Slashdot Mirror
Patent Troll Ordered To Pay For the Costs of Fighting a Bad Patent
We mentioned last year that FindTheBest CEO Kevin O'Connor had taken an unusual step, when confronted with a demand by patent troll company Lumen View that the startup pay $50,000 for what struck O'Connor as a frivolous patent: He not only refused, but pledged to spend a million bucks, if necessary, to fight Lumen View in court. Now, as Ars Technica reports, O'Connor has succeeded on a grand scale. Before trouncing Lumen View in court, Ars reports, "FindTheBest had spent about $200,000 on its legal fight—not to mention the productivity lost in hundreds of work hours spent by top executives on the lawsuit, and three all-company meetings.
Now the judge overseeing the case has ruled (PDF) that it's Lumen View, not FindTheBest, that should have to pay those expenses. In a first-of-its-kind implementation of new fee-shifting rules mandated by the Supreme Court, US District Judge Denise Cote found that the Lumen View lawsuit was a 'prototypical exceptional case.'"
http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/05/23/1347205
"Unlike the other 36 codefendants, Newegg chose to go further and recover its legal fees, an action that most companies choose not to pursue because prevailing defendants were, until recently, required to demonstrate that a plaintiff acted in bad faith."
The Patent troll will probably just declare bankruptcy and reform under a new name, all in the same day.
Not even looking at how it is structured I'd blindly wager that they are held by no fewer than two shell companies. So the problem is that the people pulling the strings never suffer any real repercussions.
To be fair, it is how our legal system was crafted. The US has a strong streak of 'handle your own problem, power to control your own fate' to it, and the civil suit system was built to support that. There are lots of crimes which in other countries would be prosecuted by one agency or another (for better or worse) but in the US the only redress one has is a civil suit. Even in situations where there are criminal laws on the books, the complaints about the police not doing anything even when supplied with all the evidence they need are significant. Actually convincing a prosecutor to go forward with your case can be an exercise in frustration.
The problem is also that the USPO granted the patent in the first place :/
re I live, it costs more in permits than materials to build a two-bedroom house.
Bullshit.
Even in the most expensive parts of the country, you could barely manage to build an uninhabitable, unfinished shell of a house for the price of a building permit.
Exceptionally prototypical.
There are some places in Canada were the permits cost are huge.. Think about a construction permit fee based on the lot size (multiple $$$ per square feet) where the minimum lot size is required to be at least something close to an hectare...
Ah, that old case. It should be noted that there were actually hundreds of injury cases associated with their coffee. They had really bumped up the temperature to unsafe levels and were fully aware that that the standard accidents people had with beverages were resulting in significant burns compared to normal serving levels. The government should have intervened long before that, but they did not because civil suits were the 'solution'.
The problem was not that it was 'hot', but that they were serving it much hotter then would be typical since that was cheaper then using cups with marginally more insulation.
I had a similar thought. Yeah permits and inspection costs are non-trivial, but they are no where near the material or labor costs unless you are stripping an old house for parts (i.e. free materials) and using near-slave immigrant labor. Though at that point the bribes needed would probably be greater then the permit costs too.
Before you blow your own trumpet too much consider the very bad US example of moving copyright from civil to criminal law which has spread like a cancer around the world. It would be very nice if it went back to Hollywood lawyers suing people instead of SWAT teams through people's windows for copyright violations.
My favourite sentence from the summary in the first link:
The patent troll's attorney also made the claim that calling someone a 'patent troll' was actually a 'hate crime' under 'Ninth Circuit precedent' and threatened to file criminal charges — unless they settled the civil case immediately, apologized, and gave financial compensation to the troll.
Even in the most expensive parts of the country, you could barely manage to build an uninhabitable, unfinished shell of a house for the price of a building permit.
It's over $30,000 in permits to build a small two bedroom house (say, 1000 square feet) in Lake County, CA, counting the water connection fee and other bullshit. You can buy a kit home for $45/ft^2 or less. A seasoned contractor who purchases materials at the right time of year can absolutely get the materials for less. It'll be a little shit-shack of a house like virtually all of them are, made out of chipboard and sheetrock, but that's what at least nine in ten of the houses being built today are like anyway so let's not be discriminatory. And I've got to add that this is one of the cheapest parts of the state, at least, that nominally still has water. Oh, did I mention that people on municipal water are being subjected to restriction? No new wells are being permitted, so you can only build where there is municipal water, which is mostly really bad here?
Sometimes, I hope I live a long time. Sometimes, I think human lifespans are too damned long. The crusty old fucks holding up progress in this town really get my goat.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Coffee hot enough to give 3rd degree burns to the genitals will probably get a lawsuit anywhere. That case gets trotted out as a negative example every time, but if you take the time to read up on it, it's the opposite.
It's over $30,000 in permits to build a small two bedroom house (say, 1000 square feet) in Lake County, CA, counting the water connection fee and other bullshit.
So, not just the price of the building permit, then?
The purpose of development charges is to defray (some of) the costs to local government that they would otherwise incur for doing things like connecting your new home to the water, sewer, electrical, and any other utilities; construction of roads and streetlights; construction and purchase of additional emergency services equipment (fire trucks and fire houses, etc.); construction or enlargement of water reservoirs, sewage treatment plants, and electrical substations....
In other words, there's a heck of a lot of new infrastructure capital costs associated with new expansion of a community--costs that wouldn't be incurred without the new construction. (The rest of your comment notes how precious a commodity water is, and how difficult it is to secure access to more of it.) Instead of loading those costs on to people already living in town, the municipalities put the costs on the developers, who in turn pass them on to the new home buyers.
If you were to instead demolish an existing home and replace it with a new one of similar size, the building permit costs would be far less than $30,000, since the home would already have water, sewer, roads, electrical service....
~Idarubicin
Your first comparison of 42000 to 30000 does not prove your point, and your using of a seasoned contractor twists the argument. A seasoned contractor gets his materials from bulk, not typically time of year. Also part of building costs are the appliances, such as stove, which are considered in most places as part of the house.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Quite.
The lady's labia melted to her thigh.
It was not a frivolous law suit.
From the trial, the plaintiff had documented evidence where McDonald's told their restaurants to keep coffee at 180-190 F. This is 30 F from boiling. The recommended temperature is between 155 and 175 for taste and comfort considerations.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Everyone's so worried about the three-letter organizations. Guess we'd better worry about the four-letter ones (best described using four-letter words).
Parsing error detected, should be: prototypical "exceptional case"
The anti-patent-troll loser-pays law applies to "exceptional cases" (presumably from context that's a step beyond just bad faith), and this is a prototypical example.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Still, water connection is a construction cost, not a permit cost. It is a requirement to pass inspection.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
So John Smith files suit against MegaCorp Inc. (with a legitimate claim) but MegaCorp's army of lawyers buries Smith in motion after motion, draining his coffers dry. When he loses (because he doesn't have enough money left to continue) he's on the hook for the millions of dollars in expenses MegaCorp's army of accountants can somehow link to the case.
There needs to be some protection for this situation, but there also needs to be consequences for "spaghetti suing" -- filing lawsuits against anyone and everyone and seeing which ones get settled and which ones stick. Maybe a superlinear increase in the cost to file suits based on the number of suits you've filed? If you want to file suit in a given issue against two or three people, you're not going to pay much extra, but if you want to sue a hundred people separately you're going to pay through the nose. [And you're not allowed to "lump together" people without showing a good reason to lump them together.]
If you were to instead demolish an existing home and replace it with a new one of similar size, the building permit costs would be far less than $30,000, since the home would already have water, sewer, roads, electrical service....
This is actually 100% false. Instead, it would cost you more, because now you have permitting from several agencies required for the demolition and removal of debris, and you still have to pay all the concomitant costs required for new construction.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
That's a vast oversimplification.
Most significantly, the temperature people generally serve coffee at is, in fact, hot enough go give third-degree burns. The general recommended temperature to store coffee at before serving is 185 degrees (farenheit, obviously). The truth is neither that the lawsuit was totally frivolous, nor that it was totally justified, but that this was a complicated situation with a number of issues that generally get glossed over.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Your brewer should maintain a water temperature between 195 - 205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction. Colder water will result in flat, underextracted coffee while water that is too hot will also cause a loss of quality in the taste of the coffee. If you are brewing the coffee manually, let the water come to a full boil, but do not overboil. Turn off the heat source and allow the water to rest a minute before pouring it over the grounds.
So, Umm....
The real thing to know here is that no one at the time did not know that McDonalds coffee was really hot. Many went there for that reason. Fuck that bitch.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Actual specification for that area was, in 2008, 8000 to 9000 square meters per plot; 95$ per square meter of lot size plus 150$ per square meter of habitation for the construction permit. Other requirements were two stories, full masonry, hidden garage entrance and no roof slopes at less than 12-12.
Needless to say we went somewhere else.. having had that kind of money I really would have liked to build at that place though.
You brew and serve at the same temperature, 'eh?
Serving and brewing temperatures are not the same...
The recommended temperature is between 155 and 175 for taste and comfort considerations.
National Coffee Association - 180-185 ;)
Coffee Detective - People prefer coffee served at between 155-175, with a massive preference towards 175. Of course, with the popularity of iced coffee drinks today, one might extend that down to 33F.
Bunn: 175-185 Holding temp, 155-175 Serving
The thing to remember about McD coffee is that people often let it sit for a bit before drinking it - reaching the office, for example.
I don't read AC A human right
This could all be fixed by issuing the original patent provisionally, and mandating a second, more thorough review by the patent office when the decorative sabre is first unsheathed.
Maybe the target of the action files an application for second-stage examination and ponies up a small fee on the order of $1000, then the patent office adds the patent to their public "notice of re-examination" board for sixty days to solicit any other public input. After the examination, the target recovers from the patent holder $250 for every claim shot down and another $5000 if the entire patent falls (the patent infringement action could permit the patent holder to exercise only certain claims, so as not to place themselves on the hook for the claim-reversal penalty award on every frivolous claim, but they still owe the $5000 penalty award if claims associated with the infringement action is reduced to the empty set).
Second-stage ratification doesn't need to be a big thing. It only needs to be as big as what the first-stage examination was originally presupposed to accomplish when this whole system was first set up, back when it was possible for a patent examiner to have his or her finger on the pulse of innovation to any extent at all, before human knowledge blue-shifted by a further six orders of magnitude.
To a first approximation, given enough eyeballs, all claims are hollow.
What we really need is a mechanical turk to challenge claims of novel art and claims of application (which should be separated). If the patent holder wished to instigate second-phase examination without filing against an adversary (so as to increase their litigational certitude before uncasking their powder), they would need to post $10,000 as a bounty fund. The public would be invited to submit arguments against any particular claim (much like a bug-tracking system). Maybe there's a $5 fee per hundred words (minimum $5) for each argument filed. The first argument (by filing time) to unseat a claim is awarded a $250 refutation bounty from the bounty fund.
Even better, people are allowed to pay $5 to click "me too". All the "me too" payments are funnelled to the person who originally filed the item (small profit, same day). All parties split the bounty (including the item owner) if that item scores (the incentive to be the fiftieth person to click "me too" is not attractive; by interpolation, the "me too" button functions as a prediction market).
I think we just need to bring a mechanical turk free market processes to bear on the patent approval system, and abuses would soon be dramatically scaled back.
If a company just wants to accumulate patents it could potentially waggle, nothing changes, and all the same press releases can still be penned (mentions of patents pursued would mean less, now being more frail in the waggling, but this is the usual erosion of sense anyone shrewd has long observed).
This is not strictly losers pays. The losing side also has to be ruled to not be acting in good faith.