'Unpatent' Begins Crowdfunding Challenges To Bad Patents (unpatent.co)

"Unpatent is a crowdfunding platform that eliminates bad patents," reads their web site. "We do that by crowdsourcing the prior art -- that is all the evidence that makes clear that a patent was not novel -- and filing reexamination requests to the patent office." An anonymous Slashdot reader reports: "Everyone in the world can back the crowdfunding campaign against the patent," explains their site, which includes a special section with "Featured stupid patents". The first $16,000 raised covers the lawyers and fees at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and "The rest is distributed to those who find valid prior art...any evidence that a patent is not novel. We review all the prior art pieces and reward those that may invalidate a claim... Then, we file an ex partes reexamination to the USPTO."

Their team includes Lee Cheng, the legal officer at Newegg, "worldwide renowned as the patent trolls' nightmare," as well as Lus Cuende, who created his own Linux distro when he was 15 and is now CTO of Stampery, a company using the Bitcoin blockchain to notarize data.
They're currently targeting the infamous US8738435 covering "personalized content relating to offered products and services," which in February the EFF featured as their "stupid patent of the month." Its page on Unpatent.co argues that "Taking something so obvious such as personalizing content and offers...and writing the word online everywhere shouldn't grant you a monopoly over it." Unpatent's slogan? "We invalidate patents that shouldn't exist."

Comments

Agreed but still better than nothing.

[renegadesx]

Agreed, this is what Slashdotters have been saying for over a decade now, but still there is no political apetite from either side of politics in just about all western countries from actually addressing this at the cause.

Meanwhile patent wars are being fought all over the world hurting consumers world wide because at the end of the day they are the ones that are paying for this nonsense. At least there is someone out there trying to fix something. Yes it's like pissing into the ocean but if a few stupid patents get squashed that's still better than none.

Works because of one very important fact- few trol

[raymorris]

There is one fact which is rarely pointed out when discussing patent trolls, but I think it's important.

Over 80% of all patent suits are filed by just four trolls.
Obviously some patent litigation has to do with legitimate disputes, so those four trolls do probably 95% of the trolling. If you put those four out business, that takes care of 95% of the problem. It also shows other potential trolls that trolls end up broke.

The people behind this initiative don't just yip yap about patents on Slashdot for a few minutes, they are professionals who have actually fought these trolls. They understand the problem better than you or I do. If they think this approach will help put the four major trolls out of business, they're probably right.