Sued For Using HTTPS: Companies In Crypto Patent Fight (theregister.co.uk)

yoink! writes: According to an article in The Register, corporations big and small are coming under legal fire from CryptoPeak. The Company holds U.S. Patent 6,202,150, which describes "auto-escrowable and auto-certifiable cryptosystems" and has claimed that the Elliptic Curve Cryptography methods/implementations used as part of the HTTPS protocol violates their intellectual property. Naturally, reasonable people disagree.

Comments

NeXTStep had ECC...

[mlts]

In 1991, NeXTStep had ECC encryption for E-mail in version 3.0 (called FastECC.) If there were a patent made then, it definitely would be expired by now.

Twats

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bunch of patent trolling twats.

When will enough be enough?

[aglider]

We're just missing

"methods and devices to manipulate and store data encoded into electronic devices by means of electromagnetic field gradients"

and

"methods and devices to enable the interaction between users and electronic devices by means of electromagnetic field gradients".

and

"methods and devices to harass individuals and companies by filing, claiming and legally enforce trivial methods and devices as patentable intellectual properties"

Then we're done.

Re:When will enough be enough?

[Jack Griffin]

Someone needs to patent "Things that do stuff" and be done with it.

Re:When will enough be enough?

[Amouth]

IBM has you covered, a Patent on how to be a patent troll

http://www.google.com/patents/...

And for good measure Halliburton has a patent on how to patent someone else's invention and gain control of it

http://www.google.com/patents/...

Re:When will enough be enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple already owns that patent.

Meet Mr. Nicolas Labbit

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent troll responsible for this nonsense, specifically the primary manager of the entity known as CryptoPeak Solutions, LLC is operated by a fellow named Nicolas Joseph Labbit, who happens to be the sole member of a "law firm" known as The Labbit Law Firm in Longview, Texas. Just thought some folks might be interested in knowing a little more about the charming young man behind this gross abuse of the legal system. HTH. -PCP

Re:Meet Mr. Nicolas Labbit

[dargaud]

If you pronounce it in franglish, it goes "la bite", which translate to "the dick".

Re:Can you say Prior Art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely there is a boatload of prior art on this one.

Yes, but it's more expensive to find it and take it to court than it is just to pay up.

That's kinda the whole point of an extortion racket.

Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'm totally against personal death penalty, there should be a corporate death penalty, where a company is completely disbanded: its assets (yeah, the investor's and bank's too!) are confiscated and put towards public good. Naturally just for a particularly outrageous behaviour, but patent trolls seem to fit the bill.

This way investors would have to make sure they check the moral side of their investment (and not only the financial).

I'm not a believer in the Invisible Hand, mind you -- but lobbyism, nepotism and too much corporate power is obstructing the few good things it *could* reasonably do.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[jpatters]

I would advocate replacing the current practice of corporations being legally required to act in the best interests of shareholders only with a new hierarchy or rules, much like Asimov's laws if you will:

First, a corporation must act reasonably in the best interest of the general public.
Second, a corporation must act reasonably in the best interest of their employees where it doesn't conflict with the first rule.
Third, a corporation must act reasonably in the best interest of their shareholders where that doesn't conflict with the first or second rule.

A corporation jacks up the price of a generic drug by 7,000,000%? Sued by the general public.

A corporation informs employees that they will have to train their H1B replacements? Sued by their employees.

A corporation pays its CEO an unreasonably large salary with no evidence that that results in better executive performance? Sued by their shareholders. (This should be happening now...)

I like it better than a corporate death penalty, because many corporations do have value and importance to the general public that would be at risk of being destroyed because of a single bad acting CEO. With this scheme, the courts would have a framework for redressing these issues.

In the case of patent trolls, some patents are more obviously bullshit then others. The more obviously bullshit the patent, the more strong a case members of the general public would have to individually sue the trolls for obstructing their use of the technology. What if everybody who uses HTTPS could sue these clowns?

Re:smart move....

[Opportunist]

Dude, a schoolyard bully is not going to try to beat up the champion of the school's boxing team, ok? He's going after the nerd.

Re:The real patent villains unmasked

[moeinvt]

-2 misinformative.

If you're talking about Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, the drug in question is Diaprim (aka Pyrimethamine). This drug has been around since the 1950s and is not, I repeat NOT subject to any sort of patent protections.

Furthermore, the drug is a treatment for toxoplasmosis not HIV. There is some confusion about this because people with weakened immune systems are especially vulnerable to the parasite which causes toxoplasmosis.

The big controversy with Diaprim arises from the fact that there are relatively few cases of this infection in the USA so there is only one manufacturer of the drug. The size of the market is so small that it's not economically viable for anyone to set up a competing operation. Therefore, Turing figures it can radically increase the price.

Re:Tested in the courts

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

The only problem with this is that the costs for checking the validity of patents would then be put on the companies sued for patent infringement.

You got it backwards, because that's the current situation: if you get sued for patent infringement, it is your legal and financial responsibility to challenge the validity of the patent. That's why we have patent trolls. What I suggest, namely dropping the presumption of validity, means that the burden of proof shifts to the company that is suing for patent infringement.

If patent examiners actually examined patents, the courts would only need to deal with the edge cases and the patent lawsuit costs on businesses would drop. Yes, this might mean more government expenses to hire patent examiners who actually do their jobs, but these costs would spread out across everyone - not just a few companies being sued.

Obviously, patent examiners can't keep up. Few people with any skills would want such a boring job to begin with, and patent examiners have no incentive to get it right, since they aren't liable for the consequences of their decisions. So, patent examinations aren't going to improve. And, frankly, I don't see why the public should subsidize multi-decade monopolies to begin with.

Re:Just checking

[Chrisq]

It's still illegal to shoot patent trolls on sight?

It infringes my patent on means to destroy vermin .... oh wait, put that gun down!