
IOS devs put out a call to unite against Lodsys, other patent trolls - DeusExMachina
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/08/ios-devs-put-out-a-call-to-unite-against-lodsys-other-patent-trolls.ars
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nkassis
I guess I wasn't following the Lodsys thing but I had not heard that they
bought the patent in question from Intellectual Ventures? I guess Intellectual
Ventures is using 3rd parties to troll.

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SolarUpNote
Is Lodsys a "shell company" of Intellectual Ventures?

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/441/w...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack)

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bdhe
I guess the specific points to note to those who haven't seen the episode:

a. IV uses shell companies to sue others, by selling their patents to these
companies, get a cut of the eventual payout in any lawsuits, but I guess in
the process have some amount of immunity against countersuits since the suing
party is a shell company.

b. Lodsys is based out of the same building and suite in Marshall, Harrison
County, TX, where, according to the episode several "patent troll" companies
were incorporated with no visible indication on-site of actual employees or a
business.

~~~
blutonium
Planet Money did a piece using lots of clips from the This American Life
episode, where someone 'doubts' that it's IV, but that they're still an
interested party.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-
pat...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-patents-
attack)

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scotto
I don't know who renowned iOS developer Mike Lee is, but I think this is
fantastic. The only way small timers can effect this legal change is to band
together like a union. And we've seen how powerful a union can be.

Trolls are going down, man.

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kragen
You may not have heard of this, but a union of _companies_ is called a
"trust", and there's an entire division of the Department of Justice devoted
to preventing them from forming, and destroying them when they do arise:
<http://www.justice.gov/atr/>

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DenisM
Which is precisely why MPAA, RIAA, BSA, and other industry associations simply
do not exist, right? :)

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kragen
Congress has actually enacted specific legislation to exempt the MPAA and RIAA
from some aspects of antitrust law. I don't know about the BSA.

To be more specific, though, there are some ways that companies can legally
cooperate under current antitrust law — for example, standardizing screw
threads and grades of steel. But boycotting the "products" of certain
"vendors" is probably not among them.

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nextparadigms
_"Imagine a law that allows small software companies to opt out of the patent
system."_

That's a _very_ interesting idea - startups opting out of the patent system,
and then they won't be sued by other companies claiming patent infringement,
but it will also mean they don't get to sue others for patent infringement
either, even when they get to become a big company. It seems like a fair idea.

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onemoreact
If anyone get's to ignore patents then the whole idea of patents as a safe
means of discloser becomes somewhat meaningless. I have no problems abolishing
software / business process patents, but if a small company can manufacture
any patented drug you greatly undermine the value of new drugs.

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hvs
I'm not going to argue for or against the usefulness of drug patents, but I
think the article was referring to opting out of the _software_ patent system.

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jjtheblunt
Just make patents non transferrable, but licensable. Is that not what they
were intended to be, with the oversight that let them be transferrable the
root of all the dysfunction?

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extension
How is that the root of all dysfunction? If trolls can't buy patents, they
will cut some other deal with inventors that has the same effect. Or they will
just "invent" things themselves[1].

[1] [http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/patent-
reform...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/patent-reform-
needed-more-than-ever.html)

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acabal
Not to sound too cynical, but if companies like MS, Apple, IBM, Google, etc.
have spent the last 20 years amassing billion-dollar patent war-chests and are
still giving in to patent trolls, and they haven't managed to get the system
changed yet--what chance do a handful of game developers have?

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doctoboggan
Because those companies also benefit from patents. It takes people who are
willing to give up the patent system all together to fix it.

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noinput
I own trollsys.com. Happy to donate it to the cause.

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DenisM
So, where do we sign up?

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DeusExMachina
Stay tuned. Soon announcements to sign up will be made on Appsterdam website
at <http://appsterdam.rs> and on Mike's blog at <http://mur.mu.rs>

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terhechte
Fantastic Idea!

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Tichy
I hope they don't forget to unite against Apple.

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stephth
What do you mean?

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Tichy
That Apple is also a patent troll. They threaten Android, which is a haven for
indie developers.

