
How to Beat a Patent Troll - wslh
https://avc.com/2019/11/how-to-beat-a-patent-troll/
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behindsight
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21447215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21447215)

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cfitz
I am a fan of Fred's work/blog but I'm not sure how this is a "how to" AKA a
guide, rather than a regurgitation of someone else's guide, meant only for
well-financed companies.

For those of us bootstrapping, this will unfortunately not work. We are stuck
settling with these parasites.

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arbuge
This is probably not a viable strategy for any startup without significant
financial resources and time to dedicate to it.

From the post itself:

> It is tempting to settle with patent trolls if you can settle for less than
> litigation costs. Our portfolio companies do it all the time and it is
> rational behavior.

That precisely is the trolls' business model - make settling with them the
rational way to go. The system is broken and needs to be fixed so that this
business model is no longer viable.

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snarf21
Exactly, we need legal changes. The changes aren't even hard, just require
enough political will.

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metalliqaz
The patent system is broken but SV is full of goons who made billions off of
"do it on a computer" patents and they will never allow their cash cows to be
legislated away. Patent trolls are really bad but they are just one symptom of
a system that is built on huge patent portfolios. The big companies are just
as bad IMHO.

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turc1656
In the original cloudflare posting, they said this - _" As we have explained
previously, patent trolls benefit from a problematic incentive structure that
allows them to take vague or abstract patents that they have no intention of
developing and assert them as broadly as possible."_

It seems to me that the real problem is patents being issues for "vague and
abstract" things in the first place. You're not even supposed to be able to
patent a mere idea anyway. It is supposed to be something specific and well-
defined (and also usually pretty narrow). The patent office sounds like the
real source of the problem, not the system/structure surrounding the legality
of patent application and ownership.

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rolltiide
As a patent creator that can’t get any message returned from potential
licensees, what options are there aside from selling the patent to a troll or
sending letters with my own lawyers

The market can’t seem to distinguish validity of claims, but a letter from
Esq. LLP seems to change that notion quickly.

These discussions don’t factor in that companies never want to willingly
exchange value for a royalty. There is no IP acquisition department. Everyone
just wants to skirt around litigation, and lawyers fix that.

There’s also a conception of thinking it’s viable to create everything you’ve
considered patenting

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mcv
What you can do is just focus on building your own product instead trying to
seek rent from others.

If it's not something you create, it's not something you should be patenting.

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rolltiide
Can you expand on that thought?

So if I receive a patent for something financial I should spend the next
decade acquiring licenses in 50 states and multiple countries, some of which
have multimillion dollar bond requirements, getting product market fit for my
new financial service just to prove that the “locked down IP” has legs?
Ignoring any other pursuit I might imagine in the mean time?

Or just letting the market stay in its current unimproved state just in case
_maybe_ someone else independently comes up with the idea

did you have something more practical in mind that fits your criteria which I
didn’t consider?

just disclosing the idea publicly as loud so others can build from it?

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harryh
Patents, at their best, are for IP that requires significant capital
investment like drug development or wireless modem chips or things like that.
You have to pay a bunch of talented and expensive people a bunch of money for
a long time how to figure out how to make the thing.

But once they figure it out, replicating the thing is fairly easy and cheap.
In this case patent licensing is great because it allows for there to be some
companies that do the invention and others that do the manufacturing. The
patent license is the bridge between these two things.

Patents are at their worst for IP that is just "I had an idea." Because,
honestly, ideas are easy. Lots of people have ideas. Most ideas aren't
original. When patents get issued for this sort of thing they mostly just
cause problems. The lawsuit in the original link here is a good example of
that. Someone had an idea to "provide an internet third party data channel"
which is....kind of silly. A bunch of people had that idea. The idea had so
little value it got sold for $1 but then it got turned into a series of
annoying lawsuits that just cost a bunch of people a bunch of money with no
good outcome for anyone.

Based on your comments, it kinda sounds like the patent you have falls into
the latter category and not the former which is why other commenters are
skeptical of you. Maybe they're wrong though, but unless you are willing to
talk about your patent (or link to it!) it's hard to really judge.

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bdowling
> The idea had so little value it got sold for $1

Public assignment records often state that a thing was sold for “$1 plus other
good and valuable consideration” to keep the actual sale price confidential.
The $1 is there to ensure the contract is enforceable and there’s no rule that
says the other good and valuable consideration isn’t a whole lot of additional
dollars.

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harryh
Ah, interesting. I stand corrected on that subpoint. Thank you.

