[HN Gopher] Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
___________________________________________________________________
Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
Author : reedciccio
Score : 393 points
Date : 2022-04-28 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.opensource.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.opensource.org)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _none is as powerful as challenging the nefarious patents
| directly_
|
| Why don't we see this deployed against competitors? I get why the
| big boys wouldn't want to rock the boat. But hiring a patent
| lawyer to go through a competitor's patents and challenge the
| ones they think could be flimsy sounds like a decent way to, at
| the very least, distract them.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| How about we make "non-practicing entity" a defense in a patent
| lawsuit? That, if you can prove that the owner of the patent is
| an NPE (and doesn't reasonably license or innovate or even try to
| innovate, only sue or unreasonably license), case tossed...
| TimPC wrote:
| Many for example Universities invent something patentable
| that's broadly useful but don't want to start a company to make
| the thing. You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater in
| this proposal. It also doesn't solve the entire problem as many
| companies are practicing entities that also use bullshit
| patents against other practicing entities.
| wvenable wrote:
| The university should just sell the patent the company and
| then they would be the practicing entity that can sue.
|
| This is even better because things can't just be patented and
| that knowledge locked away without anybody able to use it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Let's say I'm some random individual, and I have a great idea,
| and I patent it. Let's say it's the patent on interval wipers
| on cars. But I'm not an auto company, so what I do with it is,
| I try to license the patent to auto companies. But they say,
| hey, this guy is a non-practicing entity, so we can invalidate
| his patent on that grounds alone, so why would we license it?
|
| That gets us a world without patent trolls, _and_ without
| interval wipers (and everything else invented by an individual
| inventor who wasn 't in a position to start a company to
| implement the idea). Is that a strictly better world?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| It would not compare to my proposal directly because:
|
| "I try to license the patent to auto companies"
|
| Many patent trolls never even attempt licensing, they just
| wait to sue or settle. This would not remove all trolls but
| would be a first step.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| The suit always comes after they try to license (a.k.a
| settle) and are denied.
| Aachen wrote:
| If you're only suing different parties that independently
| also discovered your invention, that's a different thing
| than trying to sell your patent to an entity that is
| actually going to produce the invention and make use of
| it.
|
| Maybe patents should indeed only be enforceable by those
| that produce the invention (practicing entities as it was
| called above, not sure if that's an official term or
| something they came up with) and if you want royalties
| then you should put that in the contract when you sell
| the patent rather than sitting on patents without doing
| anything useful. That way we can have individual
| inventors (they are rewarded by what they make from the
| patent's sale) without also allowing trolls to claim to
| be inventors (because "NPEs" can't actually sue for
| infringement).
|
| Or perhaps this should be a software thing, I don't know
| enough about how well this stuff worked for other fields
| honestly. I've only ever heard bad stories but then I
| also hang out with open source communities.
|
| Edit: I realized one might think this makes the patent
| useless. If you can't sue for infringement as entity that
| doesn't produce the invention itself, any company could
| produce it and ignore you. Correct. However, I'm sure
| that if EvilCorp ignores your patent sale offer and
| produces GreatInvention without a license, MegaCompetitor
| would love to take the GreatInvention patent off your
| hands and license it to EvilCorp (or not and just block
| further use by EvilCorp). Thus the inventor can still be
| rewarded for the sale (incentivizing inventions), the new
| owner gets benefits of exclusivity for the parent's
| remaining duration, and it forces the invention to be
| available on the market (it can't only be locked away
| uselessly).
|
| There's something to say for gjsman-1000's idea, or shall
| we say, _invention_
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the
| stakes for the troll are high
|
| Take that further. The stakes should be high against all adjacent
| patent holders. Ultimately if we want to keep a working patent
| system it's too much work to rely on piecemeal independent cases
| like this, albeit a great success. The system has to self-police
| to be fair, and perhaps the best people to keep trolls and
| mischievous opportunists on a leash are the bigger players with
| legitimate patents. They must be fiven a motivated interest in
| eliminating trolls.
|
| If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the
| neighbourhood then some blame lies with you. While the transfer
| of patents between concerned partner companies and subsidiaries
| seems okay, the market for trading patents simply as value assets
| needs destroying. Ultimately its probably better if we move to a
| world where a lot of "intellectual property" expires with it's
| holder and passes into the public domain.
|
| To apply a leverage point analysis, it's probably time to
| reexamine and change the rules about the transferability of
| patents. Does the purchaser have a legitimate justification to
| hold the patent? If no, it forfeits.
| amelius wrote:
| The problem is that the people who determine patent law (mostly
| patent officers/lawyers/judges) benefit from the current
| system.
| javajosh wrote:
| This is at the root of a broader problem with the judicial
| system, which is that it systematically fails to do its job
| in a timely manner. But that's okay with the actors, because
| they bill by the hour. That's not exaggeration or hyperbole;
| I've never seen a class of people do less for more than
| attorneys and judges, who go out of their way to be pleasant
| and accommodating to each other, with total disregard for the
| matters at hand. And so we have even simple matters drag on
| for months or years.
|
| At the end of the day, "justice" is what we buy with our
| conformance to society. When nations fight over systems of
| government, it's really a fight over what justice means. The
| current system is broken, but it's owned by old, rich,
| intelligent people who know what power is and how to use it,
| how to keep it, how to rationalize it. Even the good ones
| fall, when they see how goodness and self-restraint is
| rewarded by their peers, lest they lose their power.
|
| I do not think there is a realistic path to reform. The US
| justice system should be replaced, entirely, with something
| closer to the German system, which is far less concerned with
| where evidence comes from, for example, and far more
| concerned with whether its true. Things happen much faster,
| and most argumentation is done in writing. Attorneys are
| forbidden from advertising - which used to be the case in the
| US, too. But of course they got that changed. It's also
| remarkable how often a German attorney refers to the law -
| they treat it as a rulebook as for a board game, whereas in
| the states the judge, in practice, has absolute power over
| all participants and is free to ignore the law, or invent new
| law. (Well, they aren't supposed to be, but the process for
| holding a judge to account is, if you can imagine it, even
| worse than the rest of the system. Gee whiz, I wonder how
| that happened?)
| amelius wrote:
| I think we need a Department of Anti-Perverse Incentives.
| LosWochosWeek wrote:
| > Ultimately its probably better if we move to a world where a
| lot of "intellectual property" expires with it's holder and
| passes into the public domain.
|
| I fully agree with you (and it's one of the few strongly held
| opinions of mine), but I'm not really sure why you would bring
| this up within the context of patent trolls. Patents do run
| out, rather quickly even.
|
| It's other intellectual property -- namely copyright -- that
| needs to run out way faster. The trademark system that we have
| right now is alright imo and doesnt need to be "fixed".
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Understood, please allow me clarify.
|
| Not to get off-topic with copyright despite being an "older
| author", notwithstanding the sibling comments, I'd agree it's
| too long.
|
| Now, it's nice that patents time-out quite quickly, and
| indeed that motivates for useful development, but what I'm
| talking about is adding serial (AND) conditions that require
| they're _capable_ of being used.
|
| Alice has a fresh patent on a method for manufacturing a
| drug. She can sell it to Bob who also runs a pharmaceutical
| company and is in the process of expanding his portfolio of
| medicines. If Alice sells it to Charlie who runs a hair salon
| and fashion company, because Charlie, who is not in the
| business of making medicines, she cannot sue or leverage
| using that patent in any way or it's immediately null and
| void. Charlie doesn't have an "interest" in the patent and so
| loses the patent by misusing it, without any further need to
| prove the patent invalid. Crazy as that may sound to some, I
| think its a reasonable amendment to present law.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| > Charlie doesn't have an "interest" in the patent and so
| loses the patent
|
| Wow, I like the direction of this, pragmatic enough to get
| implemented but also on its way to establish the commons as
| a party in the deal.
|
| I've long thought that the commons need a stronger
| representation in policy.
| TimPC wrote:
| Many authors do some of their best work late in their lives
| and it would be a sad society if we stopped funding the art
| projects of those who got ill or aged because of inability to
| generate profits from them. The right interval for copyrights
| is larger than the zero years after death that many advocate
| for. It's certainly less than 75 years after death though, so
| there is massive room for improvement.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| Perhaps "Life, or X years, whichever comes last" would be
| an appropriate balance. We can, of course, still argue over
| what the value of X should be.
| melony wrote:
| The marginal cost of writing and creative artwork is even
| lower than software, not being able to profit from Mickey
| Mouse doesn't create significant harm to society.
| rhizome wrote:
| > _If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the
| neighbourhood then some blame lies with you_
|
| From the context it seems like a more common analogy would be
| better to illustrate, rather than using an example of something
| that almost never happens.
|
| A "use it or lose it" model to defang patentholders who don't
| manufacture their patents is a good idea, as well as using them
| as assets.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| "use it or lose it" that's what I was looking for! Thanks. I
| see that open-carrying firearms analogies around here I'm
| likely to shoot myself in the foot.
| munk-a wrote:
| > If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the
| neighbourhood then some blame lies with you.
|
| Aside from everything else in your argument, this is a really
| bad point to lean on - in America laws are specifically
| structured to leave the selling party blameless in all but the
| most extreme circumstances.
|
| As a more general response:
|
| I also think the thing that makes anti-troll legislation
| difficult is that making it harder to attack patents, and
| making it harder to defend patents makes it harder for smaller
| businesses trying to defend their property from larger
| businesses. If we start leveraging personal penalties on the
| attorneys of bad faith suites we need to have confidence that
| that also won't be turned into a tool to silence legitimate
| claims from small parties...
|
| If we decided, for instance, to fine every bad faith attorney
| for 1 million dollars we'd need to make sure that large
| companies can't use the threat of that fine to strong arm small
| businesses into compliance.
|
| This is a really complicated question and, at the end of the
| day, it's why we need to be really careful about maintaining a
| high quality in our federal judges - bad judges cause extreme
| harm by making justice inaccessible.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Just to be clear, my suggestion has absolutely nothing to do
| with attorneys.
|
| But this is more interesting;
|
| >> If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the
| neighbourhood then some blame lies with you.
|
| > bad point to lean on - in America laws are specifically
| structured to leave the selling party blameless
|
| True perhaps. But I did not raise a point of law. This is an
| ethical chestnut that traces back to at least Plato. Perhaps
| unclear from my wording I'm implying you _know_ the buyer to
| be a killer, and so it would be irresponsible to sell.
| Anyway, my suggested legal revision doesn 't rely on whether
| the seller knows or not, but on the buyers legitimacy to hold
| the patent.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the
| neighbourhood then some blame lies with you.
|
| I'm not required, thankfully, when selling something to do deep
| background on the person purchasing it. Further, you'd have to
| prove that my knowledge of this person included the fact that
| they intended to do something bad with the gun I sold them
| before I sold it to them.
|
| Finally.. I may have just sold them the gun. Perhaps it's more
| important to ask this question of the person who sold him the
| bullets. In this analogy, I suppose that would be the patent
| law firm.
|
| > Ultimately its probably better if we move to a world where a
| lot of "intellectual property" expires with it's holder and
| passes into the public domain.
|
| You move from a high premium on participating in a market,
| which by some arguments, is my right to participate in to
| having no participation in it at all. I think more harm than
| good comes from this.
|
| > To apply a leverage point analysis, it's probably time to
| reexamine and change the rules about the transferability of
| patents. Does the purchaser have a legitimate justification to
| hold the patent? If no, it forfeits.
|
| You'll trade outright patent transfers for shell company
| transfers, and the small inventor takes a back seat in all of
| this.
|
| This situation is unfortunate, but I don't think improvements
| come from hamstringing everyone.
| rdtsc wrote:
| The owner of https://www.corporationwiki.com/p/2rwhc6/rothschild-
| patent-i... seems to run a whole slew of patent trolling shell
| companies (40 in total or so). They'll probably just make another
| shell company and keep going.
| parentheses wrote:
| I found it funny that the article refers to the troll with the
| pronoun "it"
| speedgoose wrote:
| Could the Gnome foundation move to France to escape software
| patents?
| PeterisP wrote:
| No, because while the foundation could 'escape software
| patents' the software itself can't, an adverse patent-related
| USA court decision would then make that software illegal to
| distribute and use in USA which is probably not satisfactory to
| the Gnome foundation so they still would have to fight it in
| court.
| Mo3 wrote:
| https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-...
|
| > Leigh Rothschild said "I'm pleased that we have managed to
| settle this issue amicably. I have always supported the
| innovation of open source software and its developers and
| encourage its innovation and adoption."
|
| FOR SURE, BUDDY.
|
| That sounds like something Putin would say after he gets
| absolutely decimated by the Ukrainians.
| saddist0 wrote:
| Thanks for highlighting the line for everyone of us here.
| Unfortunately, please don't make HN comments similar to the
| Reddit ones... :')
| Mo3 wrote:
| Hahaha, I definitely didn't mean to kick off political
| discussion in here. I'm happy this isn't Reddit.
|
| Just couldn't help but notice the similarity.
| muybasado wrote:
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| The patent in question that was invalidated [0]:
| Wireless image distribution system and method
| Abstract A system and method for distributing at least
| one digital photographic image is presented, the system and
| method comprising at least one capturing device and at least one
| receiving device disposed in a communicative relation with one
| another via at least one wireless network. In particular, the
| capturing device is structured to capture the at least one
| digital photographic image via, for example, a capture assembly,
| whereas the receiving device is cooperatively structured to
| receive the digital photographic image via, for example, the at
| least one wireless network. In addition, the capturing device(s)
| and receiving device(s) may be disposed in a selectively paired
| relationship via one or more common pre-defined pairing criteria.
| Further, the at least one digital photographic image may be
| filtered via at least one pre-defined transfer criteria disposed
| on the capturing device and/or receiving device.
|
| [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US9936086B2/en
|
| TL;DR some kind of device sends an image to some kind of "paired"
| companion device wirelessly.
| bitwize wrote:
| Man, where was McCoy Smith in the days of the Amiga CD32, which
| was banned from sale in the USA because of a patent on (I'm not
| making this up) the XOR bitwise operation?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The heading is somewhat misleading, in that one might read it as
| "the troll lost all rights to any patents, ever." If you
| (correctly) didn't read it that way, you can ignore the rest of
| this.
|
| What they actually lost is _that patent._ It was reexamined and
| all its claims were cancelled. Reexamination is a standard tactic
| against a patent infringement suit, and we did it all the time at
| Google. A reexamination is a mini-trial, with no jury; just a
| bunch of patent law experts. It costs less than a full trial but
| still can be $500,000 or so.
|
| A troll will offer to settle for a small amount rather than risk
| getting their patent cancelled. I think it's fair to call it
| "irresponsible" if you pay them that ransom, but of course, it's
| cheaper for you that way.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| Re "irresponsible." Most business legal matters are about
| money. Settling can save the company money. It's just a
| business decision. Those who take it personally often end up
| spending more time and money than is needed.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > spending more time and money than is needed
|
| Needed for what? To make it go away _for you_ , while the
| troll gets more money to extort everyone else?
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| If patents exist as a legal form of intellectual property, they
| should be able to be purchased and exchanged in a commercial
| market. Authors, composers and other creators of works with
| intellectual property rights can transfer or sell those rights
| and there is no obligation for the purchaser to do anything with
| the work other than own it and collect royalties.
|
| In the case of a song or a book, it is simple (in most cases) to
| know that someone is performing your song or publishing your book
| without consent. This isn't the case with patents. There is an
| involved process to determine if a given entity is violating
| another's patent rights. This friction in determining right from
| wrong is the mechanism that allows patent trolls to extract a
| toll from anyone who isn't able or willing to fight the claim.
| This puts an asymmetric amount of leverage in the hands of the
| patent trolls. Some mechanism/legislation needs to be put in
| place to balance the power so that there is a higher cost to the
| patent owner who brings spurious claims.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I mean, to the author, thank you. Can't believe it cost $150,000+
| for the open source community to go through that litigation...
|
| Dorsey, and all the SV billionaires who made money off open
| source, perhaps it's time you "contribute back" by financing the
| fight against patent trolls...
| tebruno99 wrote:
| I understood that it cost Gnome $150k for Gnome to settle and
| obtain their own exclusive right of usage instead of doing the
| right thing and fight the patent.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > I understood that it cost Gnome $150k for Gnome to settle
| and obtain their own exclusive right of usage instead of
| doing the right thing and fight the patent.
|
| That's what I meant by "going through", they obviously
| couldn't fight it in court, would have cost a lot more...
| tedivm wrote:
| They got that for free. What the $150k was spent on seems to
| be anyone's guess.
|
| > https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-
| against-...
|
| https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-
| against-...
| smoldesu wrote:
| I doubt any of them made any significant money off of the GNOME
| stack, defending it would be pretty... odd. If someone
| litigated the OpenSearch, Yarn or Homebrew devs, then yeah, I
| think it would be reasonable to expect Big Tech to step in. But
| why GNOME? They've long gone their own way, even making a big
| deal of their "my way or the highway" development stance. If I
| was $(MULTIMILLIONAIRE_CORP) I would probably just be laughing,
| so long as my name wasn't Red Hat.
|
| Come to think of it, why _didn 't_ Red Hat step in here? Afaik,
| their entire raison d'etre is keeping lawyers on retainer for
| these express purposes. Have the GNOME maintainers really
| burned that many bridges?
| noizejoy wrote:
| Not sure why you're advocating private, rather than company
| funding (by companies who have benefited greatly from open
| source). Also don't understand, how naming one specific
| individual adds to the quality of the suggestion.
| colburnmh wrote:
| The title is misleading RPI has lost patent claims on the
| "Rothschild '086", which is the one that they used to sue GNOME.
| But they still have the right to pursue other patent claims that
| they have in their portfolio.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the
| stakes for the troll are high enough to make it less appealing as
| a business?
|
| No, that's just polishing the brass on the Titanic.
|
| Patents on software just shouldn't exist. At all. We already have
| established laws where you can't patent maths. An algorithm is
| just a function. It should be covered by the maths disqualifier.
|
| The fact that a smartphone could could contain and potentially
| violate literally thousands of patents is a complete anathema to
| the original intent of the system and it should be a huge red
| flag to the entire idea of software patents.
| thechao wrote:
| If IP is real property, it should be taxed. The tax system I
| like for IP _works for hire_ is this: each year you owe 1 /4% *
| N (where N is the age of the IP) in taxes on the IP. Whatever
| you pay, the "public" (anyone/everyone else) can pay _the
| balance_ to the USPTO (or LoC) to move that IP in to the public
| domain.
|
| Non-works-for-hire last for some fixed time, or until all the
| authors/inventors are dead, whichever comes first. A principal
| distinction between "works-for-hire" and "private works" is
| that a private owned work gives _any_ of the authors /inventors
| unilateral rights to rescind contracts without contractual
| repercussion.
| dpacmittal wrote:
| That's how you get lead inventors dying mysteriously
| robbedpeter wrote:
| This leads to the notion of being taxed for having a brain.
|
| Software patents shouldn't exist. The concept is patently
| absurd.
| rhizome wrote:
| > _This leads to the notion of being taxed for having a
| brain_
|
| Isn't this the same logic as used in the US against capital
| gains taxes, that a person is being punished for being
| successful?
| cascom wrote:
| Ehh - the more typical one is that the person already
| paid tax on it when they made the money the first time
| thechao wrote:
| I fucking _hate_ software patents. The best part about
| taxing them, like this, is that SW patents become a major
| financial liability.
| tepitoperrito wrote:
| I agree that software patents shouldn't exist. I think the
| taxation is on leveraging your brain to prevent others from
| using concepts you've learned to be useful.
|
| With some clever legalese it should even be possible to
| minimally harm individuals with brains while adding a non
| negligible cost to those who would (and are) abuse the
| system
| zamalek wrote:
| > If IP is real property, it should be taxed.
|
| As someone who thinks that the underlying concept of a patent
| is worthwhile (giving an independant inventor a bit of lead
| time for their invention against huge companies who could
| easily copy-cat), I seriously _love_ that idea! Bonus point
| for somehow scaling the taxation based on real sales vs.
| lawsuits.
| jdsully wrote:
| Income from patent licensing is already taxed. We don't tax
| assets for existing except for land. This would be a form of
| wealth tax.
|
| That said I don't agree with software patents as a concept.
| kajaktum wrote:
| What isn't math tho? A lawnmower is just an assemblage of laws
| of physics. In this case, software is just an assemblage of
| laws of boolean algebra or something.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Why should the idea of a lawnmower be patented? There are
| already enough protections for IP. Design patents, trademarks
| and copyright (to some degree).
|
| Giving an inventor of something a monopoly on its creation
| should be extremely limited.
|
| Quite famously, the Wright Brothers original patent on the
| flight control mechanism successfully stifled any American
| company from making a plane, which became a real issue when
| the US entered World War One. The US quite famously had to
| buy planes from Europeans. This was such a huge problem that
| Congress passed laws to create a patent pool for aviation to
| stop this happening again.
|
| Patents are unnecessary and they stifle innovation in almost
| all cases.
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| This is interesting. Can you recommend a link to read more
| about this?
| garaetjjte wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I'm really scratching my head over this one not gonna lie.
| Are you being serious or being somewhat provocative with an
| example designed to take the logic to an illogical extreme?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the penitent of the 21st century.. zero income and rightous
| statements to the other miscreants.. MSFT took in nine figures
| this year on software patents alone? while they re-process GPL
| code and sell it? where are the market forces for individual
| authors? death by starvation with a tombstone that says "I was
| right" I am still looking for realistic responses here, two+
| decades later
| tepitoperrito wrote:
| I need to investigate this "maths disqualifier" because it
| completely blows my mind that companies are actively patenting
| the application of statistical machine learning models to their
| domain.
|
| For example Xometry has successfully patented "METHODS AND
| APPARATUS FOR MACHINE LEARNING PREDICTIONS OF MANUFACTURING
| PROCESSES"[0]. To me there is literally nothing novel here,
| they are just describing the results of using an existing stats
| tool in the "manufacturing" domain, preventing other companies
| from sharing how they do stuff like this for fear of being
| sued.
|
| I read that patent as saying if you work for a CNC machine shop
| you can't run random forest on a CSV of your own data unless
| you get granted a license to by a potential competitor.
|
| [0] METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR MACHINE LEARNING PREDICTIONS OF
| MANUFACTURING PROCESSES
| extropy wrote:
| Currently there exists a widely used "being used with
| hardware" hoophole that allows taking pure maths and adding a
| bit of hardware in there "a memory unit" "a processing unit"
| "I/O unit" and have a valid patent.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Just like "on a computer", which allowed many previously
| unpatentable ideas to be patented (even potentially in
| previously expired patents).
| pitaj wrote:
| Patents shouldn't exist at all.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| That's going way too far.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Algorithms are not patentable. Alice v. CLS Bank Int'l, Supreme
| Court 2014, holds that abstract ideas "merely requiring generic
| computer implementation fails to transform that abstract idea
| into a patent-eligible invention."
|
| But at the same time, just because a patent includes an
| algorithm, it is not necessarily invalidated.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| _Alice_ only matters if you can afford to get your case
| before SCOTUS (i.e., both money and political influence). The
| federal circuit has demonstrated they have no problem
| whatsoever with ignoring _Alice_ and thumbing their nose at
| SCOTUS.
| activitypea wrote:
| tell that to John Carmack
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Nearly all of those histories about patent trolling are for
| code running in a general purpose computer, with your
| standard I/O peripherals and the only effect on the real
| world being changing pixels on a screen.
|
| AFAIK those patents are illegal on every single country. But
| it doesn't stop honest people from losing fortunes over them.
| karmanyaahm wrote:
| Can someone ELI5 what this the RPI patent (US9936086B2) even
| tried to patent? Their claims look like the description of just
| any digital camera and a connected web service (Google Photos).
|
| [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US9936086B2/en
| asciimov wrote:
| I'm not a Lawyer.
|
| It looks like it was trying to cover the idea of sharing
| pictures between devices. Not the process of doing said
| sharing, but the idea.
| ww520 wrote:
| The claims basically say the system is a device with wireless
| input and wireless output (think a computer with WiFi in/out
| connections). The device receives a bunch of photos from the
| wireless input, filters the photo based on some criteria, and
| sends the filtered resulting photos to another mobile devices
| via the wireless output.
|
| Shotwell's feature kind of fits the description is that it
| downloads photos from a WiFi connection, organizes the photos
| by theme/date/etc (filtering), and shares the photos to
| FB/Twitter/etc (sending via WiFi). Basically any network
| connected photo editing/organizing software is in dangerous.
|
| The patent obviously lacks innovation and slipped through the
| approval process. The court agreed and invalidated the patent.
| snvzz wrote:
| When something like this happens, it should automatically reduce
| the burden for contesting the other patents owned by the same
| entity.
| Aachen wrote:
| How hard is spinning up an "entity", though?
|
| More like the judge ought to award damages in terms of the time
| and means required for setting up that fundraiser and all other
| extra-legal expenses on top of the lawyers whose pro bono work
| could have been better spent. If the troll, or its parent, has
| to pay that out of pocket, in addition to losing the patent,
| maybe that makes an impression.
| coolhoody wrote:
| > _"offers a number of ways to wirelessly share photos online
| such as through social media."_
|
| How was it possible to patent this in 2018?
|
| https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/01/50/f8/a8e7c12...
| btrettel wrote:
| > How was it possible to patent this in 2018?
|
| Easy. I'm a former patent examiner and in my view, the root
| cause of most bad patents is obviously the lack of time patent
| examiners get.
|
| Most people here don't understand how patents are granted.
| Patent examiners don't get a lot of time. If I'm an examiner,
| and I can't find it in the time provided, and the application
| doesn't have some other issues (101, 112, etc.), the
| application is likely to be granted. This is not a matter of
| caring about the quality of the work. I'm confident that few
| critics of the USPTO would do a better job than current
| examiners under the same time constraints.
|
| The most effective way to eliminate bad patents would be to
| increase the amount of time patent examiners get. The amount of
| time is based on some IBM study from the 1960s from what I
| know. Some adjustments to the time have been made, but it's
| nowhere near enough. Yes, we now have better search
| technologies, but we also have at least two orders of magnitude
| more documents to search.
|
| I'm told that the amount of time examiners get probably won't
| increase without congressional intervention. Right now the
| USPTO only makes money through user fees. The USPTO receives no
| tax revenue at all. This situation is actually worse, as the
| Department of Commerce diverts some of the USPTO's revenues for
| other projects. At the very least the USPTO should be given
| control over their own money, and they should also receive tax
| revenue. Then examiners can be given more time and do a better
| job.
|
| Here's why some other approaches won't work:
|
| - Punishing examiners for making bad decisions will just make
| an already stressful job more stressful. This seems to be the
| current focus at the USPTO. Fortunately I haven't heard anyone
| being fired due to poor quality, so I think it's mostly talk.
|
| - Adding more ways for companies to kill bad patents after
| they've been granted favors large corporations who can afford
| to kill bad patents. Small corporations and individuals are
| still powerless against bad patents.
| Aachen wrote:
| > This is not a matter of caring about the quality of the
| work. I'm confident that few critics of the USPTO would do a
| better job than current examiners under the same time
| constraints.
|
| I doubt anyone criticises the workers at the bottom, if/once
| they're aware of said time constraints. Rather, the caring
| about the quality of the work is something the person who
| decides on the time constraints clearly doesn't do.
|
| It _is_ a matter of caring, but yeah of course it is decided
| by a higher-up, not every person working there being
| individually lax.
| bonzini wrote:
| Where can patent examiners look for prior art?
| btrettel wrote:
| Patent examiners can look basically anywhere a member of
| the public can and some other places.
|
| The internal search tools check a lot of patent databases
| and are quite good, but take time to learn.
|
| The USPTO has a lot of subscription databases as well,
| including fancy AI/ML-based ones.
|
| Many examiners will also search normal search engines like
| Google, though this can be tricky for legal reasons. If the
| application was not published yet then examiners are not
| allowed to get very specific in the search and other search
| engines as that could release confidential information to
| the search engine. The USPTO has agreements with the
| subscription databases to keep the searches confidential
| but no such agreement exists with Google.
|
| In my view making new search tools like
| https://www.priorartarchive.org/ would not help the
| situation too much. It would be better to integrate more
| databases into the existing USPTO tools, as they are
| designed for serious power-searchers, and would make the
| new databases more visible. The internal search tool is
| _much_ faster than the alternatives and operates by
| keyboard. Point-and-click search is much slower by its
| nature. Speed really is critical when time constrained and
| I think that is something not appreciated outside of patent
| organizations.
| PeterisP wrote:
| What I'm reading in your description is that the process
| is designed to find cases where someone has patented the
| same thing before, but not designed to find things that
| should be fundamentally unpatentable ('obvious before the
| effective filing date of the claimed invention to a
| person having ordinary skill in the art') and many other
| people are doing the similar thing in their products but
| not trying to patent it (because it shouldn't be
| patentable) and not explicitly writing it up in public
| blog posts with the exact same keywords.
|
| Presuming that "ways to wirelessly share photos online
| such as through social media" has not been patented
| before, the best place to look for prior art would be the
| actual existing social media products which have ways to
| wirelessly share photos online instead of historical
| patent data; an effective search would have to be for
| actual prior art (i.e. products and solutions), not
| descriptions of prior art (patents and webpages).
| deno wrote:
| Why is the secrecy required if the patent is going to end
| up public anyway? If you could pre-publish to the public
| (with a verifiable timestamp) then anyone could submit a
| challenge and the patent would be only be granted if it's
| actually novel and remains unchallenged for some time.
| IDK I must be missing something because this seems too
| obvious a solution...
| btrettel wrote:
| Not all US patent applications will be published. The
| applicant can pay extra to keep it secret unless it is
| granted.
|
| As for why the applications aren't published as soon as
| possible, I'm not sure. I suspect people might want some
| time before publication to test the market. If there is
| no market demand, I know that some law firms will abandon
| the application. But if it's worthless, then why not
| publish it?
| mcherm wrote:
| Another possibility would be to create some system with an
| opportunity for an adversarial legal process. Allowing
| experts in the field to weigh in (providing prior art and/or
| professional opinions on patentability) might take some of
| the burden off the patent examiners themselves.
| btrettel wrote:
| One form of this already exists:
| https://www.uspto.gov/patents/initiatives/third-party-
| preiss...
|
| Almost no one uses it, unfortunately.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Seems like the patent office will sign everything that stands
| still for a certain time, regardless of their merits
| acomjean wrote:
| Why wouldn't they? They make their moneyy from Patent Fees.
| If they stopped granting Patents their revenue stream dries
| up. They have no incentive not to approve patents.
|
| I'm wondering why companies don't sue the Patent office when
| the patent used against them is invalidated (often some
| companies are still paying fees because they settled. )
| azinman2 wrote:
| It was filed in 2008, seemed granted in 2018
| toolz wrote:
| Yahoo Photos launched in 2000 - even if it was filed in 2008
| that's ridiculous
| PeterisP wrote:
| It's likely that Yahoo Photos in 2000 did not do it --==
| Wirelessly ==-- (imagine Spongebob rainbow meme
| https://imgflip.com/i/6e8qvo there) and thus wouldn't be
| prior art.
| coolhoody wrote:
| > Filed: 2017
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's an extension of this (granted) patent which was filed
| in 2008:
|
| https://patents.justia.com/patent/8204437
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This discussion comes up regularly.
|
| Here's something that would work, maybe, eventually. It IS
| simple; it's just not easy. You have to realize that lawyers and
| politicians don't want to _fix_ problems; they want to make a
| living off them.
|
| Who wants to lead this effort (and don't say "you" because I'm
| retired)?
|
| 1. Get someone with legal training to write legislation fixing
| this situation. Personally, I think just declaring software as
| _not_ patentable subject matter is the core of the solution, but
| that 's to be decided.
|
| 2. Get a Congressman to introduce it into the House or Senate.
| Let's say it becomes "H.R. 666" or some other number.
|
| 3. For every Congressional candidate, ask them "Do you support
| H.R. 666?" Make it clear that your support depends on a Yes
| answer. That's a language they can understand.
|
| Will this work? Well, it stands a chance. Comments on a thread
| like this don't have much chance at all of effecting any change.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| There needs to be anti-SLAPP style legislation for patent trolls.
| I honestly don't understand why there isn't: it seems like an
| easy PR win for legislators. Who would be against this (except
| patent trolls)?
| _jal wrote:
| I suspect lots of large companies that do make things but also
| hold many, many patents would object.
|
| Patents can a potent weapon, especially if you have a lot of
| them in a specific area. So to answer your question, I would
| expect opposition from anyone with a big portfolio who wants
| unencumbered range of motion to use them offensively.
|
| So for specific examples from the little corner of the world
| focused on here, I suspect and easy ones are Qualcomm and IBM.
| Probably Microsoft, probably Apple, but they've both surprised
| on some things recently.
| lstodd wrote:
| They "hold many, many patents" (usually worthless) to have an
| "unencumbered range of motion to use them offensively"
| against similar entities.
|
| If the whole idea of using bullshit patents to defend against
| someone's threat of some other bullshit patents gets buried
| at last, then everyone wins because not having to trade
| "portfolios of bullshit patents" back and forth lowers costs
| of business for everyone.
|
| This was obvious at least 30 years ago, where have you been?
| _jal wrote:
| > This was obvious at least 30 years ago, where have you
| been?
|
| Watching things like this happen:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363629/qualcomm-win-
| app...
|
| What color is the sunrise on the planet you inhabit?
| silexia wrote:
| Abolish the patent system and see innovation leap ahead and
| prices precipitously drop.
| avastmick wrote:
| I lean towards this sentiment - I think the patent and
| copyright structures limit innovation. The concept that an idea
| is worth anything without successful implementation is flawed
| in my opinion. However, has any research been done on the
| actual implications of patent and copyright removal? I may be
| naive in my thinking.
| codedokode wrote:
| This seems like a loss. Gnome and other companies had to pay
| money (as I understand) for an invalid patent, a patent lawyer
| had to pay for re-examination and a patent troll lost nothing
| except for a patent that was invalid anyway.
|
| Are vaguely worded patents legal? For example, if someone in the
| age of black-and-white TV would patent an idea that "colors can
| be transmitted wirelessly or by wire, decoded or not decoded by a
| TV or other electronic or non-electronic device and displayed or
| not displayed on a screen or other medium". Would this idea
| without any research count as a valid patent application? Please
| explain, knowledgable people.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Good on Mr. Smith. But was he in any way involved with the legal
| defense team for GNOME?
|
| The story reads to me like GNOME spent $150k on a legal defense
| that saved themselves and carved out a little niche for FOSS
| projects, but otherwise allowed the patent troll to continue
| profiting from this patent.
|
| > Of course, that's little comfort to the 20+ victims attacked
| after GNOME with the now-proven-worthless Rothschild '086 patent,
| or the 50+ companies targeted with related patents that haven't
| yet been re-examined.
|
| Meanwhile, it looks like Mr. Smith basically did what the GNOME
| defense team should have done from the start and got the patent
| _invalidated_ , with no funds to speak of.
| tssva wrote:
| When GNOME was raising the 150k they said they would not settle
| and would battle until the patent was overturned. People
| donated based upon this and then GNOME settled. This is why
| when things like the he said/she said argument with System 76
| have come up I am mystified that some people are ready to
| believe GNOME's take. They have already shown that they are a
| project whose leadership's word can't be trusted.
| tedivm wrote:
| According to the Gnome website they didn't have to pay their
| lawyers, so I'm wondering where that money went.
|
| > GNOME was represented pro-bono by Matt Berkowitz, Kieran
| Kieckhefer, Joy Wang and Larry Crouch from Shearman &
| Sterling LLP.
|
| https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-
| against-...
| JamesBarney wrote:
| There are lots of expenses in a legal case besides just the
| lawyers, like expert witness, process servers, etc..
| gralx wrote:
| I suspect it went into the settlement payment. Wouldn't it
| be ironic if so many principled advocates of open source
| and supporters of the GNOME project had their funds paid
| directly to a patent troll by GNOME themselves?
| carlsborg wrote:
| Its crazy that this didnt hit the front page of HN before the
| verdict.
|
| > That prompted over 4,000 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
| community members to rally in defense of the GNOME Foundation,
| raising over $150,000 to defend against the bogus claim
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