
Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game - Stanleyc23
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/11/the-hunted-becomes-the-hunter-how-cloudflares-fight-with-a-patent-troll-could-alter-the-game/
======
jgrahamc
More detail on what we are doing from three blog posts:

Standing Up to a Dangerous New Breed of Patent Troll
[https://blog.cloudflare.com/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-
new-b...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/standing-up-to-a-dangerous-new-breed-of-
patent-troll/)

Project Jengo [https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-
jengo/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-jengo/)

Patent Troll Battle Update: Doubling Down on Project Jengo
[https://blog.cloudflare.com/patent-troll-battle-update-
doubl...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/patent-troll-battle-update-doubling-
down-on-project-jengo/)

~~~
eru
> [...] Blackbird combines both a law firm and intellectual property rights
> holder into a single entity. In doing so, they remove legal fees from their
> cost structure and can bring lawsuits of potentially dubious merit without
> having to bear any meaningful cost.

Don't the lawyers have opportunity costs?

~~~
josaka
This argument by in the article is silly. One of the founders of Blackbird
came from Kirkland. Kirkland's profit per partner is $4m per year in the last
year. So the Blackbird lawyer is forgoing the opporunity to participate in
this income to pursue this case (and may others). (Granted, income is not
distributed equally in most firms, but to imply that the next best alternative
for these lawyers is zero income doesn't help the article's credibility.)

------
JumpCrisscross
I've used Latham & Watkins. Just made a call to let a partner there know what
I think about his firm's alumna and how it colors my opinion of him and his
firm.

Encourage everyone to check with your firm's General Counsel about this. If
you use Latham, or Kirkland or Weil, encourage your GC to reach out and make
your views heard. It's despicable that these lawyers are harassing their
firms' former and potential clients.

~~~
cortesoft
What exactly are they supposed to do about that, though? They left the firm?

~~~
seibelj
Lawyers I know are extremely risk adverse. It starts with law school, where it
is the default, safe path for a lot of people who think "I want to be really
important and make money" but have a degree in English, philosophy, etc. and
don't know how to translate that into a high powered job without more
schooling.

Then the grind of law school, where they all obsess over class rank, who gets
the best internship, who gets the best job. It's a very reputation based
industry, where even trying to switch to another firm could get you
blackballed if done improperly and without tact.

If a lot of tech people make a big stink about this to the partners, it will
quickly make this path dangerous for employees and it will stop fast.

~~~
azernik
If you've left Big Law, you are already off the risk-averse path. These are
very seniority-focused places, which will not hire you back after you've left
the Big Law system (with the exception of a few high-prestige postings, like a
court clerkship). i.e. these lawyers will probably never again work at Latham
anyway.

~~~
seibelj
Considering most lawyers in big law won't make partner (from what I've heard,
what makes logical sense, and what this Quora post says[0]) most non-partner
lawyers in big law will eventually leave. Let's keep them from becoming patent
trolls, shall we?

[0] [https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-associates-at-
big-l...](https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-associates-at-big-law-
firms-make-partner)

------
notyourday
It is all about finding a correct pressure point.

Long time ago certain Philadelphia area law firms decided to represent vegan
protesters that created a major mess in a couple of high end restaurants.

A certain flamboyant owner of one the restaurants targeted decided to have a
good time applying his version of asymmetric warfare. The next partners from
those law firm showed up to wine and dine their clients in the establishment,
the establishment(s) politely refused the service to the utter horror of the
lawyers.

Needless to say, the foie gras won...

[Edit: spelling]

~~~
tareqak
This account seems more like poor planning on part of the lawyers. I would
assume representing a client would imply a sort of temporary boycott on the
part of the lawyers towards the client's legal adversary.

~~~
learc83
In a large firm, a lawyer isn't going to go through the active cases for every
partner in the firm when choosing where to take clients for dinner.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It seems a bit naive, then, to assume that the people you're litigating
against will civilly keep their anger in Lawyer-Land and never hold a grudge
in real life.

~~~
mendelk
_I talked to an Oracle lawyer a few months ago, and told him their lawsuit
just makes Oracle look bad. The lawyer was dismissive, and tried to explain
how it 's silly how people take lawsuits personally, and talked about how
layers _understand_ that lawsuits aren't personal, and that they are still
friends outside the court._

 _I 'm sure a lawyer can "understand" how lawsuits aren't actually something
personal at all, but lawyers really seem to be the _only_ people who
"understand" that._

\-- Linus Torvalds [0]

[0] [https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-
discuss/...](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-
discuss/2016-August/003580.html)

~~~
arkh
> “The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if
> some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that
> harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The
> Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it
> is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of
> Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin.
> If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal.
> Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a
> better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered
> dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being
> considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their
> eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with.
> Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your
> liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the
> ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the
> world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them.
> Make it personal.”

― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

~~~
chris_wot
Yup, I've had to do that. I've basically not given in, and have slowly but
surely ground down the people who should have been investigating and dealing
with my issues. I'll succeed from sheer bloody mindedness.

------
tracker1
I think that this is absolutely brilliant. I've been against the patent of
generalistic ideas, and basic processes for a very long time. Anything in
software should not really be patentable, unless there is a concrete
implementation of an invention, it's not an invention, it's a set of
instructions.

Let software work under trade secrets, but not patents. Anyone can implement
something they think through. It's usually a clear example of a need. That
said, I think the types of patent trolling law firms such as this deserve
every bit of backlash against them that they get.

~~~
mjevans
Software is already covered by /copyright/ law. It does not need patents.

~~~
MatthewWilkes
Copyright covers implementations, not ideas. I have no moral objection to
truly novel inventions in computer science being protected by patents. An
innovative search algorithm, a compression scheme, etc. Its shit when MP3s and
GIFs were encumbered, but they were genuine inventions whose sharing publicly
genuinely advanced the public good.

The kind the patent trolls use are not innovative in the same way. We need a
stricter definition of obvious to one versed in the art, not a ban throughout
the field.

~~~
Hermel
I'm pretty sure that if you rewrote Harry Potter from scratch with new names
and wording (redoing the implementation) and published that, you would still
get in trouble. So copyright is somewhat broader than you think.

~~~
MatthewWilkes
Of course there are grey areas, and it's appropriate that they're decided by
the courts. I'm sure nobody would argue that a lossy copy of a work protected
by copyright can still infringe, even if the lossiness was deliberate and
intended to differentiate it from the original to a minimal degree.

Copyright of literary characters is one of the harder ones to define, and
perhaps a system more like patents would be more appropriate for them, but
that's neither here nor there.

Let's stick to computer science for a while. Imagine I have come up with a
sorting algorithm for integers with significantly better time complexity than
existing options. I can describe that in any number of programming languages,
in natural language, in pictographs, etc. It's a skill that people can learn,
or a tool that could be embedded in silicon and used for financial gain.
Doesn't that sound more like an invention than a creative work? Shouldn't
patents be the best fit?

Don't get me wrong, copyright and patent systems the world over hace
significant class, but for us as software engineers to declare that patents
shouldn't apply to our work because it is somehow fundamentally different to
the other science and engineering disciplines is just arrogance.

~~~
slaymaker1907
The problem is that algorithms and math are explicitly forbidden from being
patented. This is why most software patents include some sort of clause
specifying that the work is done using a computer.

The patent office has simply done a lousy job when it comes to software
patents.

~~~
URSpider94
I don't believe you are correct. You can't patent math, but you can patent
algorithms. This is analogous to the material world, where you can't patent
physics, but you can patent engineering.

An algorithm isn't math, it's a series of instructions. That is something that
is patentable, as long as it involves an inventive step.

A more efficient sorting algorithm that is non-obvious would almost certainly
be patentable.

~~~
zephyrppt
You're partially correct. Algorithms can't be patented. However, in practice,
patent drafters work around this by adding phrases such as "A memory with
computer readable instructions to [Insert Algorithm]" to turn the algorithm
into an invented product. The bottom line is that the invention is the memory
and the processor system whose novelty is that it includes instructions which
implement the particular steps of the algorithm. This practically covers all
implementations of the algorithm on Von Neumann machines, in effect covering
all current implementations of the algorithm.

~~~
bluGill
Anything you can do in software I can do with a set of hydraulic value). Your
software will be faster (a video game on my valves will take several lifetimes
to display the opening), but it will work (until something leaks). thus you
can translate your program to hydraulics and it is patentable.

------
avodonosov
It was late summer night when I noticed that article on HN. I immediately
noticed it's organized like a novel - this popular lame style which often
annoys me lately:

    
    
        Matthew Prince knew what was coming.
        The CEO of Cloudflare, an internet security
        company and content delivery network
        in San Francisco, was behind his desk
        when the emails began to trickle in ...
    

Was he really behind his desk?

Hesitated a little before posting - am I trying to self-assert by deriding
others? But this "novel" article style is some new fashion / cliche which
might be interesting to discuss. Let's see what others think.

~~~
mnm1
Since you asked ... As both a writer and reader, I _fucking hate it_. I think
it's fucking piss-poor writing by journalists who don't know how to be
journalists and don't even know how to write an article, all in the name of
attracting simple-minded readers with a one of the lamest prose techniques
possible. I'm here to read an article about patents. I'm not interested in the
opening few paragraphs of a bad novel. If I wanted to read a bad novel, I'd
pick up a bad novel. If these "journalists" want to write a novel, then they
should do that and stop writing "journalism" articles.

This is one of the worst scourges of online "journalism" and frankly, I'm
tired of having to skip the first few paragraphs of every article because I
don't want to read some fucking stupid little story over and over again and
want to get to the content. What ever happened to traditional journalism,
where the facts are laid out at the top and the details come in later? It
seems that "journalism" nowadays can't even get that right. If they want to
put a stupid story, at least put it at the end where it belongs, where few or
none will read it.

You could say this is a little pet peeve of mine. Thanks for asking.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The reason is simple - they (people responsible for the form of articles,
which may not always include the original journalist) _don 't care about you_.
They're not here to deliver you value. They're here to extract value _from_
you.

My rule of thumb is simple: I look at a service and ask myself, is what I see
a good, efficient way to deliver the value the service says it delivers? If
the answer is no, I know that they don't give a shit about delivering value,
they're only there to _extract_ it.

In the concrete example of journalism: inverted pyramid, TL;DR of the facts at
the top, no useless prose - those are signs of trying to deliver value. Prose,
multi-page articles, ads, auto-playing videos (be it ads or "content") - those
are signs they don't give a shit about you.

And yes, some may say that companies seek balance between profitability and
value. Sure, maybe companies think they do that. But the choices they make
matter. If they're making money literally on wasting my _time_ , the most
precious resource any human being has, then I don't want to have anything to
do with them.

Which is why I don't read the news. The state of the journalism is so bad
here, that casual browsing of comment sections of Reddit and HN is a more
efficient way to stay up-to-date on the world events than actually reading the
articles.

------
siliconc0w
I'm not a fan of the argument that if Blackbird weren't a NPE it'd be okay
because Cloudflare could then aim it's 150 strong patent portfolio cannon back
at them. It's basically saying incumbents like Cloudflare don't really want to
fix the system, they want to keep the untenable 'cold war' status quo which
protects them but burdens new entrants.

~~~
tracker1
Frankly, if it weren't for the stupidity of the patent system, I don't know
that Cloudflare would even have the patents. Has Cloudflare _ever_ initiated
patent litigation against anyone?

The fact is that most patents for things that are "invented" but entirely
virtually don't really deserve patent protection. Rarely is there significant
research, expense or tooling to implement. Patents on software, processes and
most extension patents are ridiculous in premise. That's what trade secrets
are for.

~~~
siliconc0w
Even if the companies only hoard these to defend themselves when they go under
their patents get picked up by NPEs. It's like nuclear weapons, MAD kinda
works but then a state fails and now you have terrorists with nukes. The
answer is disarmament. If you want to enlist the help of the community you
should have to pull a Tesla and open your patents or at the very least
advocate for the abolishment of software and process patents. By crying foul
and appealing to the community Cloudflare, like Blackbird, wants to have it
both ways. They continue to advocate for and benefit from the ridiculous
status quo but don't want to be subject to it when it inevitably goes awry.

~~~
rictic
Just so we're clear though, the disarmament that we should aim for is to
change physics so that nuclear weapons don't work at all, right? Because
that's an option, we could change how the patent system works.

~~~
CamperBob2
Land mines are a much better metaphor for patents than nuclear weapons are.
Say what you will about the evils of nuclear warfare, but we haven't seen any
world wars lately, and nuclear weapons are to thank for that state of affairs.

Patents (and land mines) are a lot less useful to society.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _Say what you will about the evils of nuclear warfare, but we haven 't seen
> any world wars lately, and nuclear weapons are to thank for that state of
> affairs._

It seems disingenuous to assume that the way it happened is the only way it
_could_ have happened. MAD exchanged the near-certainty of world war for a
coin-flip between mostly-peace and total annihilation. We can certainly be
happy that we lucked out on the coin-flip, but I don't think it follows that
MAD was a policy of pure wisdom and sanity.

~~~
CamperBob2
No question about that -- MAD was a reckless gamble that nothing would
accidentally trigger the endgame. Hardly a sensible strategy. Still, it's hard
to argue with the results so far.

The real concern is the ascendance of leaders who don't care if they die, or
whose religion assures them that they'll come out on the winning side of
Armageddon. But the analogies with patent law run out of steam well before
reaching that point.

------
oskarth
> So-called non-practicing entities — or holders of a patent for a process or
> product that they don’t plan to develop — often use them to sue companies
> that would sooner settle rather than pay what can add up to $1 million by
> the time a case reaches a courtroom.

Why on earth aren't non-practicing entity patent lawsuits outlawed? Seems like
a no-brainer, and I can't imagine these firms being big enough to have any
seriously lobbying power.

~~~
dangrossman
> Why on earth aren't non-practicing entity patent lawsuits outlawed?

The NPE category includes universities and researchers. Many inventions can't
be brought to market without significant capital, and not all inventors are
interested in commercializing their inventions themselves. Just because you're
not personally going to build a billion dollar chip fabrication facility to
implement the new silicon etching process your research group patented
shouldn't prevent you from licensing it to Intel and suing someone else that
uses your invention without a license, IMO.

~~~
coldpie
> Just because you're not personally going to build a billion dollar chip
> fabrication facility to implement the new silicon etching process your
> research group patented shouldn't prevent you from licensing it to Intel and
> suing someone else that uses your invention without a license, IMO.

I completely disagree. You're now squatting on a useful technique and
preventing someone else from using it even if they invented it in parallel
without your help. That is extremely unethical.

~~~
ABCLAW
Why would it be squatting if you're open to licensing your technology at a
reasonable cost to whatever manufacturer is willing to implement your state-
of-the-art technology?

Why should the manufacturer have the incentive to fund parallel invention
efforts to avoid paying such licensing fees? What if the upfront capital
availability for such R&D funds created differential overhead profiles across
industries, such that massive up-front R&D costs were now required in order to
keep an acceptable op-ex profile?

This is a bit more nuanced than 'you aren't using your patent, you're clearly
a vampire'.

------
mabbo
> “[Is Blackbird] doing anything thing that is illegal or unethical?”
> continues Cheng. “For the most part, it’s unethical. But it’s probably not
> illegal.”

If it's not illegal, more work needs to be done to make it illegal. Inventors
always have avenues, moreso today than ever before.

~~~
adekok
While I agree it should likely be illegal, the solution to bad laws isn't more
laws.

A better solution would be to

* do better examination of patents so that BS ones don't get issued

* allow third-parties to invalidate patents by showing prior art to the patent office for a nominal fee

* punish patent applicants who know about, or should have known about prior art

* if a patent is invalidated, force them to return all of the money they were paid for licenses and/or fees

See the lawsuits around the "Happy Birthday" song for similar problems:

[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-happy-
birthday-l...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-happy-birthday-
lawsuit-settlement-public-domain-20160208-story.html)

IIRC, the settlement came about because the plaintiffs were able to prove that
the song had been published and put in the public domain. They had found a
copy of a songbook which was the definitive proof.

How did they find the songbook? They were given a scanned copy in discovery...
with most things clear, and the date suspiciously blurred. After a few months
of looking, they found a print copy which confirmed their suspicions.

i.e. it looks like Warner Brothers deliberately fudged the evidence. If the
plaintiffs hadn't noticed, or hadn't been able to find a print copy, people
would still be paying license fees.

When there is no punishment for lawyers who break the law, I think that
"ignorance of the law" _is_ an excuse. There is just no way that ignorance
isn't a defence for me, while at the same time the lawyers use the law to
attack me, and aren't punished for their violations.

~~~
criddell
> allow third-parties to invalidate patents by showing prior art to the patent
> office for a nominal fee

I think there should be a punitive part to this as well. If you apply for a
patent that is later invalidated, then those that licensed the patent should
be made repaid. And yes there should be a fee for trying to invalidate a
patent, but there should also be a reward if they are successful.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _If you apply for a patent that is later invalidated, then those that
> licensed the patent should be made repaid._

I feel that this effectively says that nobody should be able to license their
patent: they would need to hold all of their license fees in reserve against a
lawsuit that could happen at any time between the patent grant and the end of
the legal system.

That or buy insurance which will, no doubt be priced well above what a sole
inventor could afford.

The net effect would be to accelerate the concentration of patent portfolios.

~~~
reitzensteinm
The worst case is that the money has to be repaid - how would insuring against
that be prohibitive? If there's a 20% chance of invalidation, inventors take a
20% haircut.

But the invalidation chance will not be uniform, and the risk assessment done
by insurance companies will bring the right kind of market forces to bear
against frivolous patents.

And even aside from the economic impact, it's quite simply the right thing to
do. If you shake people down with a government enforced monopoly that turns
out to never have legitimately existed, keeping that money is immoral.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _The worst case is that the money has to be repaid - how would insuring
> against that be prohibitive?_

Because, under the proposal, those license fees can be recovered at any time.
Forever. You will never be able to go uninsured for any patent you ever
granted. As your life wears on, regardless of whether you need the insurance
or not, your net value is wound down.

Again, this means that only large companies will be willing to take the
chance, because they can spread that risk across a portfolio and afford to
defend it. A sole inventor cannot. They might obtain a patent, but under this
scheme, they won't license it -- they'll just sell it. And it's just going to
be to a large company, a patent broker or a patent troll.

> _If you shake people down with a government enforced monopoly that turns out
> to never have legitimately existed, keeping that money is immoral._

I agree, and courts may be prepared to grant remedies in some cases.

But my point is that it is also problematic to tilt the field still further
against sole inventors. That increases the proportion of giant companies and
patent trolls, which makes the net situation worse, not better.

~~~
criddell
> those license fees can be recovered at any time. Forever.

Forever is too long. It should only be for the life of the patent. That might
be a nice incentive to open up the conversation to reducing the life of some
patents.

------
FussyZeus
I've never heard a good argument against this so I'll say it here: Require
that the plaintiff in this cases show demonstrable, _actual_ , and
quantifiable loss by the activity of the defendant. It seems like such a no-
brainer that a business suing for damage to it's business prospects after
someone stole their idea would have to actually _show_ how it was damaged.
Even allowing very flimsy evidence would do a lot to dissuade most trolls,
because as every article points out, _they don 't make anything._ And if they
don't make or sell a product, then patent or not, they haven't lost anything
or been damaged in any way.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
Let's say I invent something really useful but also very difficult for an
individual to take advantage of, like a new kind of airplane nosecone that
shaves 10% off fuel costs for very large airplanes. Now, I'm not in the
airplane business, and getting into it would take many, many millions of
dollars. Probably the only way for me to make money on this would be to go to
Boeing or some similar company and license my patent to them. Boom, I get my
millions and everybody's happy.

If I were required to show actual loss, Boeing would see my new patent, just
implement it without even bothering to talk to me, and when I tried to sue
them, they'd say "you don't make anything, you have no losses," and they'd be
right.

~~~
cstejerean
You could still sell your patent to an actual airline, and it could then use
that patent exclusively and prevent airlines from doing so. In a sufficiently
competitive market that might be enough. Boeing might buy your patent to
prevent Airbus from using that tech and therefore gaining an advantage. Or if
Boeing ignores your patent and just builds that tech anyway then they would
expose themselves to future liability if Airbus later buys your patent.

Or you could sell the patent to an existing supplier of airline parts (and I'm
sure there are plenty) which can then commercialize it. Or as a last resort if
none of the existing players are interested in buying your patent, you could
raise funding and open up a shop that manufacturers and sells nosecones, and
then sue everyone for lost sales.

Ultimately I think it's much more useful to protect entities that actually
make products and give them incentives to bring innovative products to market
than it is to protect entities that simply want to invent things and extract
fees from others. To me it would be a perfectly acceptable compromise.

~~~
bradjohnson
All of your options encourage a monopoly on the specific patent and ignore the
possibility of licensing.

------
mgleason_3
We need to get rid of software patents. Patents were created to encourage
innovation. Software patents simply rewarding the first person who patents
what is almost always an obvious next step. That's not innovation.

~~~
Scea91
Do you feel that there is a difference in innovation between software and
other fields?

The obvious next steps you are talking about are usually only obvious in
hindsight.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The difference that comes to my mind is costs. I suspect software "inventions"
are usually very cheap to make (a person with a laptop is enough), compared to
other industries.

------
corobo
I'm hoping their fight actually leads to a defeat rather than a submission. I
have faith that Cloudflare will see this through but I also had faith that
Carolla would too.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/good-bad-and-ugly-
adam...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/good-bad-and-ugly-adam-
carollas-settlement-podcasting-troll)

------
ovi256
I've noticed a Techcrunch comment that makes this fight about software patents
and states that forbiding them would be a good solution. I think that's a very
wrong view to take. The software patent fight is worth fighting, but do not
conflate the two issues. Abuse by patent trolls or non-practicing entities can
happen even without software patents.

The law patch that shuts down patent trolls will have no effect on software
patents, and vice-versa.

~~~
sqeaky
I don't think many do conflate the two, I think most people just don't see
value in software patents.

Software is great because it has no cost to copy, so when someone creates a
new algorithm it can be put in use everywhere applicable rapidly. This pace of
advancement is so awesomely powerful that many do not appreciate how much
positive change it can bring or how different the world was just a few years
ago. An advancement in algorithms becomes and advancement for humanity pretty
quickly.

Software patents are the exact opposite of this.

I will take it one step further and claim that patents on the whole are bad. I
don't think they do what most Americans think they do in terms of
incentivizing inventors or protecting small business.

EDIT - Also software is already covered by copyright, why does this IP deserve
two kinds of protection and most other IP gets 1 or 0 kinds of protection.

~~~
frenchie4111
I agree. Even "hardware" patents are too hard to defend to really be worth it
most of the time (ex: fidget cube and other chinese kickstarter clones). You
can't rely on patents to ensure defensibility to your business model, so they
really just end up being money-sinks.

~~~
pnw_hazor
A US Patent has jurisdiction in the US. You can bar foreign companies from
legally importing your patented inventions. US customs will seize such goods
at the port or elsewhere if they are aware of them.

~~~
sqeaky
That isn't a real solution. Searches are imperfect and this forfeits the
entire foreign market. I think Musk has the right idea on novel inventions,
the only way to keep them secret is to actually keep them secret.

An honest patent forces a description good enough to duplicate. Better to keep
your secret sauce secret.

------
tragomaskhalos
This reminds me of an altercation in the street that my neighbour reported
overhearing some years ago:

Aggressive Woman: You need to watch your step, my husband is a criminal lawyer

Woman she was trying to intimidate: (deadpans) Aren't they all ?

------
shmerl
Someone should figure out a way how to put these extortionists in prison for
protection racket.

~~~
draw_down
They're way too rich for that to ever actually happen. I agree, though.

------
anonjuly12
> It’s for this reason that Prince sees Cloudflare’s primary mission as
> figuring out how to increase Blackbird’s costs. Explains Prince, “We
> thought, if it’s asymmetric,” because it’s so much cheaper for Blackbird to
> sue than for a company to defend itself, “how can we make it more symmetric?
> And every minute that they spend having to defend themselves somewhere else
> is a minute they aren’t suing us or someone else.”

They should take it a step further and apply the Thiel strategy of finding
people with grievances against the founders of the patent troll and support
individual lawsuits against them.

------
kelukelugames
I'm in tech but not in the valley. How accurate is HBO's representation of
patent trolls?

~~~
snug
It's a documentry, not just the patent troll part, but the whole thing.

------
drtillberg
This is a dysfunction in the patent and legal processes that cannot be fixed
by _even more_ dysfunctional tactics deployed against the NPE. The rules
against champterty (buying a cause of action) have been relaxed considerably
to the extent in many jurisdictions of being a dead letter, and the litigation
financing industry seems to have a better sound bite.

At least half of the problem is the "American Rule" of rarely shifting legal
fees, which if you dig a bit you will find is of recent vintage. Back in time,
for example in Massachusetts, there actually is a law for shifting legal fees
as costs as a matter of course; the catch is that the fee is very low (even at
the time it was enacted) of about $2.50 per case, which partly reflects
inflation and partly antagonism toward legal fees.

I wonder whether a compromise solution would be to require a deposit for costs
of a percentage of the demand for recovery like 2.5% of $34mm, which post-suit
you could figure how to divvy up. That would make the demand more meaningful,
and provide a tangible incentive to the plaintiff to think a little harder
about pricing low-probability lottery-ticket-type litigation.

------
unityByFreedom
> Blackbird is a new, especially dangerous breed of patent troll... Blackbird
> combines both a law firm and intellectual property rights holder into a
> single entity. In doing so, they remove legal fees from their cost structure
> and can bring lawsuits of potentially dubious merit without having to bear
> any meaningful cost

That's not new. It's exactly what Intellectual Ventures was (or is?) doing.

------
avodonosov
I've read the patent. But what part of CloudFlare services it claims to cover?

Also, the patent applies the same way to almost any proxy server (ICAP and
similar
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Content_Adaptation_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Content_Adaptation_Protocol))

------
fhrow4484
What is the state of "anti-patent trolls" laws in different state? I know for
instance Washington state has a law like this effective since July 2015
[1][2]. What is it like in other states, specifically California?

[1] [http://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-
general-s-...](http://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s-
patent-troll-legislation-passed-legislature)

[2]
[http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=19.350&full=true](http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=19.350&full=true)

~~~
pnw_hazor
The bad faith element is almost impossible to prove. It certainly isn't met in
the Cloudflare case.

Certainly, experienced patent litigators are very unlikely to file a case that
would be considered in bad faith.

------
bluejekyll
Something needs to give on this stuff. It's probably going to be hard to get a
significant change done, such as getting rid of software patents (following
from no patents on Math).

I've wondered if one way to chip away at them, would be to make Patents non-
transferable. This would preserve the intent, to protect the inventors R&D
costs, but not allow the patents to be exploited by trolls. This would have
the effect of devaluing patents themselves, but it's not clear that patents
were ever intended to carry direct value rather they exist to grant temporary
monopolies for the inventor to earn back the investment.

------
redm
It would be great if the "game" was really altered but I've heard that
statement and hope many times over the last 10 years. While there has been
some progress, patent trolling continues. Here's hoping...

------
bluesign
Tbh I dont think there is a practical solution for patent trolls.

Patents are basically assets, and they are transferable.

Making then non-transferable is not a solution at all. Basically law firms can
represent patent owners.

System needs different validity for patents, which should be set after an
evaluation, and can be challenged at the courts.

Putting all patents in the same basket is plain stupid.

------
SaturateDK
This is great, I guess I'm going "Prior art searching" right away.

------
arikrak
Business usually settle rather than fight patent trolls, but I wonder if
fighting is worth it if it can deter others from suing them in the future? I
guess it depends somewhat on the outcome of the case..

------
draw_down
Unfortunately, I think this is written in a way that makes it hard to
understand what exactly Cloudflare is doing against the troll. They're
crowdsourcing prior art and petitioning the USPTO?

------
avodonosov
Can the Decorator design pattern be considered a prior art?

------
y0ssar1an
Go Cloudflare Go!

------
danschumann
Can I create 5 more HN accounts just to +1 this some more?

------
subhrm
Long live patents !

~~~
sctb
Please comment civilly and substantively on Hacker News or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
ivanbakel
I don't see anything game-changing about their approach. Fighting instead of
settling should definitely be praised, but the only differences between this
legal challenge and any of the previous ones are the result of recent changes
in the law or the judiciary, which are beyond Cloudflare's control. Nothing
suggests that patent-trolling itself as a "game" is going to shift or go away
after this, and until that is made to happen, it's going to be as lucrative as
ever.

~~~
wglb
Then perhaps you missed one of the novel ideas _Cloudflare is also filing a
complaint with the ethics committee_. And their talking to reporters.

~~~
ivanbakel
That's a one-sentence action that's brushed over in the article. I see nothing
suggesting it's novel or effective, and I don't have enough knowledge of
patent suits to decide that.

~~~
wglb
There are at least two other tactics that are novel. The article as a whole
indicates that this novel approach is effective.

~~~
pitaa
> There are at least two other tactics that are novel

Good point. Cloudflare should patent them!

