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'Troll' Loses Cloudflare Lawsuit, Has Weaponized Patent Invalidated (arstechnica.com)
A federal judge in San Francisco has unequivocally ruled against a non-practicing entity that had sued Cloudflare for patent infringement. From a report: The judicial order effectively ends the case that Blackbird -- which Cloudflare had dubbed a "patent troll" -- had brought against the well-known security firm and content delivery network. "Abstract ideas are not patentable," US District Judge Vincent Chhabria wrote in a Monday order. The case revolved around US Patent No. 6,453,335, which describes providing a "third party data channel" online. When the case was filed in May 2017, the invention claims it can incorporate third-party data into an existing Internet connection "in a convenient and flexible way."
Oh, please let this be a strong precedent in nullifying crappy patents.
SO many patents are "a system and methodology for doing something kinda like this, which is an analog for a real world scenario we have, but with a computer and a network".
I would love to know how many patents would be vacated under this, because a patent should not encompass "doing something we do every day but with a computer".
USPTO keeps validating these bullshit patents because their system rewards passing patents but never punishes passing bad patents. The result is that just about anything can be patented and is expensive to fight in court. If you're lucky, you will win and by win I mean you will have spent millions of dollars fighting a bad patent and get nothing in return.
This is a serious problem.
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