking or something on your end, and the troubles you experienced was likely your own damn fault.

Re:I don't trust new egg anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the card they used is only registered with newegg. Wht didnt. They then try to use the card number else where just newegg 4 times in 1 night. With failed ccv code. If they had the number and nit just access to my newegg account the could easly just encode a the number to a blank and use it all over without needing the ccv. That didnt happen.

Re:I don't trust new egg anymore

[AgNO3]

If it wasn't newegg that was hacked and it was in my opinion. Then why wasn't the card used at other places? The only saving grace is that the card data is encrypted better then their user data. So if they where hacked and they got user log in with accounts that have cards attached they would only be able to purchase via Newegg but not have access to the actual card number. How if newegg wasn't hacked did they use my account with my passwords. They didn't just guess my password I guaranty.

Re:I don't trust new egg anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

• It's far more likely you're doing the American-standard find-somebody-to-blame-because-I-can-do-no-wrong, and the "hack" was in fact executed upon yourself, via trojan keylogger or an email with a link to a fake Newegg page.
• If NewEgg were hacked, why would the hacker pick your specific account and ignore all the others? Egotistical, much?

That might be a really good idea

[raymorris]

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.

Re:That might be a really good idea

[gl4ss]

the first guy to buy the patent would be a real sucker if the price went down. if it didn't then the one to buy the last license before it went public domain would be a real sucker. and little guys would be totally fucked having to guess their licensing income and come up with the 2% up front.

Re:That might be a really good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the system will hurt little guys. The cost of filing patent's is already in many thousands. This system will drive the cost of filing a genuinly innovative patent down and consequently helping little guys who are innovative.
The very fact the "little guy" is filing patent means the he intends to make some money. If can just put 1k upfront then he is going to make half million, which is a hell lot of money for him since by the definition he is "little guy".
  And typical patent license are not going to cost thousands per license so there is not much heartache to be the first or the last.

Re:That might be a really good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

another advantage is that really hot patents will go in public domain quickly that will benefit the community.

Lousy lawyers

[Taco Cowboy]

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.

Re:Lousy lawyers

[Skapare]

And this is why the legal system (not just patents ... the WHOLE legal system) is so screwed up. Judgment on cases brought before the court should always, and only, be based on the merits of the case, no matter how good ... or how bad ... the attorneys are. This is what is raising the cost of lawsuits in this country.

Re:Lousy lawyers

[Alain Williams]

Mod parent up.

We would all be better off if the world had fewer lawyers.

Re:Lousy lawyers

[Dishevel]

That would be a Justice system.
Some people call what we have a justice system, but they are wrong. What we have in the US is a legal system.
There are a few good things about a legal system. Also a few pitfalls in having a "Justice System".
Though I think I would still prefer a justice system. Even though it would result in the instantaneous execution of many lawyers and politicians.
Notice how such a large number of scum sucking politicians are lawyers?

Perhaps the system does work after all.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Perhaps the system does work after all.

[Let's All Be Chinese]

I'd call it "mistaking succesful damage control for correct functioning". Apparently the system isn't entirely dysfunctional as patents can be revoken and it is possible to prevail against a patent troll, depending. But that doesn't imply the system as a whole is functional.

The fact that these patents were issued in the first place and that patent troll companies can exist on settlements and the occasional lawsuit already ought to be proof enough that the system is at least partly dysfunctional and therefore not fully functional. I would even argue it is dysfunctional enough to warrant immediate takedown of the entire system, and a rethink of what we originally wanted with the system.

If you can't see that, then maybe you're not really informed and if you're trying to inform the public while in such an uninformed state you're likely to spread misinformation. As such, shame on ars technica for wishful thinking. They ought to have known better.

Troll might be close, but ...

[Skapare]

... a more accurate term I believe would be leech.

I don'n try very good

[inportan]

I think in vietnam transport then http://vanchuyen.com.vn
I love you page http://freewebs.vn
I hope you visit in page

"Perhaps the system does work after all"

[lkcl]

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.

Nice thought but...

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Still broken

[Anonymous Coward]

The system does not work at all! If the system worked the lawsuit would not even have been filed to begin with.

Sounds like LEO

[zaax]

LEO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer) did inventory control for Lyons tearooms which had multiple input/output buffers a sort of shopping cart.

'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. '

Quest #2

[slashmydots]

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.

All the reason I need to buy from Newegg for life

[MetalliQaZ]

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.

Newegg followed the golden rule:

[DarthVain]

Don't Feed the Trolls.

Patents didn't do that much

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Patents didn't do that much

[Eskarel]

And what would those institutions of science teach if everyone kept everything they know a deep dark secret to protect it from being copied? The fact that patents get you paid are nice and that certainly helps foster innovation, but the thing you're actually paying for with the temporary monopoly is the publication. To get a patent you have to explain how your idea works(or that's the idea anyway), this means that inventors have to weigh up a guaranteed monopoly for a fixed period of time or a secret which could keep them on the gravy train for life or could be discovered tomorrow.

Patents help to guarantee us the shoulders of giants on which to stand.

That's not to say there aren't lots of issues with patents, or that the patent office is perfect, but there's a reasonable correlation between the advent and expansion of patents and the expansion of human knowledge, and the fact that patents require knowledge to be shared indicates this relationship might be at least partially causal. At the very least the argument that "patents would have stopped all human knowledge" is fundamentally wrong since a) they've been around since the 14th century, and b) a whole lot more stuff has been invented since then than was invented previously

.

Re:All the reason I need to buy from Newegg for li

[chrismcb]

I thought this statement was a good enough reason to love Newegg:

"We basically took a look at this situation and said, 'This is bullshit,'" said Cheng in an interview with Ars.

Very Confusing

[chrismcb]

No wonder it is hard to invalidate a patent in East Texas.

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."

Being first to market is a BIG advantage

[raymorris]

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.