
Crowdfunding campaign against US patent on personalized content - izqui
https://unpatent.co/campaign/US8738435
======
leksak
Wouldn't funding this be in the interest of mid-sized companies? Albeit it's
not likely that they'll be targeted it seems like an awfully cheap insurance
policy. By "they" I mean "a company".

Seeing as they are a potential target for the next six years they'd
effectively pay 20000/6 which rounds up to four grand a year that has to be
much cheaper than the legal fees they'd incur if they were targeted.

Split that cost with a few other companies and it hardly costs a thing in the
relative scheme of things. Makes for a good PR opportunity as well: "We will
not sit idly by when others are bullied into paying licensing fees on such a
nonsensical patent, effectively robbing the cradle of new businesses"

~~~
PieterH
Funding an attack on a patent is also a great way to solicit counter attacks.
Patent trolls like to sue.

~~~
luisivan
That's why backers are anonymous by default!

------
Cozumel
Related-ish:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12538224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12538224)
Apple trying to patent a paper bag!

~~~
izqui
Apple is one of the companies that fill more stupid (obvious) patents in the
world...

They have a freaking patent on converting different data types, patent
US7886264B1 [1]

Even though Apple has never acted as a patent troll, it doesn't mean their
patent portfolio isn't potentially harmful and it could be used as such some
time soon to maximize profits.

It wouldn't be the first time a once very successful company makes good
profits by charging licensing fees on things way far away of their product
line. I'm looking at you Microsoft... [2]

[1]:
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US7886264B1](https://patents.google.com/patent/US7886264B1)
[2]:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-
android-patent-income/#38428da07275)

~~~
Coding_Cat
Perhaps they are not a troll, in that they don't trawl. But look at the
patents that they used in their dispute with Samsung. They have no problem
using their ass-backwards patents agressively if one becomes a threat to them.

~~~
xupybd
They have them for that reason, they are a war chest used to fight other
patent claims. Large companies needs these, it's a sign of how broken the
system is.

~~~
lmm
They were the aggressor against Samsung.

------
danirod
Even if the 'invalidating bad patents' idea sounds promising, I still think
that in order to stop 'stupid patents', as described in their front page, the
smartest move would be to fix this broken patents system so that no more
stupid patents could be registered.

~~~
izqui
I completely agree with you, but there is way too much lobbying power
protecting the status quo in the patent arena.

Not even a letter to Congress signed by very important SV players did
anything... [1]

At Unpatent we believe that big changes can be made using technology when
legislation is clearly falling behind.

[1]:
[http://www.unitedforpatentreform.com](http://www.unitedforpatentreform.com)

~~~
acomjean
Part of the problem (among many) is the patent office is funded by fees. So
they naturally favor "approving" patents, because applications are their
revenue source. Plus it cost businesses to invalidate a patent, but the patent
office doesn't bear the cost of bad pattents.

[https://www.uspto.gov/blog/director/entry/an_update_on_susta...](https://www.uspto.gov/blog/director/entry/an_update_on_sustainable_funding)

------
MichaelBurge
Can you buy patent troll insurance?

$500/month to protect against a 0.1% chance of being sued by a patent troll
over a 7 year period gives $42 million in expected value to fight a bogus
patent when it does come up. Adjust the numbers to whatever's realistic.

It seems more sustainable than asking strangers to fund patent lawsuits.

~~~
izqui
That is something we have definitely thought about, but when making the
numbers with the actual probability of being sued (more like 1% each year if
you are a mid-sized VC funded startup) and the average lawsuit cost of going
to court against the troll ($3M over 2 years, in case the case goes to the
end), it is very dangerous to setup without a proper actuarial model, charging
$500/month to some companies might be too risky.

What we are focused on right now is on diminishing patent portfolios so the
lawsuit probability goes down. We have a lot of things in the pipeline that
will make it easier for companies to be protected using Unpatent, that don't
necessarily involve backing individual campaigns.

~~~
ensignavenger
It would be great to have more/better tools to fight patent trolls, so that
the cost of litigation goes down. Has their been any research to break down
where all the costs of defending oneself against a patent trolls go?

~~~
luisivan
Absolutely! I cannot speak for other companies/defendants, but in our case our
aim is to make it very cost effective to invalidate patents that may later be
used to sue your company. Most fees in litigation and patent invalidation go
to lawyers. We chose a kind of patent reexamination that can be automated, and
we're working on the process. We have automated a great chunk of the process
and paperwork already. That will bring costs down and democratize patent
invalidation.

~~~
ensignavenger
"Most fees in litigation and patent invalidation go to lawyers."

That is what I had figured... as an aside, I have been hearing complaints
about young lawyers not being able to earn very much due to over saturation of
the market- but it still sure costs a bunch to higher one of them! I would
think if the market was so over-saturated, lawyers would lower their prices to
better compete. (Of course, the various specialties may still have variances
based on expertise). The over saturation thing must be a myth being spread by
old lawyers trying to protect their earnings by discouraging new competition
:)

~~~
luisivan
Completely agree. I think lawyers are one of the biggest lobbies ever. They
really care about their profession and making sure that they stay relevant.
Some lawyers try hard to make simple things look extremely hard just so you
have to blindlessly trust them. And you obviously pay a premium for that.
Anyway there are awesome lawyers out there that actually help businesses, but
they are the less

------
watermoose
I'm glad that they are doing this to raise awareness about the problem, and it
seems like a good idea to request prior art on this page.

And, it looks to have a great team behind it:
[https://unpatent.co/about](https://unpatent.co/about)

So, I'm curious, is Lee Cheng going to be the one going after Marc and his
group, and is the $20k just to try to help pay his court expenses? Because, it
seems like it's going to be a lot more expensive than that. I'm asking because
there isn't much information about how the money will be used on the campaign
page, and I think more would give if this were clearer.

Good luck to Unpatent in this! I think this is an inventive way to help start
to solve this problem.

Something else that people could do is write to their representatives about
it. These patent problems are solvable with law that penalizes organizations
that try to blackmail organizations with patents that are overly broad.

[http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/](http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/)

[http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_c...](http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm)

~~~
luisivan
Thanks a lot!

We spend the crowdfunded money on the ex parte reexam PTO fees + lawyer fees
(for preparing the filing) + rewarding the prior art searchers. As we're doing
an ex parte, it's pretty cheap compared to an inter partes. The IPR one would
be >$100k, while ex parte's minimum costs are about $16k. Ex parte has less
success probabilities than an inter parte, but the fact that it's so cheap
helps scaling the process so we can get rid of stupid patents at a good pace
:)

------
xg15
Patent noob here, but wouldn't this violate the basic "you can patent
implementations but not ideas" rule?

Did they actually patent _all possible methods and apparatuses to select
products based on personal information_? Or was the patent for _one_ concrete
method and apparatus that did so and just formulated intentionally vague?

~~~
zipwitch
The U.S. Patent Office will grant a patent for basically anything.
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100819/12015210689.shtml](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100819/12015210689.shtml)

~~~
xg15
Thanks for the info.

So basically, the harder I make it to validate my patent, the higher is the
likelihood that it will be _granted_? That's crazy.

This might also explain though why so many patents are written in such an
incomprehensible way.

------
dest
Sorry if dumb question, but isn't that patent expired? " Legal status: Expired
- Lifetime"
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US8738435](https://patents.google.com/patent/US8738435)

~~~
kitbrennan
"The patent has just expired, but the troll still has 6 years to ask anyone
for the licensing fees or the damages that they incurred during the term of
the patent — which is 20 years."

~~~
izqui
Exactly. Some patent trolls wait near the end of the lifetime of their patent
to start asserting them.

------
sjclemmy
Am I missing something? This patent is specific to automated insurance
marketing. The unpatent.co campaign seems to imply that is some kind of catch
all patent that covers all automated decision making. I don't see the link.

~~~
xchaotic
If i read this correctly, this should expire in 4 years anyway, I know it's a
lot of time in tech, but might be around the same time that trial completes?

~~~
luisivan
6 years! It's a lot of time if you keep in mind that some trolls wait until
patents are expired in order to ask for all the infringement fees during the
whole term of the patent. They sued a lot of businesses already, more to come
during these years for sure.

------
BillyParadise
OT, but I like the use of Semantic UI on that site. Nice and clean design.

~~~
izqui
Thanks Billy!

~~~
GrinningFool
It was amazing. I didn't have to scroll all over the place to find what it was
about - no massive hero banner that conveys zero useful information either[1].
It just presents the info as readable text.

This shouldn't be a thing that needs to be praised, but sadly it's
increasingly rare on new sites.

1\. The main site has as banner, but it doesn't necessitate scrolling a full
page to get to anything meaningful.

~~~
luisivan
Thanks a lot! Instead of focusing on looking amazing, we first thought about
making people understand us and then we added great design. It's a very
legalese, complex concept to explain people, so we spent a lot of time on
this!

------
infodroid
Is there any reason why an unpatent campaign is limited to 30 days? Wouldn't
it be better if campaigns expired only after their funding threshold was
achieved?

~~~
luisivan
We're pretty open about that and gathering feedback to build a timeline that
makes sense. We are thinking about moving between stages only if they're
successful instead of just looking at some arbitrary number of days.

