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Rackspace Goes On Rampage Against Patent Trolls

Posted by timothy on from the there-should-be-blood dept.

girlmad writes "Rackspace has come out fighting against one of the U.S.'s most notorious patent trolls, Parallel Iron. The cloud services firm said it's totally fed up with trolls of all kinds, which have caused a 500 percent rise in its legal bills. Rackspace was last week named among 12 firms accused of infringing Parallel Iron's Hadoop Distributed File System patents. Rackspace is now counter-suing the troll, as the firm said it has a deal in place with Parallel Iron after signing a previous patent settlement with them."

8 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. The only ones who win are the lawyers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The laws must be changed.

    1. Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. by crashumbc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "The only ones who win are the lawyers."

      -The laws must be changed.

      Which is exactly why the laws won't be changed.

    2. Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Which is exactly how the laws got written in the first place.

    3. Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. by jhoegl · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That used to be the case, but you guys are forgetting this is the 21st century.
      Now lobbyists make the laws, and lobbyists are paid for by the winning side.

    4. Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. by anagama · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Exactly how many non-geeks are actually knowledgeable about patent trolls? Two? Three?

      Talk to most random people about patents, and they think: "lotto" -- invent something cool and retire. Try to explain what is wrong with the system and their eyes glaze over. The notion that patent reform will come from the masses and that they will demand change is .... wishful thinking? ludicrous? Crazy? Pick any word that's the antonym of "possible."

      --
      What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
    5. Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "who wouldnt be first to line up and patent something if they actually came up with something cool?"

      I presume that you're familiar with the name "Linus Torvalds"? Copyleft authors are legion and myriad. It's not unusual to see a license that says something to the effect, "Hey, enjoy my cool stuff, for free! If you really like it, visit my homepage to leave compliments or to make a donation!"

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  2. Are the courts the enemy of the people? by CuteSteveJobs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is with overinflated lawyers fees, court procedures which encourage paperwork which makes even more fees for lawyers and and court fees that the courts are so expensive you are looking at handing lawyers and courts two million up just to defend yourself from a patent troll. If cases were streamlined and it only cost $10K to defend a patent troll it would be far fairer, but lawyers and judges would be out of work. Have you ever heard of judges being laid off for lack of work? Judges whose communities depend on patent trolls for a steady stream of cases have a conflict of interest. If they came down hard on patent trolls and threw out meritless cases there would be boarded up lawyers offices all over town. Instead the judges say well geez better have a trial anyway just to be sure. It might get an answer but it wastes a fuckload of cash to get there. If the USPTO issued firm rulings we wouldn't need the courts. Instead the USPTO scratch their balls and say well I will just approve this shit because I can't understand it anyway and let the courts sort it out. The problem is as much the court system as it is the USPTO. They should streamline these but do you really think lawyers and judges will be putting themselves out of work?

    Patents are written in bullshit confusing language so courts argue what they mean. A software engineering looking at one of these wouldn't even recognize their own system in one of these documents. Lawyers write them to be broad and confusing so they can make money arguing it. The USPTO shouldn't be approving patents that are unreadable. And if a IT graduate can't read one of these and work out what they mean, they shouldn't be granted.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-32973_3-57409792-296/how-much-is-that-patent-lawsuit-going-to-cost-you/
    http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2013/03/guest-editorial-throwing-trolls-off-the-bridge.html

  3. Game theory by 91degrees · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It surprises me that this hasn't become a policy before. Patent trolls exist because they know that the company will roll over if it's cheaper to comply than to fight.

    Problem is, that only works for a single stage game. What we have is a repeated stage game. The optimal strategy for the troll victim is to fight, and to do as much damage to the troll as possible. This increases the cost of operation for the troll, and makes the victim a lot less lucrative a target for future lawsuits.