

Patent troll claims to own Bluetooth, scores $15.7M verdict against Samsung - aceperry
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/patent-troll-claims-to-own-bluetooth-scores-15-7m-verdict-against-samsung/

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throwawaykf05
Sigh, par for the course for any patent-related reporting on Ars.

1\. The headline is pure clickbait, and is obvious from the article itself.
From a quick glance, the patents concern a specific feature of Bluetooth 2.0
that enable selecting different modulation schemes, one with a higher data
rate, based on a header. Whether that's novel or non-obvious depends on the
prior art, which isn't discussed in TFA. In any case, it's a far cry from a
claim on "owning Bluetooth".

2\. The article and comments paint the plaintiff as a troll. But nobody asks,
let alone bothers to answer, what somebody should do if they devise such type
of an improvement to existing systems. "They are trolls because they make no
products", is the argument. Well, what product would you build in this
situation? Wireless communications are heavily regulated and standardized.
Build an entire new protocol and standard around a single improvement? And
then get people to build chips for that? Who's going to adopt your standard
when there are powerful network (literally) effects in place? And how does
that help when this improvement could be applied to any other protocol? Others
can simply adopt this improvement in their own products and completely ignore
yours.

I haven't seen anybody attempt to answer these questions. It doesn't take much
thought to call someone a troll, though.

3\. HNer DannyBee, a patent lawyer, had once (jokingly?) suggested that
defendants may start faring well in ED Texas if they, say, built a stadium in
Marshall. Looks like somebody at Samsung is thinking along the same lines.
Though it didn't help in this case, I guess it may help in the longer term,
especially given that Samsung is not an American company, something jurors may
be consciously or subconsciously biased against.

~~~
derekp7
For point 2, there are a few factors that go into distinguishing a non-
manufacturer patent holder vs. a patent troll. First, is the use of low
quality patents. A low quality patent is one or more of the following:

* Overly broad

* Describes the problem space, and claims all possible solutions to that problem

* Written in such a way that you can't implement the covered technology based on the patent description

* Covers existing practice, or what is destined to become standard practice in a new field, but worded in such a way to make it appear more novel

* Doesn't pass the non-obviousness test (need to be careful with this one, because a lot of patent-worthy inventions are obvious in hind site)

Also, a patent troll typically waits till a technology is well established
before suing, in order to maximize payout (see submarine patents). Another
soft clue to identifying a patent troll, is if the party being sued had came
to knowledge of the covered technology by way of the patent or patent
holder/inventor. If it is independent invention, then that could indicate that
the patent fails the non-obviousness test.

~~~
gyc
It seems like most of your points are already addressed in patent law. A good
patent litigation counsel on the opposing side should be able to dig up prior
art to invalidate any overly broad or obvious claims, and should be able to
invalidate any patent that does not sufficiently teach how to make and how to
use the invention due to lack of enablement.

------
wingerlang
I hear about these patent trolls a lot but I never really got an understanding
of what kind of people and companies these are.

First of all, I know they are scummy and yada yada.

But they must be very smart, setting up shell companies and having deep (?)
knowledge of the various tech stuff they are pursuing, it's not within the
average persons knowledge to do things like these.

How do they get the patents? Do they validly have patents, 100% generic or
not, before something similar comes up. Or do they somehow "craft" it towards
the victim.

Is there some known person who is a patent troll?

Is it knowlegable normal people workin in the scene while doing these things
"behind" the scenes or is it some proper company/office that delegates stuff
to their "shells"? It must require a huge amount of work to fight these mega
corporations, even if they give up quickly.

I find them faschinating in the same way as any high level scam artist since
it requires some finess.

~~~
berberous
Check out ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold [0] of Intellectual Ventures [1]
infamy. He's also famous for his epic modernist cuisine cooking bible [2]. I
also highly recommend the This American Life two-part podcast on patent trolls
[3] [4].

You can read Nathan's attempted justification of his patent troll activities
here [5].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold)
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures)
[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-The-Science-
Cooking/...](http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-The-Science-
Cooking/dp/0982761007#) [3] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/441/w...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack) [4]
[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/496/w...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/496/when-patents-attack-part-two) [5]
[https://hbr.org/2010/03/the-big-idea-funding-
eureka](https://hbr.org/2010/03/the-big-idea-funding-eureka)

~~~
michael_h
Nothing makes my blood boil more than Nathan Myhrvold's weird justifications
for his behavior. It all sounds plausible, maybe even admirable, and then he
turns around and funds 'inventors' that have patents for absolute malarkey. At
this point, I hope he is ONLY remembered for being a troll and nothing else.

Once people make it to the top, they almost always try to change the rules so
no one can follow in their footsteps. "Well, yes, that was okay _for me_ , but
you are going to have to make it _on your own_ , kiddo."

Establishing a capital market for inventions sounds like a _great_ idea, but
it is predicated on the notion that the patent office is not asleep at the
wheel. Person-in-garage-invents-life-changing-technology is a great trope, but
where the rubber meets the road we have the Eolas patent and various "using a
computer or network of computers" patents.

------
TorKlingberg
The telecom industry is unfortunately very patent heavy. It holds back
startups from entering, and the standardization groups become a game of trying
to push in things covered by your own patents while dodging others.

~~~
rayiner
I used to work in wireless R&D (at a startup). It's frightfully expensive, and
we would have never be able to do a whole stack with original technology, so
we licensed and built on top of WiMAX. I'm not sure why we should've been
allowed to build on all that technology for free.

Patents are a huge boon to standardization in capital-intensive industries
like that. Getting your patent in the spec is what creates the incentive to
contribute to this joint venture that's going to be opened up. Otherwise
you're doing R&D for your competitors for free.

~~~
bovermyer
"R&D for your competitors for free" sounds like the open source movement to
me.

In the brief amount of time I worked in telecom, I was shocked at how paranoid
and backstabby it appeared to be.

~~~
rayiner
The GnuPG maintainer is begging for nickles, while most commercial investment
into open source is incidental to some other activity that generates the real
money. Those aren't good things. When you make it difficult to monetize a
product, you create a huge incentive for companies to vertically integrate
until they control part of the stack that can be monetized. E.g. Android can
exist as open source because it's an on-ramp to Google's proprietary web
services.

If companies like Qualcomm couldn't directly monetize their R&D, the likely
end result would be their getting sucked up into companies like Apple and
Samsung that build end-user products.

------
chrsw
If companies spent more time on their Bluetooth stack implementations and less
money on the legal wrangling, BT wouldn't be so shitty.

~~~
throwawaykf05
Many think that the spec itself is crappy, so there's not much an
implementation can do to fix that. Witness, for instance, the number of
hardware vendors like Logitech that eschew Bluetooth in favor of their own
proprietary wireless protocols.

~~~
chrsw
I have no doubt the spec is crap, but some implementations are better (read:
somewhat less problematic) than others. Which leads me to believe there is
some degree of freedom with respect to quality here.

~~~
aceperry
I fully agree with you there. I'm working on some BT stuff, and find it to be
lacking, mainly the software stack. The spec looks ok for a wireless
interface, the quality of the stacks are all over the place.

------
whizzkid
So what these guys are doing is sitting on their chairs, and trying to get
money from people/companies that produce something?

Not that I am a fan of Samsung or anything, but this feels really wrong. Can't
this be stopped?

I would understand if these guys had their patent before bluetooth, this is
just plain stupid that they can earn money from it, isn't it ?

~~~
strttn
You could argue that companies like Rembrandt are the only way that indie
patent holders can hope to compete with the likes of Samsung. Unfortunately
the patent game appears to usually be one that is won by whoever has the
largest legal budget.

It costs huge amounts to create, file and protect patents and any errors will
mean that a patent is worthless once the opposition's lawyers get stuck into
it.

Large companies in patent heavy fields all have teams of lawyers filing
patents as quickly as they can and then defending them and attacking others as
hard as they can. The little guy doesn't stand a chance.

Perhaps a solution could be to have government take the place of a company
like Rembrandt so that independent patent filers can get the heft behind them
required to support their patent.

~~~
Kliment
Or how about we kill the parasitic patent industry once and for all? Declare
all patents invalid, like the debt amnesties that were common thousands of
years ago, and refuse to issue any new ones.

