

Take a stand against patent trolls - chwolfe
http://www.internetretailer.com/2011/03/31/take-stand

======
ahi
I was going to write up a full article, but I'll just post this here instead.

I was thinking shame might work a little bit. Most people, even lawyers and
patent trolls, think of themselves as being good people. Calling them out
directly can have quite an affect.

MacroSolve is one of the companies suing iOS developers over forms
([http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/05/macrosolve-
joins-...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/05/macrosolve-joins-lodsys-
in-suing-mobile-app-developers.php)).

Dr. Dale Schoenefeld, a CS professor and bureaucrat at University of Tulsa
([http://www.utulsa.edu/offices-and-services/information-
techn...](http://www.utulsa.edu/offices-and-services/information-
technology/about/administration.aspx)), is on the board. He probably doesn't
care that I think he's a scumbag, but I imagine he might care how he is
perceived by students and his colleagues.

------
krschultz
In order for this to be effective, defendants need to be able to discover
other defendants being sued by the particular troll firm for that particular
patent. Then the defense can be funded by multiple companies and the defense
becomes more formidable.

This almost screams for a website - a central place to facilitate matchmaking
between companies under suit by a particular troll.

~~~
efsavage
Unfortunately you're not going to see many companies saying "Yeah! We're being
sued by that guy too!" because that quickly reduces to "we're being sued!",
which never goes over well with investors, shareholders, employees, etc.

------
dpcan
Who is fighting to keep software patents as-is? Who are we up against? I have
NEVER read anything in their favor. If we live in a society where the laws
need to be changed, why are they just not changing? What horrors could
actually come from abolishing software patents?

I just don't understand why this is still an argument. Who are we even arguing
against? I never see anyone disagreeing with the argument. It's as if everyone
hates the same thing yet it continues to exist and all we have to do is change
it. So someone just change it.

~~~
rwmj
There's a big pharma lobby who love patents and lobby for more of the same.

This is in itself a problem: there is no separation between types of patents,
so we can't (easily) get separate policy on software, business methods, pharma
etc. I imagine, for example, no one would particularly complain about software
patents if they only lasted for 2 years. But the way it is now, that would
mean all patents would expire after 2 years, and the pharma lobby would hate
that.

Having said all that, best thing is to get rid of _all_ patents, and we'll
start again when someone proves that narrow patents in a particular field have
a benefit to the economy.

~~~
tzs
Speaking of pharmaceutical patents, I'd like to see two changes:

1\. There should be automatic licensing of the patent to anyone who wishes to
make the drug, at a royalty rate on gross sales determined by statute. I'm
thinking something around 5%.

2\. The patent term should be extended from 20 years to something like 100
years.

The idea here is that drug companies invest huge amounts in developing new
drugs. Many of these don't even pan out. Some make it into production, and
they are patented for 20 years. The drug company then has to charge a lot to
make up for that huge investment before the patent expires, and the generics
come on market.

So, for the first 20 years we consumers pay something like $30-50/month (after
insurance--it could be $200 or more a month without insurance) for these drugs
until they go generic, then it drops to around $4/month (and that is without
insurance!).

Under my proposal, the generics would come out right away, for maybe around
$5/month, and the original company would make back its investment over a very
long term instead of needing to make it back over a relatively short term.

------
splat
The tacit assumption upon which this argument rests is that the trolls are
guaranteed to lose in court (at least after an appeal). While that might be a
fair assumption in the most egregious cases, in many circumstances the lower
court will not be particularly skilled in patent law and an appeal to a
specialized appeals court is by no means certain. A rational businessman might
well chose to settle a case even if the probability of losing is just 5%
simply because the penalties for patent infringement are so high in comparison
to the settlement costs.

~~~
probablyrobots
The OP also argues that the patent could be defeated by a patent review.
"Virtually none of the patents that patent trolls buy would be issued today.
The vast majority of these patents would not survive a U.S. Patent & Trademark
Office patent review. Most were issued during the 1990s when the standards for
business process patents were very low."

The OP goes on to say that the victims of patent trolls band together to
finance the review to make it cheaper than settling.

~~~
alanthonyc
The MacroSolve patent[1][2] was requested in 2003 and granted in 2010: forms
on devices that transmit data to web servers.

The USPTO is broken.

[1][http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/05/worse-than-lodsys-
ma...](http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/05/worse-than-lodsys-macrosolves-
sues.html)

[2][http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,822,816.PN.&OS=PN/7,822,816&RS=PN/7,822,816)

~~~
brlewis
It is impossible to expect the USPTO to determine novelty and non-obviousness
for software patents. Imagine how difficult it would be to examine mechanical
engineering patents if millions of people carried machine shops around in
their backpacks.

------
jcromartie
I've always wondered: what if you just responded to a patent troll with "screw
you" and refused to play their game? What if you just did the absolute minimum
and didn't take their bait to reach settlement? What could you face? Could you
go to jail?

~~~
bradleyland
Patents are a civil matter. You'd end up involved in civil litigation, which
means you pay an attorney to defend you, or the plaintiff would win by
default. Usually, the goal is to settle prior to litigation, because
litigation is incredibly expensive.

If you litigate and the plaintiff wins the case -- or you don't fight and lose
by default -- the plaintiff gets a judgement against you. The judge/jury
determine what you must pay to the plaintiff. With a judgement in hand, the
plaintiff must start collection proceedings. This is a not-so-straight-forward
process, and can take months, if not years, depending upon how evasive the
defendant is and how aggressive the plaintiff attorney is.

Expect to receive garnishment orders for your pay, as well as other treats,
such as having your checking account emptied without notice. Being evasive may
also require additional court appearances and court orders. Failure to comply
with a court order can result in charges of contempt. This usually means a
fine, but can also result in jail time if the act is egregious.

At the end of the day, you may find yourself filing bankruptcy, in which case
the trustee will be the one after your assets.

The whole time this is happening, it's very difficult to operate. Having
someone chase you while paying thousands of dollars in attorney fees makes
life very difficult.

The bottom line is that you cannot simply "refuse to play their game".

------
wccrawford
And will Crutchfield be taking that stand? Because posting an article like
this and then refusing to follow your own advice is foolhardy at best.

~~~
rojoca
There is the EFF: <https://w2.eff.org/patent/>

~~~
wccrawford
That's not the point. Crutchfield wrote that article. I want to know if
Crutchfield is following his own advice.

------
ggchappell
While we're on the topic of annoyances that get in the way of worthwhile
activities, how about websites that publish interesting articles and then
stick eye-catching auto-scrolling displays right next to them? It never ceases
to amaze me how rarely it seems to occur to web-based publishers that someone
might actually want to read their stuff.

Well, thank goodness for Readable.

Hey, maybe I should patent auto-scrolling ads, and then sue sites like this
one. That would be patent trolling with positive social impact as the goal.

------
BornInTheUSSR
I wish someone had a patent on the business process of buying patents just to
sue companies that actually try to provide some value to the world and then
went around suing these parasitic lowlives.

~~~
kwantam
IBM may well have such a patent very soon.

<http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2007/0244837.html>

