
Taking on a Patent Troll: Caveat Troglodytarum - kfarr
https://bitmovin.com/caveat-troglodytarum-trolls-beware/
======
redm
Good for them. Having been on the receiving end of patent trolls seven times,
it's a challenging situation. It's easy to settle, and risky to fight.

To give credit where its due, this aggressive defense strategy dates back to
Lee Cheng from Newegg, predating CloudFlare. [1] [2] [3]

[1]
[https://profilemagazine.com/2013/newegg/](https://profilemagazine.com/2013/newegg/)

[2] [https://www.newegg.com/insider/patent-trolls-learn-mess-
newe...](https://www.newegg.com/insider/patent-trolls-learn-mess-newegg/)

[3]
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140402/14293426778/neweg...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140402/14293426778/newegg-
gets-patent-troll-macrosolve-to-fold-like-cheap-suit.shtml)

~~~
krc17
Newegg was definitely a role model for us at Cloudflare. However, we followed
Cloudflare's approach on the prior art search and ethic complain this time.

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schoen
The Latin here doesn't make any sense. The post translates it as "trolls
beware", but caveat is singular (the plural is "caveant") and troglodytarum is
genitive plural (the corresponding nominative plural should be "troglodytae").

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/troglodytes](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/troglodytes)

~~~
thaumasiotes
Also, "troglodyte" and "troll" are completely unrelated words...

~~~
schoen
Etymologically yes, although Wiktionary says a troll is "now especially a
grotesque humanoid creature living in caves or hills or under bridges" and so
if you take just the "living in caves" part there's some slightly plausible
connection.

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toomuchtodo
Slightly offtopic: I notice this is written by Bitmovin's General Counsel, and
Cloudflare has had to defend itself from patent trolls previously (also
mentioned in this blog post). Is there a reason YC hasn't taken this on
internally, perhaps in partnership with the EFF, with a dedicated resource to
defend and then pursue patent trolls for their portfolio companies?

Also, congrats on the win Bitmovin!

~~~
krc17
That's a great idea! If you have further thoughts on how to do that, I would
love to hear them. DM me and we can set up some time to chat, if you are
interested.

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nimbius
sounds familiar. I work as an ASE mechanic in a small chain of shops in the
midwest. We had a deal with a company that provides code readers for long haul
trucks. mostly its just to license their expensive software as the readers
themselves are off the shelf. we still have to buy pricy laptops to run them
on windows 10.

Recently I found out we could read codes using a raspberry pi and an adapter.
I rigged up a cool little doctors cart with a monitor, a small keyboard, and
the pi. I spent a few nights writing a simple python program that takes codes
that are output from the reader and compares them against a database I
laboriously typed up for techs to read.

This went all the way to the owner of the company before I found out, but the
owner loved it. Later on, after we started culling our software licenses and
stopped buying hardware from the vendor, they demanded an audit. The final
verdict? we owed then just short of half a million in back licenses and
damages for "copying" their patent on reading OBD type codes from an engine
computer. Our formal response to their threat of a lawsuit was something along
the lines of "try it." I was pretty terrified the whole legal thing was
happening, but the owner himself came down to my shop, promoted me to a shop
captain, and personally told me to keep making the little readers if people
wanted them.

We never did hear back from our old software vendor, but every time someone
rolls over a pi accidentally or drops one out of an engine bay, I wonder what
theyre up to.

------
adrianratnapala
This is an encouraging example, not just because they did the right thing, but
because they struck a workable balance between pragmatism and good
citizenship. From the post, it seems Bitmovin' didn't actually need to fight
anything in court. They just did enough legwork to credibly threaten legal
action against the troll, who then backed down.

This is a relatively low-cost tactic that others might well employ too. If it
catches on, the bar will be raised for trolls, and the business model will
become less profitable.

~~~
krc17
Thank you, that's flattering to hear and exactly what we were striving for.

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jlv2
So they are not going to help invalidate the troll's 15 patents?

That means the troll lost one battle but will still win overall.

~~~
krc17
I agree. However, they other companies sued are much bigger than Bitmovin, so
the do have the resources to defend themselves. We have a legal team of one.
That said, we did put some links to prior art in the blog post and would be
happy to help in other ways.

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bdowling
For reference, the case is _Hertl Media, LLC v. Bitmovin, Inc._ , Docket No.
1:18-cv-00938 (D. Del. Jun 25, 2018). The patent-in-suit is US 9,324,365 B2
[0], originally assigned to Nero AG (of Nero Burning ROM fame). The invention
in question seems to be directed to parallel processing of multiple langauge
assets in a audio/video stream to enable low-latency switching among the
available languages during playback.

[0]
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US9324365B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US9324365B2/en)

------
Aloha
Too bad no one patented the idea of being a patent troll (a business method
patent) - and could use to to sue patent trolls.

~~~
krc17
IBM patented patent trolling as a business model in 2007, but I like your
evil, legal genius.

~~~
Aloha
I've often thought that I missed a calling as a lawyer.

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acd
Is there any crowd sourced initiative to take on patent trolls and trademark
disputes with prior art? In other words a group of people raising of money to
pay lawyers and then a group work/artificial intelligence to find prior art on
the patent?

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/09/20/askpatents-com-a-
stack...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/09/20/askpatents-com-a-stack-
exchange-to-prevent-bad-patents/) might be what you’re looking for.

