
Appeals court hits largest public patent troll with $1.4M fee - solveforall
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/netapps-1-4m-fee-smackdown-against-patent-troll-holds-up-on-appeal/
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kelukelugames
I was hoping for Intellectual Ventures.

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thoman23
Ha ha, exactly. Just like there are a few baseball umpires who are so bad you
learn their names (Angel Hernandez, Phil Cuzzi, Joe West), Intellectual
Ventures is one of the "companies" that most developers know of for all the
wrong reasons. I remember when they sued every maker of "todo list" software.

~~~
throwawaykf05
_> I remember when they sued every maker of "todo list" software._

Hmm, I must have missed that one. Link?

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thoman23
Turns out I was mistaking Angel Hernandez for Phil Cuzzi...so to speak. It was
Channel Intelligence not IV that I was thinking of.

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/17/channel-intelligence-
sues-j...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/17/channel-intelligence-sues-just-
about-everyone-who-offers-wishlists/#)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=248577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=248577)

~~~
throwawaykf05
Ah I see, thanks. I've been following IV for a while and this didn't seem
familiar, so was wondering.

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ww520
$1,025 per hour for partners, $750 for associates, and $310 for paralegals.

Those are kind of high. Did they actually charge those rates? Or retroactively
bumped up the rates once they knew the case was dismissed?

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Sanddancer
Those are fairly standard fees for a big law firm defending these kinds of
cases. It's why most companies settle rather than fight cases.

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middleclick
Out of curiosity, is this the fee for just one lawyer or there are more than
one?

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ericd
Think of them like AWS instances, with a partner being an XL and an associate
being an M. Big firms can spin up a lot at once to hammer the other side with
legal paperwork, but it starts costing you quite a lot per month. Sometimes
there are jobs you really need an XL for for maximum concentrated firepower
(like negotiating in person, where someone even slightly better can be worth
millions/hr in outcome), but oftentimes a M can be a better fit for the task
(paperwork, legal motions, almost everything else).

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xacaxulu
The title alone makes me all "Yissssssssssssss".

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shmerl
Good, but I was hoping for Intellectual Vultures to be busted.

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ccvannorman
A good start.

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curiousjorge
>$1,025-an-hour partners.

TIL some people make literally a 100 times what the average person makes.

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eru
That's what they charge for partners. Normal people easily get charged out for
50 USD per hour. Try calling a plumber to see for yourself.

That doesn't mean that they actually get that much money for every hour
worked, since the billed hours have to pay unbillable costs like office rent,
admin overhead, taxes etc.

If you are willing to look beyond the rich world: world average GDP per capita
is something like 10k USD. At 2000 hours worked per year, that 0.5 USD per
hour.

Your `average' person already makes 20 times as much as the actual average
person.

(Keep in mind, that the median is lower than the average. Check out
[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040))

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beedogs
> If you are willing to look beyond the rich world: world average GDP per
> capita is something like 10k USD. At 2000 hours worked per year, that 0.5
> USD per hour.

No it isn't. It's $5 an hour, barely under the US minimum wage.

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eru
Thanks for catching that! Sorry, I obviously can't do arithmetic.

Interesting that the global gdp is that high, actually.

Comparing to the minimum wage is still a bit misleading, since the wage share
of GDP is far from 100%.

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winter_blue
$1.4 million seems small in comparison to the billions[1] that Microsoft was
fined by the EU for bundling certain software with Windows.

Acacia did something that would be considered illegal and exploitative in
almost every jurisdiction, whereas bundling a browser straddles a legal gray
area. Apple does it OS X and iOS, Google does it on Android & Chromebooks, and
nearly every Linux distro does it. On iOS, you can't even use a browser engine
other than Safari's WebKit. And none of these companies have gotten into
trouble.

It just seems unfair to me that when a company does something slightly
unfairly competitive (like Microsoft) they get hit with huge fines, but when a
company like Acacia does something that's outright evil and illegal, the fines
are a joke.

I do think Microsoft should be paying even bigger fines for patent-trolling
Android manufacturers with false patent claims. And a judicial decision or
executive act ordering Apple to allow users to install their own software on
iOS, and removing the ban on interpreters/browser engines/etc on the App Store
would be appropriate.

[1] $794 million in 2003, $449 million in 2006, $1.44 billion in 2008, and
$765 million (€561 mil)in 2013 -- a total of over $3.4 billion, all for
bundling standard software with Windows that all other OSes also bundle. And
this money paid in fines to the European Court goes back into the EU budget.
(TBH, this smells strangely as a revenue-generating move by the Commission.)
See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission)

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reality_czech
Saying that Microsoft was fined for "bundling a browser" is like saying that
the Feds went after Al Capone because of tax evasion. I hope this was a joke
post!

There were plenty of other cases pending against Microsoft, but they were all
dropped when George W. Bush came into power. If Gore had won, Microsoft
probably would have been broken up, like AT&T before it.

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oldmanjay
Since technology did what it does by enabling unexpected competitors to pass
Microsoft, would there have been a purpose beyond the purely political? It's
hard to say they have a monopoly on anything now, not even the badwill of the
geeks.

~~~
reality_czech
Microsoft is still as profitable as ever and they have a ton of money and
patents. There is still no real competition on the desktop. Linux is used by a
tiny number of hardcore enthusiasts. Apple was financially propped up by
Microsoft in the early 2000s to maintain the illusion of competition, but
their market share is under 15%. The next generation of hardware is going to
take away the option of even using Linux... Microsoft has locked down the
bootloaders on ARM devices, although they continue to allow Linux to be
installed on Intel devices (for now, at least.)

Microsoft may not dominate the areas of cloud computing or smartphones, but
those are separate industries from the desktop. And Microsoft continues to
pour money into those industries by investing in Azure and Windows RT. They
may yet come to dominate those industries if Amazon or Google make a mistake.

Microsoft has also added mandatory spyware (essentially) to their new Windows
10. Some of it can be disabled, but other parts can't. They are also pushing
their Windows Store thing. It's still possible to install desktop software
without paying Microsoft, but for how much longer?

HN has a real blind spot when it comes to how harmful Microsoft was and
continues to be.

