
Biggest patent troll of 2014 gives up, drops appeal - imglorp
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/biggest-patent-troll-of-2014-gives-up-drops-appeal/
======
MichaelBurge
If they're a shell company, I wonder if they'll actually end up paying the fee
or just declare bankruptcy and start another shell company. Can the owners be
made to pay the fee?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Only certain things can pierce the corporate shield, like unpaid workers comp.
Legal fees, thankfully, don't.

Of course patent trolling always becomes a discussion of corporate shielding
instead of the conversation we need to have: a radical reform of the patent
system and a re-thinking of what should be patentable, especially in the
software world.

This conversation always gets derailed by the tort reform crowd on the right
or the anti-corporate shield crowd on the left. Those are just symptoms to a
larger problem and both of those things (torts, shields) exist for valid
reasons. Fix patents instead.

~~~
WalterBright
The patent wars are hardly a recent phenomenon. They go back to tremendous and
crippling fights over the telegraph, telephone, auto, movies, radio,
television and airplanes.

It's a bit hard to see how patents promoted anything - they mostly seemed to
retard progress. The airplane patent wars were so bad that aircraft
development shifted overseas out of reach of US patent courts. The movie
industry packed up and left for Hollywood to evade patent courts. Industry
progress on the TV happened only when the patents expired. And on and on.

~~~
eru
Even further back, to steam engines.

~~~
chris_wot
Absolutely. James Watt didn't invent steam engine but came up with an
innovative design that gave him a big advantage. He based this on other,
unpatented, technologies. Then he sued the living day lights out of all his
competitors and if argue prevented innovation for years.

~~~
stan_rogers
Unpatented? Not quite. Savery's patent (which Newcomen licensed because it
would last longer than any he could have gotten himself) had long since
expired, and Boulton and Watt had to work around Pickard's patent on the crank
(!) using planetary gears.

~~~
eru
Yeah, the planetary gears they came up with were pretty crazy. Everyone
switched to the crank, once the patent ran out.

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toomuchtodo
The ArsTechnica piece says the judge ruled the patent invalid. I assume that
overrides the USPTO?

"eDekka's patent, which had been used to sue a wide array of online retailers,
described nothing more than "the abstract idea of storing and labeling
information," Gilstrap found. Those were "routine tasks that could be
performed by a human" and didn't meet the standard for getting a patent.
Gilstrap ruled the patent invalid."

~~~
fweespeech
> The ArsTechnica piece says the judge ruled the patent invalid. I assume that
> overrides the USPTO?

Correct.

If the USPTO or the Federal Court invalidates it, it is invalid and stays that
way.

[http://www.uspto.gov/patents-maintaining-patent/patent-
litig...](http://www.uspto.gov/patents-maintaining-patent/patent-
litigation/about-patents)

> In general, patents can stay in force for up to 20 years from the time of
> filing although the actual length of a patent’s life can vary depending on a
> variety of factors. More information about patent term, and an explanation
> of how to estimate whether a patent has expired, is available on the Patent
> Term Calculator webpage. Also, note that the claims of a patent can be
> invalidated by federal courts and/or the USPTO only prior to their
> expiration date.

~~~
baldfat
Wish we could do this for extending Copyrights so that Disney gets their
Golden Ticket for Mickey Mouse and everything else gets to be Public Domain.

Make it cost $20,000,000 to file the motion, a million to every Senator's
campaign fund and $25,000 for every Representative and $2,000,000 for the
Chairman of every committee.

That way it is just upfront who wins a special copyright extension and
everyone else get's Anne Frank's Diary, the rest of Sherlock Holmes and the
Autobiography of Malcolm X.

~~~
herge
What does patent law have to do with Mickey Mouse?

~~~
eloff
Why is this downvoted? Copyright and patents are two completely separate
things.

~~~
baldfat
Yes that is 100% why I said I wish this could be done for COPYRIGHTS. Guess
this is the new Hacker News read a portion and then down vote. (This will get
down voted by at least two people.

If there was no Disney there would be now Copyright Extensions where we have
No Public Domain works entering the US system for the last 30 years.

[http://artlawjournal.com/mickey-mouse-keeps-changing-
copyrig...](http://artlawjournal.com/mickey-mouse-keeps-changing-copyright-
law/)

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steveeq1
Didn't they pass some law making patent trolling a lot harder to do? People
keep telling me this, but this behavior seems to continue.

~~~
WildUtah
There is a proposal to make it slightly harder to troll called the "Innovation
Act." You can look it up on [http://thomas.loc.gov](http://thomas.loc.gov)

IT has not passed.

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JDiculous
How the hell does something like this get granted a patent?
[https://www.google.com/patents/US6266674](https://www.google.com/patents/US6266674)

~~~
tyingq
It gets worse.
[https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/viewer?url=www.google.c...](https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/viewer?url=www.google.com/patents/US4195707.pdf)

Talking between two tin cans and a length of string.

~~~
function_seven
Did you read the patent? That's not tin cans and a string. It's an improvement
that allows it to be packaged in cereal and assembled by the end-user.

Sure it's not complicated, but novel inventions aren't always complex. This is
a unique-enough idea that it probably deserves the patent.

~~~
tyingq
The "claims" portion of the patent does not reference any of that. The scope
of the grant is wider than you think.

~~~
tclmeelmo
The claims establish the legal bounds of a patent, however, they must be read
in light of what is disclosed in the specifications. The enforceable scope of
this patent is fairly limited.

~~~
tyingq
You would think so, but in practice, that's not really what happens. NCR, for
example, successfully settled with many companies "infringing" on their
ancient patents with their ecommerce sites. The patents predated ecommerce,
and made reference to things like microfiche.

