Slashdot Mirror
Cloudflare Pays First $7,500 Bounties In War Against Patent Troll (cloudflare.com)
Cloudflare declared war on a group of lawyers that files patent lawsuits against tech firms, by offering bounties for the discovery of patent-invalidating "prior art." Now an anonymous reader writes:
On Thursday, Cloudflare announced it has paid out the first $7,500 to people who discovered documents that could help invalidate Blackbird's patents. The money is part of a $100,000 war chest the company announced this spring... The company said it is ready to launch individual challenges to specific Blackbird patents. The company believes it has enough examples of prior art on US Patent 7,797,448, "GPS-internet Linkage" and US Patent 6,453,335 (the one asserted against Cloudflare) to lodge a challenge.
"We have received more than 230 submissions so far," Cloudflare reports, "and have only just begun to scratch the surface."
"We have received more than 230 submissions so far," Cloudflare reports, "and have only just begun to scratch the surface."
As long as pathetically obvious patents like these are granted in the first place, it's always going to be whack-a-mole. And as long as the USPTO is funded by charging fees for granting patents (and not just applying for them) the situation will persist.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Fuck you and the China horse you rode in on. I use CloudFlare to challenge a number of countries that send a lot of forum spam our way. Once these fuckers are put to death I'll stop challenging their access.