

Podcasting Community Faces Patent Troll Threat; EFF Wants to Help  - vertis
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/podcasting-community-faces-patent-troll-threat-eff-wants-help

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Ogre
The patent was filed in 2009. I wrote a podcast fetcher for an obscure Archos
device in 2005. It was hardly the first app like that. But just based on my
own personal experience, the things that this patent covers were in wide use
at least 4 years before it was filed.

I can't say I've read any of this in detail, but on the surface it might be
the most ridiculous one of these patent stories I've seen in a long time.

My thing was a fetcher, not a distribution system, but if there hadn't already
been a well established standard for distribution (RSS), I wouldn't have had
any reason to write it.

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jimrandomh
I would really like to see the EFF try to get a precedent which solves this
problem in the general case, rather than invalidating just this one patent.
And I think I know what the solution has to be: class-action defense.

What's going on is this. They have a pretext to sue, which is not good enough
to win, but is good enough to keep the case from being dismissed on summary
judgment and to keep them from being ruled vexatious litigants. They use this
pretext to start hundreds or thousands of copies of the same case, against
different defendants, achieving economy of scale. If the case proceeds, the
defense has to spend much more (even if they win), because they have no such
economy of scale. So they're forced to settle instead.

But suppose one defendant could force the patent troll, in a pre-summary-
judgment motion, to reveal the identities of everyone else they'd threatened
with the same patent. That would allow the defendants to pool legal costs,
merge all the cases into one courtroom, and have a fair trial, rather than
just being extorted.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
At which point _this_ NPE dissolves and reorganizes around a different patent
to troll a different crowd. And the pool is still out a non-zero sum.

We need real reform. This is a job for Congress, not the courts.

~~~
newbie12
Disagree, the courts have to fix this. Congress (and the Obama Administration)
are ignorant and corrupt, they just passed fake "Patent Reform" and won't act
again for some time.

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ehuna
One of the issues here is the Apple settled with 'Personal Audio' and handed
them $8 million -

[http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/09/apple-coughing-
up-8-milli...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/09/apple-coughing-up-8-million-
to-personal-audio-in-ipod-playlist/)

Small change for Apple, but could now establish a precendent for judges who
don't really understand technology and have to go by patent law.

