
Exposing Patent Trolls - grimey27
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/exposing-patent-trolls/
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chasing
This is great.

I might also suggest a section of trollingeffects.org called something like
"What We've Lost." Meaning, a catalog companies that have shut down, people
who have been unable to pursue ideas, expenses that have been passed on to
consumers, etc. Use stories. Make it concrete. Clear. Poignant. Because, at
the core, that's what all of this is about. What we've lost and what we'll
continue to lose to these assholes.

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breckinloggins
Next step: add an easy way to link these back to
[http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/prior-
art](http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/prior-art) to initiate
and document a crowdsourced prior art search.

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vehementi
Yeah now they'll stop extracting their billions of dollars from the industry
and be forced to live the rest of their lives with their billions of dollars
extracted from the industry! (Bitter that justice is always years behind and
these atrocities will never be rectified, just mostly stopped going forward)

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adrianwaj
How many companies have successfully counter-sued a troll? for harrassment,
for example.

Is there a site with names and photos of the trolls and their lawyers? Might
be interesting for trollingeffects. SOBs gallery.

~~~
patrickdavey
Could be wrong, but I think most of these patent trolls are wrapped up in an
endless series of shell companies... so going after them simply isn't worth
the effort.

~~~
adrianwaj
I'd take it personally and go after the individuals.. even the lawyers know
who is paying them. We're dealing with a set of individuals that are
harrassing the entrepreneurial community... and have never IPO'ed anything or
have any customers to vouch for their character. They may have patents, but no
products, and they are harrassing those creating products and getting
customers. If I got a patent troll on my back, I would find a bunch of their
other prior targets and get a petition from all our customers, and ..... do
what's right. Maybe obtain some punitive damages. They're not acting in the
spirit of the law, rather the spirit of the cockroach. One could even conceive
of a reverse troll, creating a honeypot company to attract the trolls, and
then to counterstrike.

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thinkcomp
Another resource that exposes patent trolls:

[http://www.plainsite.org/tags/index.html?id=635](http://www.plainsite.org/tags/index.html?id=635)

~~~
grimey27
Very cool.

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DanBC
Here's one that makes me a bit sad: half keyboards have a patent that is
enforced.

([http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000021.html](http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000021.html))

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rexreed
As an aside, is it possible, and therefore cheaper and more beneficial to the
trolled party, to just endlessly stall and delay with various tactics, such as
stretching out response times as long as possible and then responding with a
proposed (low ball) settlement, awaiting the response to that, waiting again
for a long period of time, proposing another (low ball) settlement, shuffling
around the contacts at an organizaton, etc. Or is there some requirement to
come to a conclusion within a specified time?

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TallboyOne
Can someone explain to someone who doesn't really know much about this topic
other than that it angers them immensely... why can't the laws do anything to
stop this nonsense??

~~~
RKoutnik
Because the trolls are very good at what they do. They usually don't sue, but
rather threaten to sue unless the company they're targeting pays a fee. Said
fee is set to be below what it would cost the company to fight back.

Virtually every time a company has fought back (and a decision has been
reached)[0], the troll has lost. However, it costs companies (especially
startups) a LOT more money to fight back. Many roll over and pay instead of
fighting, and the trolls make their money.

There is a new law in the works [1] that aims to make the trolls pay the bills
in the case the company fights back and wins. This will make trolling very
expensive, now that companies can fight without worry of being shut down due
to fees.

[0] Sadly, many companies run out of money before this point. [1]
[http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr845](http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr845)

~~~
TallboyOne
When will this law be put into place? What are the chances of it passing?

Each time I see a patent trolling thread it makes me so mad.

