
Trolls Are Real - lelf
https://www.eff.org/effector/32/3
======
ddspider
We've been targeted by a patent troll and as a small business (less than 5
employees) it absolutely shook us to our core. Thankfully a lawyer took us up
pro bono and the trolls backed off. I'm saddened to think of all the
businesses that weren't as lucky. This needs to be fixed.

~~~
novaleaf
why not provide some details? at least how you got in touch with the nice
lawyer, that might help others.

~~~
ddspider
Sure. All I can recommend is to contact the EFF. They had some lawyers willing
to work with us. The lawyer who did end up working with us was from California
and specialized in patent trolls. I'm outside the office right now so I can't
tell you specifically who it was

You may also be able to strike a deal with the patent trolls. We were able to
take them down to 40k from 100k. That was still ridiculous for us but if
you're paying a lawyer or paying the troll it's all the same to a business
working on thin margins. We heard stories that they would accept as little as
10k.

For what it's worth the patent troll that targeted us is no longer operating
under their original name. They were taken down by the EFF representing a vape
company if I remember right.

~~~
lstodd
> but if you're paying a lawyer or paying the troll it's all the same to a
> business working on thin margins

and this is why patent trolls exist

------
hownottowrite
Reference: Speech given by USPTO Director Andre Iancu to the Eastern District
of Texas Bar Association [https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/10/19/iancu-risk-
takers-pate...](https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/10/19/iancu-risk-takers-
patent-troll-narrative-orwellian-doublespeak/id=102474/)

~~~
acomjean
Yikes, thats pretty bad.

In a single brush he dismisses those small business horror stories as “fairy
tails”. Not to get to political, but the with the current us political
environment it’s not entirely surprising.

Also using last century examples ( IBM and 3com ) is a little strange.

~~~
TomMckenny
It is political. Andrei Iancu did not appear from thin air (nor did Ajit Pai),
they are political appointees.

Maybe we don't discuss the proximate cause of the problem for some strategic
reason, I don't know. But when we don't, we spiral into unproductive
discussions about the innate morality of all patents. Maybe that's good but
isn't going to solve anything in the foreseeable future.

And for the record, my biggest worry too is a fatal patent shakedown for my
unlaunched startup. Actually I'm surprised the trolls haven't started selling
"insurance" given the climate of fear they've created.

------
amelius
The patent system was broken from the start. The incentives are all wrong, as
USPTO officers get paid more, the more patents they approve. It's like paying
fishermen for the fish they didn't catch.

~~~
skrebbel
> paying fishermen for the fish they didn't catch.

TBH that doesn't sound like an awful bad idea.

~~~
badfrog
What do you mean? Why?

~~~
thaumasiotes
Ocean fish are a well-known example of the tragedy of the commons, where too
many independent fishermen will wipe out the local fish population, leading to
less fish for everybody. This is traditionally dealt with by

(1) Informal norms among the fishermen as to how much fishing you should do.
This system is not resilient to immigrants, who don't know the local norms
(and may, not unreasonably, feel that the local norms already allot all of the
fish to established fishermen), so fishing communities are often fiercely
resistant to newcomers.

(2) Legal limits on how much fish you can catch. The idea is that an authority
will determine the total quantity of fish to be harvested, and then allot
rights to harvest smaller quantities than that piecemeal. Under this system,
taking fish without an appropriate license is a crime.

You could move to a system more like our agricultural subsidies (paying people
for the pigs they didn't raise), by giving money to anyone who owns a fishing
trawler but didn't bring in any fish. But that seems obviously insane compared
to the permitting system.

~~~
dalbasal
(1) Informal norms among the fishermen as to how much fishing you should do.
This system is not resilient to immigrants, who don't know the local norms
(and may, not unreasonably, feel that the local norms already allot all of the
fish to established fishermen), so fishing communities are often fiercely
resistant to newcomers.

"Informal" cultural norms operate as laws on a small scale, maybe a pre-
industrial community and a lake (or grazing commons, like various feudal
Europe examples). Any scale that implies depleting oceanic fish is a way to
big for this. I would be surprised if any modern era conventions applied to
ocean fishing for migrants to have any influence at all.

~~~
thaumasiotes
The ocean is all connected, but fish don't magically equalize their
distribution by the law of fish gravity. If you double the number of ocean
fishermen working out of Galveston, the supply of fish near Galveston will
suffer.

Cultural norms generally operate on a small _group of people_. In the modern
day, it doesn't take very many people to catch a ridiculous number of fish. So
depleting ocean fish is better handled by cultural norms now than it was 500
years ago, when catching a lot of fish meant fielding a lot of boats.

~~~
shkkmo
> If you double the number of ocean fishermen working out of Galveston, the
> supply of fish near Galveston will suffer.

That greatly depends on the type of fish and is not generally true. Many
species of fish spend different parts of their lives at different locations.
Tuna, salmon and many other pelagic fish travel pretty big distances.

------
gviperrr
Haven’t been affected by this issue but I’m dreading the future where a lot of
hard work building my company is wiped out by people like this. Fairly
demotivating as an individual and terrible for innovation based economies.

~~~
bluejekyll
100% this. It’s exactly one of the biggest of my concerns at the idea of
starting a software company.

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nanokilo
Of course lobbyists are behind the weakening of patent laws. Something really
has to be done about the lobbying problem we have in this country.

------
z3t4
Patents are meant to protect you from bigger companies muscling you out. They
have however found a loophole by acquiring as many patents as possible hoping
that will scare you. That strategy however doesnt help against trolls. So they
lobby to weaken the patent system to make it easier to steal ideas from small
startups.

~~~
greglindahl
Patents aren't "meant to protect you from bigger companies muscling you out".

That's a common story told to justify them, but US patents are meant to do
what the US Constitution says about them: “To promote the progress of science
and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the
exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

Many people who do small startups think patents are a net negative for small
startups.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Their investors sure like them though.

Patents are business assets that can be very important for valuation during
exits or funding rounds.

In most cases, due diligence auditors are going to want to see a company's
patent portfolio. A bad or weak portfolio may not tank the deal, but it
certainly impacts valuation.

I have seen this first hand, if BigCo is choosing between two or more
companies to acquire, they are more likely to select the one with the stronger
patent portfolio.

edit-to-add: trademarks are very important too -- and often overlooked by
startups until it is too late. Trademark trolls are real too.

~~~
greglindahl
Investors like patents and trademarks in the "better to have some than have
none" sense. That can be still be true even when the patent system is a net
minus for small startups.

Source: filed a lot of patents and trademarks in my small startups, they were
useful at exit, still hate patents with a passion.

------
jka
This may mean it's a good time to re-read the history of SCO and their patent
claims on Linux:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes)

~~~
pnw_hazor
That was copyright not patents.

~~~
jka
Thanks for the correction! I'll likely leave the comment to stand as-is, since
perhaps it's still vaguely relevant, but I appreciate the note.

------
mjevans
Re Patents (Just get rid of them entirely!)

Please prove me wrong that they aren't effective and are a myth.

Processes of how to do things often come down to engineering and math; if
given the same goal a solution is likely to be similar at it's core as for any
given problem there is probably an ideal bound and variations of effort will
produce similar results or results optimized slightly to different
circumstances.

(Yes, this is copied from a different post I made last night with respect to
all sorts of intellectual property issues.)

~~~
danaur
How would you incentivize drug research without patents?

~~~
ndnxhs
Government funded. Drug research is an obvious benefit to every single person.

------
edoo
Patents going back to 7 years instead of multi generational would fix most
everything.

------
eruci
True. I recently got an email from someone claiming they had reason to believe
I was infringing on... I wrote back "I believe you have no reason"

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antpls
Can't even access the article with javascript turned off.

~~~
wataruspeedo
Turn JavaScript on.

------
everybodyknows
> ... patent number 10 million and celebrated that milestone with a signing
> ceremony at the White House with President Trump ...

Aha! Now we know why it was extra-important to pluck #10,000,000 out of normal
order.

[https://patentlyo.com/patent/2018/06/patent-
no-10000000.html](https://patentlyo.com/patent/2018/06/patent-
no-10000000.html)

[https://patentlyo.com/patent/2018/06/patent-
no-10000000.html...](https://patentlyo.com/patent/2018/06/patent-
no-10000000.html#comment-410229)

------
blazespin
Patent trolls would be OK if they couldn’t go after small companies. What’s
worse is they prioritize small companies. In fact, buying patents and then
suing makes IP from fundamentally valuable. I am generally OK with that, but
not when it discourages startup ecosystems which are a huge source of real
innovation.

What I’d love to see would be the democrat party to refocus their policies to
shift towards small business against large corporations. Re-invent the
American Dream. This could tie in well with the green new deal. Rather than
talk about jobs, talk about the tens of thousands of small businesses.

------
rayiner
Trolls are definitely real, and we need reforms, particularly at the PTO, to
cut down on the number of bad patents. At the same time, there are companies
who make lots of money free riding on other peoples’ IP. And that’s also a
huge problem. For example, YouTube became a multi-billion business ripping off
content companies. YouTube doesn’t create a product-it’s just a middle man for
content produced by other people. YouTube makes more money by weakening the
protections available to content producers (and unsurprisingly Google is at
the forefront for watering down copyright law). Huawei built a business
ripping off the designs of Cisco and Juniper, and now are using their leverage
to try and compete with those companies in the US.

That problem becomes particularly acute as the US switches more to producing
IP. The EFF’s myopia is to fail to realize that a balance needs to be struck.
A world where you can release a chip or a drug or a jet engine and have a
Chinese company immediately copy it and sell a competitor at a fraction of the
price with no consequences is one that’s not good for Silicon Valley in the
long run. Our competitors overseas can recreate YouTube much more easily than
they can recreate Hollywood. India still hasn’t been able to create a jet
engine domestically, even though HUL has been able to design and manufacture
most of the rest of a jet fighter.

~~~
jMyles
> A world where you can release a chip or a drug or a jet engine and have a
> Chinese company immediately copy it and sell a competitor at a fraction of
> the price with no consequences is one that’s not good for Silicon Valley in
> the long run.

I have no problem living in a world where the government is unable to exact
violence against people for copying data.

This seems to me to be an entirely artificial crime whose existence has been
important for humanity so far, but which is now a human rights affront.

~~~
twtw
I genuinely do not understand your position.

Let's say a U.S. company spends a billion dollars creating a chip design. You
think that it should not be illegal for other companies to steal said chip
design and manufacture it because it is just "copying data?" So the company
that invested to design has to compete with a company that stole it, and
therefore can price it lower because they don't have to recoup that
investment?

Just because something can be copied more easily now than when it required a
bunch of photocopying doesn't mean it isn't (or shouldn't be) a crime.

~~~
mrmyers
Let's say I spend $300 and countless hours growing an amazing garden of
especially fragrant plants. Do you honestly think it should _not_ be illegal
for some random guy on the street to walk by and steal my lovely-smelling air
by literally 'taking' a sniff? He put absolutely no effort into making that
air as fragrant as it is, but gets to reap all the benefit, while I'm stuck
paying the fertilizer and gardening bills.

I can understand (though I disagree with) the pragmatic arguments you could
make for copyright and patents for incentivizing creation. I cannot understand
your insistence on pretending that copying information is actually stealing.
You can't even plead technical legal truth, as they are absolutely not
conflated legally. But when push comes to shove, this argument seems to reach
for some 'moral' truth that one 'deserves' to be compensated for one's labor
proportionately to one's investment, which is ultimately applied no where else
in our society, since it's just the labor theory of value in a funny wig.

Let's say a mother spends tens of thousands and countless hours raising a
child who never calls or supports her in her old age. Is this illegal? Our
society depends much more crucially on the free labor of mothers and fathers
than on the R&D of any chip company, even in purely economic terms.
Pragmatically, one could say that people just don't seem to need as many
guarantees/incentives to have kids as they do to innovate, so it's more
important to have state incentives for the latter, and a temporary monopoly on
usage is a sufficiently time-tested incentive. I can sort-of understand that
argument. What I can't do, is somehow pretend that anyone should care more
about the efforts of innovation going unrewarded than of any of the other
crucial efforts essential to our society, for which no one is ever guaranteed
a dime.

~~~
twtw
Your garden analogy is poor for several reasons.

the primary reason is that it is not remotely comparable to the theft of trade
secrets in my example. If the gardener put their garden in a greenhouse and
put a padlock on the door, then the scenario would be more comparable, but
then it wouldn't make a lot of sense to say it should "obviously" be legal for
someone to break in and take a sniff, because it's just a sniff, right?

Your parent/child analogy is poor because you are just describing an
investment that doesn't pay off for any number of reasons, not that somebody
stole the value from you. Perhaps more comparable would be if a parent raised
a child until adulthood, at which point someone stole the young adult,
brainwashed them to think they were the parents, and the child visited the
fake parents in their old age.

That sounds far fetched, but it is far more comparable to the scenario I
introduced of someone stealing a company's intellectual property and profiting
off of it.

