[HN Gopher] Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial
___________________________________________________________________
Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial
Author : jgrahamc
Score : 826 points
Date : 2024-02-12 14:14 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.cloudflare.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.cloudflare.com)
| rvnx wrote:
| At the end of the day, this is a deep legislation issue, patents
| should not exist at all.
|
| They are supposed to promote innovation, in practice, it's more
| about protecting guys who sitting and waiting for passive cash.
|
| Once we give exclusive rights to all AI stuff to Nvidia, is the
| world going to be a better place ?
|
| What would be with ChatGPT if Google actually had enforced (or
| enforces) patents on Transformers.
|
| Is the world better since we have to pay a license to use the
| word "Smiley" and not "Emoji" ? (a >500M USD per year business
| btw).
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Is the world better since we have to pay a license to use the
| word "Smiley" and not "Emoji" ? (a >500M USD per year business
| btw).
|
| If this is true it would fall under copyright or trademark
| protections, not patents.
| rvnx wrote:
| You are absolutely right, just a side & +/- related topic
| that made me upset and wanted to rant about :)
| huijzer wrote:
| I'm not so convinced of your argument yet. You point out some
| cases in which granting a patent will lead to reduced
| innovation, which I agree is bad. But how about innovations
| which might never have happened without the patent system in
| place?
|
| I agree with you that patents a probably a net negative for
| innovation, but we need to come up with a stronger argument
| than monopolies are bad.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| Can you provide some recent examples of where patents likely
| played a positive role in innovation?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Fifty years ago they paid for Xerox's PARC where WYSIWYG
| and GUI interfaces were first developed targeting a mass
| audience.
| sophacles wrote:
| Right, I was so glad when those patents expired because
| the Xerox monopoly on my computer usage was annoying.
| nottorp wrote:
| Iirc Apple paid (in Apple stock perhaps) but Microsoft
| didn't :)
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Probably every pharmaceutical patent.
|
| In software? Um... <crickets>. (But you asked "where
| patents" and not "where software patents", so...)
| notfed wrote:
| > Probably every pharmaceutical patent.
|
| Great, they've played their role, then. I'm ready for
| that stage to be over now. IMO if there's an incentive to
| manufacture distribute the product, let that be the
| incentive.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| To the degree that patents have led to the creation of
| new pharmaceuticals, you're ready to stop doing that?
| You're ready for progress in pharmaceuticals to stop
| where we are, because you don't want patents to exist any
| longer? I strongly disagree.
| patmcc wrote:
| Having ~zero new drugs introduced does not seem like a
| great thing?
|
| Unless you completely revamp how drug discovery and
| research is funded and driven, anyway.
| 8note wrote:
| Pharmaceutical parents seems like an odd choice. Aren't
| most of those inventions driven by government funding at
| universities?
| Exoristos wrote:
| Yes, but they probably wouldn't be without patents to
| ensure income for the government's partners.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| No massive amount come from the private sector. Almost
| all the money used to get a hypothetically effective drug
| through the approval and trial process is private.
| dmoy wrote:
| Right, to be clear:
|
| If the initial research is funded by government grants or
| at Uni or whatever, the overwhelming majority of the cost
| is still in Phase 2 and 3 trials.
|
| This is why certain drugs don't get developed anymore -
| if it's a naturally occurring substance that can't be
| patented, nobody's gonna foot the gallion-dollar bill to
| go through trials.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| ARM CPUs
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| There is a general problem with excessive rent seeking in our
| entire economy and society. But I don't think having zero
| patent protection is the answer. Like most problems with
| society, there is no easy answer, just a continual fight
| against corruption, rent-seeking, nepotism, collusion, price
| fixing and all the other crappy human behaviors.
| zackmorris wrote:
| I second the abolishment of patents.
|
| The reasons people are for/against patents are political. A
| rightist view would be that patents allow first-to-the-finish-
| line inventors to reap financial awards that lead to success
| and freedom. A leftist view would be that the opportunity cost
| of patents is an increased cost (analogous to a tax) on
| everyone else in the form of licensing fees and barred entry to
| markets as improvements in science and technology make patents
| more obvious than innovative.
|
| If we don't reform the system by at least reducing patent
| durations to something reasonable like 3-5 years, then that
| will create an incentive to operate outside the market. People
| will just use open source and 3D printing to build their own
| stuff, rather than purchasing it from someone else. In other
| words, more patents = bigger black market and smaller
| market/profits for those operating legally.
|
| It's not a good look anymore to favor policies which encourage
| corruption. Other examples of unintended consequences include
| the War on Drugs, the Citizens United decision, NAFTA, etc etc
| etc. We know better now and we can do better, rather than
| letting special interests dictate the manner in which we do
| business.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > A rightist view would be that patents allow first-to-the-
| finish-line inventors to reap financial awards that lead to
| success and freedom. A leftist view would be that the
| opportunity cost of patents is an increased cost
|
| Patents as originally formulated were to incentivize public
| disclosure of new techniques for building things. Portland
| cement is a great example: the company could have kept the
| formula secret and profited significantly, but instead a
| patent was filed, they got a short monopoly, and for over a
| century we have enjoyed the benefits of a publicly known
| formula. Pure ideas (like math and physics) were considered
| non-patentable.
|
| If we can reform patents to disallow patenting software (and
| all other pure "ideas" with no physical realization), I think
| that will continue to help encourage public disclosure of
| helpful techniques (like Portland cement) without all the
| stupid baggage of software patents.
| adrr wrote:
| So you spend billions($2.5 billion being average) inventing a
| new drug and anyone should be allowed to copy and sell it? That
| would foster innovation and not kill pharmaceutical market?
| nottorp wrote:
| 2.3 billion of that being marketing expenses?
| ahofmann wrote:
| This is a very unhelpful pseudo question, that adds nothing
| to the conversation but can easily derail it. Do you have
| at least a source for that "claim"?
| rakoo wrote:
| We need a pharmaceutical library, not a pharmaceutical
| market. Research doesn't cost $2.5 billion, lobbying does.
| tomschlick wrote:
| Software patents should not exist.
| Solvency wrote:
| Ok I'll bite, why stop at software?
| nness wrote:
| Patents fundamentally operate to allow the owner of
| protection to extract value from research and development
| investment. If you cannot protect your research and
| development, then competitor may extend upon your invention
| without the necessary capital or time investment --
| effectively making any kind of innovation risky and
| unattractive to business. There is no model where abolishing
| patents still grants protection for R&D.
|
| The complaint is that software patents have been awarded and
| interpreted far too broadly, and coupled with the relatively
| low cost of R&D for software, have begun to stymied
| innovation in the same way patents intended to prevent.
| mnau wrote:
| Inventor profits by being ahead of competition. VisiCalc
| (first spreadsheet) was a killer app.
|
| But they didn't innovate and were taken over by Lotus 1-2-3
| four years later.
|
| Lotus was great, graphs and all.
|
| Same thing happened to the Lotus, Excel was just better.
| Lotus didn't innovate (e.g. IBM had first ever pivot tables
| and they made separate spreadsheet program for it instead
| off improving Lotus).
| nness wrote:
| Inventors only profit if and when they release -- Patents
| allow you to cover the cost of research and development
| even if a profitable product does not materialise or is
| not profitable at the time of release. R&D is essential
| for economic growth, so the promise/higher-chance of a
| successful return at some point in the future, I think,
| this is a reasonable trade-off.
| filleokus wrote:
| Having a time limited monopoly on new drugs seems required
| considering the costs involved in getting drugs through the
| regulatory framework.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Considering how much more is spent on marketing and
| executive salaries, maybe we don't?
|
| Or the patent protection is contingent on limits to
| marketing and admin overhead
| rakoo wrote:
| I agree with you, patents in general shouldn't exist
| connicpu wrote:
| If someone invents something truly novel I think they deserve
| the first right to make money off it. The extra bonus of
| having them file a patent is that when it expires it becomes
| free public knowledge for everyone. The problem for software
| is that the duration of the patent is way too long for the
| pace of innovation in the world of software, to the point
| that a reasonable duration patent probably wouldn't even be
| worth filing for after the time it takes to process. In other
| fields it's not the existence of patents but the games and
| loopholes e.g. pharma companies coming up with a slight
| reformulation they can patent again and again. It's not novel
| at that point and should not be granted a patent.
| eli wrote:
| What would be an example? Like you invent a new compression
| algorithm and nobody else should be able to use it for a
| year or two?
| connicpu wrote:
| Well patents are supposed to be more "you have to pay me
| if you want to use it before the term expires". Maybe a
| requirement to offer patent licenses for a reasonable
| price could help there, but it's tricky. I think at a
| minimum though software patents should have a shorter
| term than physical inventions.
| arsome wrote:
| Software patents do not provide the benefits other patents
| do. Name a piece of software that would likely not have been
| written if it wasn't able to be patent protected. Now compare
| that with other industries like pharmaceuticals, textiles,
| chemical processes, etc. Software is different because it's
| more straight forward engineering than explorative science.
| If an implementation is obvious to anyone with the
| prerequisite knowledge, it's not patentable and there's
| really not much, if anything, in the software realm that
| meets that criteria.
| criddell wrote:
| > Name a piece of software that would likely not have been
| written if it wasn't able to be patent protected.
|
| That's a fantastic argument against software patents. I
| can't believe I've never thought about it in that way.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Software R&D has mostly not been patented for many years
| because algorithm patents are effectively unenforceable
| outside of narrow contexts, so it is largely futile.
| Computer science R&D is almost universally treated as trade
| secrets now, which have proven to be effective and
| defensible in many more cases.
|
| The consequence of this is that the state-of-the-art in
| many areas of software are not in the public literature and
| there is no trivial way to learn it. Ubiquitous deployment
| in the cloud greatly limits the ability to reverse-engineer
| the underlying architectures, data structures, and
| algorithms. This is notionally the situation patents sought
| to avoid, but the practical unenforceability of algorithm
| patents has made it the default outcome regardless of
| whether there are patents on software.
| Quenty wrote:
| The point of the parent system is to prevent knowledge from
| being lost to humanity. It encourages disclosure on how
| unique and novel things work in return for a limited
| monopoly. If inventions were not patented then we can lose
| the ability to make them, which isn't as insane sounding as
| you might expect.
|
| Preserving this knowledge for the future of humanity is
| critical.
| rakoo wrote:
| This is absolutely not the point of the patent system,
| otherwise there would be no provision for a monopoly over
| the commercial manufacturing of the invention.
|
| Don't be deluded, the patent system serves as a weapon for
| bigger companies to block competition. That is their only
| goal.
| derf_ wrote:
| _> ...otherwise there would be no provision for a
| monopoly over the commercial manufacturing of the
| invention._
|
| You should always be able to make your opponent's
| arguments at least as well as they do, as that is the
| first step to overcoming them.
|
| The argument from patent proponents is that without the
| legal monopoly, they would rely on trade secret law
| instead, so they would do their best to ensure no one
| else understood what they do. They still do, within the
| confines of what disclosure is legally required to get a
| patent issued (I once had an engineer tell me that if he
| had not invented the thing being patented, he would have
| no idea what the patent application the lawyers wrote for
| it was describing), but at least there is a legal
| requirement.
|
| Of course, there are important contexts where that
| argument is irrelevant, such as standards development.
| Trade secret law is no use there, because the value is in
| the network effects of the standard, not the invention.
| Yet we still have patent-riddled standards.
| rakoo wrote:
| > The argument from patent proponents is that without the
| legal monopoly, they would rely on trade secret law
| instead, so they would do their best to ensure no one
| else understood what they do.
|
| Look at China, and the argument of "maybe it will be bad"
| turns out to be wrong. I'm not saying the system is
| perfect, far from it, but the idea that patents are a
| life-saving measure is utterly false. Companies live and
| die in both systems, but at least in China they get to
| share their improvements.
|
| The premise is that a patent is necessary to have funds
| for continuing innovation, but that's just not
| understanding what capitalism is and how pervasive it is
| in our society. The reason individuals need money is
| precisely because of capitalism redistributing money to
| those who have the most already, not to the ones who need
| it the most, not to the ones making the most progress, or
| not to everyone in a fair manner allowing all of us to
| live without worrying about that aspect (yes, there is
| more than enough resources creation for all of us). The
| patent system only furthers this uneven distribution.
| Innovators do not calculate the amount they might be
| getting from their invention before setting about and
| coming up with something new; that is a lie that needs to
| disappear.
|
| Patents are _not_ making the society better.
| duped wrote:
| If you ever do a patent survey, you'll quickly discover
| that patents aren't written to preserve knowledge or
| disclose inventions. They're written to disclose as little
| as possible (or disclose everything except the thing that
| matters) as fodder for a legal defense.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Science journals exist.
|
| OTOH, I've never, not once, ever, heard of someone reading
| through the patent database to learn how to do a thing. I'm
| sure someone has done such a thing, but that's not the
| norm. The patent database is where you record that you were
| the first to claim to have done a thing. It's not where you
| meaningfully explain how.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| That may have been the point hundreds of years ago. Today,
| it no longer serves that purpose, and is doing more harm
| than good.
| s_dev wrote:
| Software is just fancy math being executed. Math can't or at
| least shouldn't be patentable e.g. imagine the absurdity that
| would ensue if you could patent a number not that that hasn't
| happened (HD DVD encryption). I'm aware every piece of IP or
| Copyright can be represented with a really big number (a mp4
| file is really just a big number) but it's not the number
| that's the patentable aspect.
| Solvency wrote:
| Hardware is just fancy physics. Medicine is just fancy
| chemistry.
| akersten wrote:
| Math, however, is uniquely identified in the law as non-
| patentable.
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| ... and copyrights should last no longer than software patents.
| djbusby wrote:
| Lots of patent hate in the first few comments.
|
| If we take the position that an inventor should be able to try
| and get profit from their invention how can we protect that
| without patent system?
| anonzzzies wrote:
| > If we take the position that an inventor
|
| But most software patents aren't inventions; they're just brain
| farts with money behind them. They might not be trolls, but
| they went to the toilet, had some random idea I had 20000 times
| in my life already, but they patent it genuinely thinking it's
| anything original.
|
| There are many none trolls, like the famous Amazon one-click
| buy one; everyone in web dev invented that in the 90s by
| themselves; they patented it. How is it worth protecting?
|
| If you did invent and put the time and effort, how about
| selling your products; if someone else does it better, that's
| life. Especially in software; the pain is in the development
| and finishing, not the invention. The idea is absolutely
| worthless, outside this broken patent system.
| rockbruno wrote:
| >had some random idea I had 20000 times in my life already,
|
| Aren't patent systems already supposed to reject "inventions"
| that are common sense? Perhaps the problem is not the system
| itself but rather the humans who are approving these.
| acdha wrote:
| That's definitely part of it: in the 90s you saw a ton of
| "on the internet" patents which looked a lot like the
| examiners not having had enough experience to say that
| something was either an obvious adaptation of an existing
| concept to the web or that the two systems had almost
| nothing in common other than using a computer (I remember a
| patent troll hitting a customer with a 1980s patent for
| cash registers connected to a minicomputer using a phone
| line, claiming it covered their web store). A younger
| generation of patent clerks hired with more experience
| seems to have helped there.
|
| The other problem is funding: look at the patent examiner
| listings right now and think about how many people they're
| going to be able to get with the federal pay scale having
| been prevented from keeping pace with the market for years:
|
| https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?l=&l=&a=CM56&hp=publ
| i...
| lostdog wrote:
| The parent system will accept pretty much anything if your
| lawyers ask them enough times. I've seen algorithms from
| the 80s patented today, with no real changes. The patent
| examiners have no idea what's novel or common sense, and
| just accept everything.
| brlewis wrote:
| It is not reasonable to expect humans to assess the novelty
| or obviousness of software "inventions". Too many of them
| can be created too fast for any conceivable patent office
| to handle. The only solution is for Congress to write a law
| saying algorithms can't be patented. SCOTUS tentatively
| said it already, but nobody listens to them.
| sneak wrote:
| Software patents are bogus. Under the law, algorithms cannot be
| patented but clever lawyers figured out ways of getting the
| USPTO to issue software patents despite the intent of the law.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Is that how patents are used today?
| otherme123 wrote:
| Industrial secrets. WD40 was not patented, they did good
| anyway.
|
| Wright brothers or James Watt were notoriously hard defending
| their patents, hindering progress and getting next to no
| significant profits. 3D printers only took off after key
| patents expired.
| sam_goody wrote:
| I have an invention that I think could change the world (a
| better toilet). I went to a patent attorney.
|
| His advice: File a submarine patent, wait til someone else has
| the idea but is stupid enough to manufacture, sue him for low
| enough that he wants to settle.
|
| Why not manufacture? He explained that the patent system is
| designed to help the incumbents. If you manufacture, the big
| players will make some minor change, file for a patent as an
| improvement to the original, and ignore you. If you go to court
| - who has more lawyers on call?
|
| At some point, you may iterate on your original product. At
| that point they will sue you with the patent they have obtained
| for their improvement. It doesn't matter if you infringe, it
| doesn't matter anything. Guess who has more lawyers? If you are
| lucky, you can settle for just giving them your IP plus your
| legal fees.
|
| Many many inventions and improvements have been created by
| small guys, but they don't go to market. Because if it will
| disrupt an existing big player they will be sued. For any
| reason under the sun. Because the legal system favors the side
| with the funds.
|
| And that is even without considering the companies in China et
| all that will just copy your idea wholesale, at a fraction of
| the price, and are untouchable.
|
| The patent system helps the incumbents, but does nothing for
| the little guy.
|
| A better system would be to use the money currently spent on
| the patent system to give grants to anyone who comes up with a
| new idea. [And you can even perhaps have some way for the
| general public to weigh in.] The smaller the company, the more
| the grant available. With funds, you could actually try to
| develop a brand, and the competition across the board would
| help everyone.
| jeremiahbuckley wrote:
| I like this as a direction to push, even if there may be some
| details that are later discovered to require correction. Is
| any org pushing for this?
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| I'm not an expert on patetnts, but that seems backwards to
| me. If I get a patent for something, someone else can make a
| trivial change they call an improvement, admit their work is
| derivative, and get a patent for that without any cooperation
| or licensing from me?
|
| And then if I iterate and get sued, even though I can show I
| hold the original patent it's not a slam dunk win for me in
| court?
| ptero wrote:
| Limiting the time of the protection would go a long way towards
| its acceptance. With the speed of technology today, 3-5 years
| seems reasonable. Anything beyond this is an overkill. This
| also discourages early filing (which now causes to mostly
| stifle related exploration) and encourages filing when the
| technology is ready for commercialization.
|
| I also view the goal of the patent system as benefiting a
| society by encouraging the people to innovate. While somewhat
| similar to the current goals (rewarding the inventors) it is
| subtly different because its success and failure is determined
| not by the fairness to each inventor but by its statistical
| impact on innovation. If it tends to encourage innovation, even
| if in a few corner cases the time limits are too short for the
| inventor to reap the full reward, so be it. If it tends to
| stifle innovation by focusing on fully defending _every_
| inventor it needs to be repealed. My 2c.
| rakoo wrote:
| > If we take the position that an inventor should be able to
| try and get profit from their invention
|
| The premise is flawed, the conclusion can only be wrong.
|
| Patents are an invention by the bourgeoisie to extend their
| control of the production of anything and extract as much money
| from it, but to make it acceptable they have the play the image
| of the "lone inventor in their garage". This inventor doesn't
| exist. No invention ever came out of nowhere, based on nothing
| more than hard work and selfless involvement. Nothing would be
| achievable without the help of society, past and present,
| without cooperation, and to close that off is to go against the
| very reason we as a species survive. We need shared creation of
| art, of technologies, of ideas, because this helps everyone.
| Look at Volvo giving away their rights on the 3-point security
| belt, or the penicillin being openly distributed; to favor
| individual wealth over collective well-being is borderline
| criminal.
|
| Patents do not serve individuals, the individuals are not
| business people. Patents only serve companies which by
| definition steal the production of its workers for private
| profits.
|
| Patents do not allow creation; patents _prevent_ creation. Look
| at the history of steam machines and how many people were
| involved in all the subtle, incremental improvements. It 's not
| just one guy suddenly finding out everything from scratch. One
| of them put a patent on his invention and froze the development
| of the steam machine for decades before allowing it to
| continue.
| Angostura wrote:
| > No invention ever came out of nowhere, based on nothing
| more than hard work and selfless involvement
|
| Straw man. No-one has suggested that the inventor invented
| something in a complete vacuum without support from society.
| rakoo wrote:
| And yet that's exactly what the patent model claims: The
| invention is the fruit of a single mind who must get the
| entirety of money ever produced by the commercialization of
| the product. It is a glorification of individualism
| freejazz wrote:
| The Patent model doesn't claim that at all, it assumes
| the opposite. That's one reason why patents are public.
| thfuran wrote:
| >The premise is flawed, the conclusion can only be wrong.
|
| That's the fallacy fallacy.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| They went on to support their point. To ignore that
| is...the fallacy fallacy fallacy?
| thfuran wrote:
| No, they went on to make specific claims essentially
| unrelated to that initial general claim.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| To continue your point, here is my proposal to _replace_
| intellectual property: Pay the inventor for their _work_ ,
| not the _result_ of that work.
|
| This has several advantages:
|
| 1. Inventors get paid to fail. Failure is a critical step in
| the process of invention.
|
| 2. Inventors get paid immediately. How can an inventor be
| expected to have time to invent something if their only means
| of income happens _after_ the work of invention? Any person
| who is working should earn a living.
|
| 3. An inventor can quit. If you aren't getting anywhere on a
| project, then you can go do something else!
|
| 4. Another inventor can pick up where they left off. Fresh
| eyes bring new perspective.
| thfuran wrote:
| You're proposing that the state pay a good wage to anyone
| who chooses to be a full time inventor, regardless of the
| results? Does that include paying for whatever facilities
| might be required?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Who said anything about the state?
|
| All of these things are already paid for. Either that
| continues to happen, or invention just stops happening
| altogether. Obviously there is profit to be made from new
| ideas, so there should be plenty of incentive to invest
| in inventors.
|
| Inventors could also collaborate and unionize. Many
| already do.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Who said anything about the state?
|
| By implication, you:
|
| >here is my proposal to replace intellectual property
|
| Property rights, intellectual or otherwise, are granted
| and enforced by the state. So too, it would seem, might
| be their replacements. But it sounds like you're actually
| proposing simply eliminating all current IP law rather
| than replacing it with anything.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| My proposal, _taken literally_ is to eliminate all IP
| law, and to not replace it with anything.
|
| My proposal, _taken in context_ is to meet the same needs
| that IP intended to meet, but without any state
| involvement.
| bmacho wrote:
| > If we take the position that an inventor should be able to
| try and get profit from their invention how can we protect that
| without patent system?
|
| What about: inventors should be able to try and get profit from
| their invention like anyone else.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Software authors, like other authors, can protect their
| creations through copyright. That's as it should be.
|
| Allowing patents on software is about as sensible as allowing
| JK Rowling to patent the concept of a storyline about a boy who
| was cursed at birth by an evil wizard, and must defeat said
| wizard in order to fulfil his destiny.
| kemayo wrote:
| The myth of patents is that some inventor working in their
| garage comes up with a genius invention, patents it, and then
| can leverage that patent-granted period of exclusivity into a
| thriving business. Hard work and smarts translating directly
| into rewards!
|
| This is, of course, a myth.
|
| It's not impossible for that to happen, theoretically, but the
| way the patent system actually works these days is that large
| companies patent anything they ever think of regardless of
| actual novelty, holding on to vast piles of patents as weapons
| of strategic deterrence. The megacorps exist in a state of
| patent detente -- unless someone is particularly blatant about
| a violation, it's better not to sue another corp because
| they'll just countersue with their own patent hoard. Then
| you'll both be stuck in years of litigation, working to get
| each other's patents invalidated, unsure of who is going to
| come out of it with a remaining claim.
|
| When the tiny independent inventor appears, however, they don't
| have any of that patent-hoard protection. So it's easy for a
| big company in a vaguely related industry to squash them if
| they want to. Or wait until there's enough money being made
| that it's worth showing up and demanding fees. Sure, the
| company's patents may well be bogus and unrelated, but the tiny
| inventor can't afford to spend the next five years litigating
| that.
| shagie wrote:
| Board game rules fall under patents. It has an example of the
| garage process, patent, infringement, and win.
|
| https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2012/11/26/271633.
| ..
|
| > A company headed by a Colorado professor who invented a
| strategy board game has won a $1.6 million patent
| infringement verdict.
|
| > ...
|
| > Innovention prevailed in a patent infringement against MGA,
| Wal-Mart Stores and Toys R Us. A federal court in New Orleans
| found that MGA's Laser Battle game, sold through the two
| retailers, infringed on Innovention's patent for Khet.
|
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16991/khet-laser-game
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242
|
| ---
|
| Note the rarity of this happening that it makes the news
| compared to how often patents are thrown around in courts.
| brlewis wrote:
| > Board game rules fall under patents
|
| Please supply evidence. All links in your comment relate to
| a patent to an invention where lasers are an essential part
| of the claims. I'm not convinced that rules alone would be
| patentable subject matter.
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.upcounsel.com/board-game-patents
|
| https://patentpc.com/blog/example-of-how-a-board-game-is-
| pat...
|
| https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/493249/mythbusting-game-
| des...
|
| https://www.theiplawblog.com/2019/04/articles/intellectua
| l-p...
|
| http://www.gamecabinet.com/info/PatentSearch.html
|
| https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/93654/blue-and-gray-
| paten... (Blue and Gray) - this particular one is well
| known because Sid Sackson went trawling through patents
| and found it and wrote about it. From https://archive.org
| /details/gamutofgames0000sack/page/9/mode...
|
| > THE FILES OF PATENTS that have been granted are a
| fruitful hunting ground for forgotten games, although
| going through these files, as anyone who has ever been
| involved in a patent search well knows, is a time
| consuming job. Often the patented games are downright
| silly, such as a set of dominos made of rubber so that
| they can double as ink erasers (No. 729,489) or a sliding
| block puzzle with edible pieces so that a player who
| despairs of a solution can find consolation in gratifying
| his stomach (No. 1,274,294). Often the patents are
| repetitious: There are over a hundred variations of the
| well-known checkerboard and over a thousand different
| baseball games.
|
| > But often the patented games are a fascinating
| reflection of their time: races to the North Pole, war
| games to capture the Kaiser, automobile games, in the
| infancy of the automobile, and radio games for the
| crystal-set fanatic.
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US2026082A/en
| (Monopoly)
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US5662332A/en (Magic
| The Gathering)
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US6352262B1/en
| (Icehouse)
| brlewis wrote:
| > https://patents.google.com/patent/US5662332A/en (Magic
| The Gathering)
|
| Thank you. I concede, this one is proof that an
| application that's essentially board game rules can be
| accepted. Whether rules not tied to a particular machine
| _should_ be accepted is debatable.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine-or-
| transformation_test...?
| kentonv wrote:
| It's not a myth!
|
| My uncle is such a garage inventor, and has made a
| comfortable living for himself by licensing a number of
| different inventions.
|
| One of the things he invented was the Zipit drain cleaner.
| It's a long piece of plastic with barbs on it. You shove it
| down your drain, pull it back out, and it pulls out a
| gigantic disgusting hairball that you had no idea was down
| there!
|
| It's really quite remarkable, it works so much better than
| what people were using to unclog their drains before. It
| seems obvious in retrospect, so why weren't such products
| already on the market?
|
| Unfortunately after seeing the success a competitor decided
| to copy it and, when my uncle tried to sue, the competitor
| got the patent invalided. Meanwhile my uncle lost much of his
| savings in legal fees.
|
| https://usinventor.org/portfolio-items/34660/
|
| In my (biased) opinion, this was a case of a legitimate,
| deserving patent. But all the junk patents and patent trolls,
| and the arms race you describe, have shifted expectations so
| much that the patent review board now tends to invalidate
| everything brought before them. So now the patent system
| doesn't even work for the people it's supposed to work for,
| since when a small inventor makes something actually worth
| patenting, a big company can just invalidate the patent.
|
| With all that said, I do agree that software patents are
| pretty broken. If nothing else, the 20-year time limit is way
| too long, as technology moves much faster than that. We are
| constantly building the next layer on top of whatever was
| invented last decade, so last decade's inventions have either
| become foundational or have been discarded. Patenting an idea
| means it has to end up in the later category, as a
| proprietary idea cannot be made foundational; the industry
| must work around it. Meanwhile, the upfront investment cost
| in software ideas is much lower than other kinds of
| inventions, so there's no need for 20 years of royalties to
| incentivize it. I think software patents could make a lot
| more sense with something like a 3-year time limit. But I'm
| not really sure it's needed at all, as first-mover advantage
| seems sufficient to reward many software inventions.
|
| (Disclosure/disclaimer: I work for Cloudflare, but obviously
| the above is personal opinions. I am proud of what Cloudflare
| has done with Project Jengo -- which I had no personal role
| in, I'm just an enigneer.)
| kiba wrote:
| Lawyers are expensive. If your business model required
| suing someone to enforce your claim, you better hope you
| have money, and you better hope you win your case fast.
|
| Otherwise, you will spend more time and energy on that
| lawsuit than your work on invention. It's what economists
| termed "deadweight loss".
|
| It has at time proven to be a business mirage, especially
| if inventors start suing other inventors and pioneers
| rather than getting on with copying and improving upon each
| other's work. Invention and engineering is a collaborative
| process, even if at time, adversarial. Can't really let a
| few folks has their monopolies at the expense of everyone
| else.
| jwr wrote:
| > an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their
| invention
|
| Well then, let the inventor try and get profit from their
| invention. An idea is never enough: it's the execution that
| matters, so let the inventor go forth and execute.
| fargle wrote:
| patents were _intended_ to protect the little-guy, the inventor
| (meaning a person), with an artificial monopoly so he could
| make money.
|
| they weren't intended to be used by huge companies to help
| further their already impressive monopolistic empires. they
| collect them and use them as a kind of insurance or mutual-
| assued-destruction policy. microsoft won't sue ibm (and so on)
| because both have such a vast portfolio of garbage patents that
| they know they could tie each other up in litigation for 100
| years, and they don't feel like paying for it.
|
| then you get to the trolls. our government is actually enabling
| and encouraging a semi-legal form of extortion. the big
| companies can pay or pay to fight. it's a tax on everyone in
| the business though, even when _winning_. only the attorneys
| really win here.
|
| it's obvious that the time and place for patents has come and
| gone.
|
| - they don't do what they are intended, do much more harm than
| good.
|
| - other comments are 100% correct, "software" (algorithms) and
| other similar areas like the one in TFA should never have
| existed in the first place.
|
| - the pursuit of patent portfolios has created a surge of
| _really_ bad patents. it 's really been the entire life of the
| internet and modern computing. "one-click-patent", etc. and far
| worse. so why actually encourage more and lower quality
| patents?
|
| - it does no good for an inventor to go get a patent, because
| even if the spiffy device is successful at market, the chinese
| will steal it with or without the little patent number
| engraving on the bottom. hell, they'll copy that too. if you
| find out who they are and sue them, they'll pop up as another
| company. if that's who you are competing against, why waste
| time and energy on anachronistic non-functioning armor.
|
| - better option for an advantage from a unique software
| algorithm is to: be to market first and, if desired, keep it a
| trade secret.
|
| - i think it'd be relatively easy to fix. first, allow the
| patent-holder to pick or easily challenge the venue (to kill
| east-texas) and second, allow awarding of attorney costs for
| the defendant, and force the plaintif to post a bond to prove
| they can pay them.
|
| - but why bother? just abandon the whole system. it literally
| helps nobody.
| kiba wrote:
| _patents were intended to protect the little-guy, the
| inventor (meaning a person), with an artificial monopoly so
| he could make money._
|
| Did that actually broadly happened over the history of
| patents? It sounds intuitive enough that patent protect the
| little guys, it's another if it actually happened for any
| period of time.
|
| I remember reading that the Wright brothers spending time and
| money suing other inventors and pioneers over their patents.
| Ultimately, they weren't very successful at building a
| business and fell behind. That capital spent on a lawyer
| could be spent on their business or improving their machines.
| fargle wrote:
| i think it did in the US in the 18th and 19th centuries.
| Colt for example. many old-west certainly had lots of
| individual or small companies patent gadgets. i think by
| the 20th century, it was already a big-business only thing.
| or was that just the economy in general? doesn't matter.
|
| the Wrights are kind of a sad story, but one that HN
| readers should be familiar with. technical excellence and
| just flopped at the business side. they got _far_ too
| wrapped up in secrecy, almost paranoia, and like you
| pointed out, it just delayed and eventually ruined them.
| strain from fighting basically killed Wilbur at 45 years
| old.
| teddyh wrote:
| As I recall, the entire US aviation industry was locked up
| for decades in patent conflicts, and were as a result way
| behind the rest of the world (where US patents were not
| valid). The only thing which could fix this quagmire was a
| miracle, which actually did occur in the form of WW2,
| causing the US government to nationalize the entire thing,
| allowing people to actually innovate again, which the US
| air force desperately needed.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Granting intention over centuries-old institutions is a fools
| errand.
|
| Whatever the people that created them intended, they were
| used at first to grant favors to well connected people (some
| times for good reasons, other times not), and then to enable
| industrial monopolies on planned economies.
|
| That last one is the format that the modern version is based
| on.
| fargle wrote:
| kinda prickly? when i think we agree.
|
| i brought up _intention_ because it 's a) historically true
| and b) to contrast with the complete opposite that they
| developed into. you get rid of something without
| acknowledging what it was intended for and looking at
| whether it's still helping or not. i don't think any of
| that is foolish.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| I'm not sure how much is current system effective today when
| biggest world producer's just can decide they are not going to
| respect that.
| dcow wrote:
| The easiest way to understand the issue is to consider cooking.
|
| A chef can't sit around and think up recipes and file thousands
| of patents. We explicitly agree in the law that it would be
| incredibly backwards negatively affect society if chefs got
| exclusivity on recipes and could sue home cooks for being
| creative. And chefs are still thinking up new recipes and using
| them in their restaurants because unique meals and flavors
| offer a competitive advantage. The reward is that you can keep
| your profits in our capitalist society. See Coca Cola and KFC.
| You have to use your knowledge in a novel invention to benefit.
|
| In the same spirit, it's not wanted to have people sit around
| and ideate about which instructions, and in what order, when
| fed to a processor machine, make it do useful things. Thousands
| of people program processors every day and we don't want them
| getting sued because someone else figure out an efficient way
| to reverse a linked list. You have to run a software service
| that provides value and get people's money that way.
|
| Even if we concede that patents are useful in their intended
| purpose to protect actual manifest inventions, not just ideas
| (patent office is supposed to require a prototype invention to
| be registered with your patent), that's certainly not what
| patent trolls are doing and that's not how the majority of
| software patents work.
|
| For the purpose of discussion, to get close conceptually to
| some sane type of sane SW patent scheme you'd have to 1. make a
| linked list reversing library, 2. register the complete
| prototype source code with the patent office, and 3. be
| actively maintaining and selling your linked list reversing
| library for your patent to even start to hold water. But even
| then you're running up against problem that software is purely
| algorithms (just like recipes) and those aren't even originally
| patent-able.
|
| Apple can't patent an "object oriented operating system" unless
| they're offering that system in isolation and as a whole to
| consumers for use, which they're not, but someone at the patent
| office got tricked into granting them a patent. Patents are
| supposed protect the inventors of complete products, not tiny
| building blocks of knowledge (algorithms). The "patent hate" is
| because despite the arguably good initial conditions, the
| patent system has been abused by greedy people who are not
| benefiting society in any way whatsoever. And you should be
| infuriated by that.
| Laaas wrote:
| What would be required to get a court to order Sable pay the
| legal fees Cloudflare incurred?
| delfinom wrote:
| Courts only order that in cases the lawsuit is in bad faith by
| one party.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Quite a bit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney%27s_fe...
|
| Versus
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fee...
| in much of the rest of the world.
| jotaen wrote:
| Is this still true, considering how the Supreme Court has
| decided a similar case against patent trolls[1][2] in the
| past?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_Fitness,_LLC_v._ICO
| N_He....
|
| [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2014/04/29/pat
| ent-...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| As the second link notes, that helps only in "the most
| egregious cases of misconduct".
| Laaas wrote:
| In the opinion it says that it merely has to be
| "exceptional", I would think Cloudflare has a good chance
| at winning their case.
|
| They ought to do so, if only to discourage patent trolls.
|
| Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140429231129/http://w
| ww.suprem...
|
| Relevant part on page 10.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| That alone likely wouldn't help, because often patent trolls
| are relatively small entities built around the patents they're
| trolling with. Once those patents evaporate, there isn't much
| value to be gained, so the limited liability company now owing
| millions in damages simply goes bankrupt and the people behind
| it start trolling anew with new patents and a new company.
|
| We should hold the lawyers accountable. If you as a lawyer
| bring egregiously bullshit cases, you should be on the hook for
| the costs.
| duped wrote:
| There needs to be a "use it or lose it" doctrine/law around
| technological IP. I get all the arguments around creating a
| market for the patent rights, but it just leads to these bottom
| feeders creating no value and increasing costs for the industry
| and consumers.
| lukan wrote:
| There are research companies who only do research and get money
| by licencing their patents. I mean, I really would like to live
| in a world without patents, but currently those companies do
| provide value, but cannot exist, without guarding their IP. Yet
| they would cease to exist, with your proposal.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Great point. And then if one of those companies _sold_ a
| patent that wasn 't immediately licensable to an IP firm for
| an immediate infusion of funds should the IP firm be
| considered a patent troll?
| lukan wrote:
| Maybe the patent system could work, without the possibility
| of selling patents at all? Have not thought it out, but I
| know musicians also seldom profit of selling their IP to
| the major labels. But they are pushed into it.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Based on the text of the IP clause of the US Constitution
| I have wondered whether selling or licensing of IP (or
| even assigning it to a corporation) is technically
| allowable.
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/sectio
| n-8...
|
| : To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by
| securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
| exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
| Discoveries;
|
| "Exclusive Right" means exclusive right. And I don't
| think the definition has changed much since the US
| Constitution was written.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/exclusive
|
| I think it must at least be licensable, or authors
| couldn't sell copies of their works. But whether the IP
| rights can be sold is another question.
| freejazz wrote:
| It means the right is exclusively granted with them. I.e.
| no one besides the author gets to control the exclusive
| rights of a patent. By your logic, they can't even
| license it because "it's an exclusive right".
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| They control the license according to the terms of a
| license. But once a patent is sold the author of it no
| longer has any right to it.
|
| Authors and inventors are mentioned with the same
| language in the clause. Since it has always been true
| that authors can basically only profit from their
| writings by selling copies or originals of their works
| (without selling the right to the copyrighted material
| itself) then some form of licensing is necessarily
| included in the clause for both copyright and patents.
|
| There may have been journalists at the time who wrote
| works for newspapers owned by others. If so, this would
| be a reason to include the right of selling all of the
| rights to one's writings or inventions in the clause. I
| genuinely don't know if this was the case though.
| freejazz wrote:
| Authors can license all of their rights away. They can
| sell their copyrights - I don't see your point...
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I'm asking whether the laws which allow this are within
| scope of the US Constitution's clause on intellectual
| property rights.
|
| There are plenty of laws which have been ruled
| unconstitutional. But it takes someone making the
| complaint to a court for this to happen. Otherwise the
| legislature does whatever it wants.
|
| Currently a majority of the US Supreme court thinks that
| the status quo at the time of the writing of the US
| Constitution or its amendments has bearing as to the
| meaning of those texts. Thus I mentioned back then
| authors sold copies of their works while retaining all
| other rights as indicating that "licensing" is within
| this clause. Whether or not total sales of the rights to
| the work is within the purview of the clause is another
| question that I'm curious about.
| freejazz wrote:
| > I'm asking whether the laws which allow this are within
| scope of the US Constitution's clause on intellectual
| property rights.
|
| Which laws are those? I'm not sure why it wouldn't be in
| the scope of the constitutional grant of authority to
| congress. "by securing for limited times to authors and
| inventors the exclusive right to their respective
| writings and discoveries" The use of exclusive here makes
| perfect sense with how things worked then, and today. I
| think you are getting caught up in non-existent
| semantics. What would be the purpose of the clause if
| authors/inventors couldn't sell their work? what would be
| secured in the exclusive rights that benefits the
| furthering of arts and science if inventors and authors
| couldn't exploit their exclusive rights? I'm a copyright
| and patent litigator and I've never heard anyone make the
| argument you are making.
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| Issuing a license is a form of "using it" in a use it or lose
| it scenario.
|
| Those are not patent troll companies. Patent troll companies
| file patents and then sit on the patent until they can sue
| another party for infringement, and never make an attempt to
| commercialize their patent.
|
| Another example of not using it in the use it or lose it
| scenario is Pfizer's acquisition of Esperion Therapeutics in
| 2004. Esperion was developing a competitor to Lipitor, so
| Pfizer purchased Esperion for $1.3BB and shelved the
| technology to prevent competition with their best selling
| drug. Had Pfizer "lost" their patent for failing to
| commercial Esperion's drug, that drug could have entered the
| market as a generic to compete with Lipitor and severely
| reduced the cost of statin drugs for consumers.
| lukan wrote:
| That is hard I think, as there are patents that are not
| licenced because no one wants to - but I think every holder
| of a patent _must_ licence it to any party interested. So
| just "sitting on patents" is not really possible to my
| knowledge. (but I am really not an expert here)
| floating-io wrote:
| If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, then
| I'm not sure where you got that idea.
|
| Patent holders are _not_ required to license their
| patents last time I checked. You are simply required to
| acquire a license prior to using patented technology.
|
| If they don't want to license it, you're SOL.
|
| (edit: if you were speculating on what _should be_ , and
| not _what is_ , then my bad... :)
| lukan wrote:
| "Patent holders are not required to license their patents
| last time I checked."
|
| That is apparently right and I learned it wrong (but it
| does seems wrong to me).
|
| edit: after reading the siblings answer, I apparently
| wrongly overgeneralized the way it works with patents in
| standards
| smachiz wrote:
| Only for patents used in standards - where the standard
| enforces FRAND/RAND/other licensing schemes to insure
| that 'standards-required' patents are available to all.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-
| discriminat...
|
| This is Qualcomm's big business (and others), getting
| their patents into standards like 5G and then charging
| people a fair amount to use it - and they have to license
| it to everyone, even their arch nemesis. Or you just buy
| their chips.
|
| For a patent of something you invented, but did not
| submit to become part of a standards-body, you absolutely
| can choose not to license it for any amount of money.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| What's your bargaining position when you lose a patent that
| might be useful for only a few companies if you don't issue
| a license?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| If it's only useful to a few companies then it must be
| niche IP and therefore valuable.
| crdrost wrote:
| > Issuing a license is a form of "using it" in a use it or
| lose it scenario.
|
| Patent trolls will point to their prior victims as current
| licensees, proving successful commercialization.
| pwg wrote:
| > Patent troll companies file patents and then sit on the
| patent until they can sue another party for infringement
|
| Many of the patents asserted by trolls were not actually
| filed by the trolls. Most often the troll company simply
| purchased the patent from the original owner (or, often, a
| bankruptcy court) and then they proceed to go about suing
| others using their newly acquired weapon.
| btilly wrote:
| Worse yet, the troll company was often created for the
| purpose of owning that specific group of patents. That
| limits the damage from a lawsuit gone wrong to just that
| group of patents, and not the many other patents owned by
| the hundreds of other similar troll companies that the
| same lawyer runs.
|
| We really need a patent troll version of anti-SLAPP laws.
| To go past the shell company, and hit the people who run
| them.
| duped wrote:
| Why wouldn't they be able to exist?
|
| If you invent something, there's a work product. There is
| documentation, notes, blueprints, CAD files, software, etc.
| You can sell this and license it however you want. You can
| sue people that use it without a license. More importantly,
| you as the original author can use the IP as you see fit.
|
| All of that is what I would put under the category of "use
| it." If you stop licensing it, then you "lose it."
|
| Personally I don't think you should be able to sell the
| invention as an idea to another company that only relicenses
| it, but I get that there needs to be a market for IP itself.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > If you invent something, there's a work product. There is
| documentation, notes, blueprints, CAD files, software, etc.
| You can sell this and license it however you want.
|
| These would only be protected by copyright. So if you
| invent something but do not have the resources to create
| the implementation yourself (and therefore cannot patent
| the invention under the scheme proposed by GGP), but you
| licence the work products (documentation, software) to one
| or more companies who can then implement it, a larger,
| well-resourced competitor can just reimplement it without
| paying you as long as they did not need to use any of your
| documentation or software. So that reduces the value of
| your work products.
|
| But if the converse happened, e.g., your customer
| reimplements something invented by the large competitor,
| they can get sued, because the large company, being able to
| implement their invention, can therefore file a patent. So
| it amplifies the effect of having more resources.
|
| It would be fairer to treat the large company the same way,
| and only let them copyright the work products rather than
| patent the invention, putting them on the same level as a
| smaller inventor.
| solomatov wrote:
| Could you give examples of such companies (I am really
| curious)?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I am aware of a few orgs that license interesting software
| R&D often with engineering support, sometimes with an
| equity component. Another variant is the R&D holding
| company that creates separate companies to commercially
| exploit the R&D in different parts of the public or private
| sector. Most such R&D orgs are very low-profile, they
| usually don't have an internet presence. Many use few or no
| patents these days, those economics don't make sense unless
| the business is largely owned by lawyers, which creates a
| different kind of company (much closer to patent trolls).
|
| It is a bespoke kind of business, tailored to the specific
| technology and investment network of the people involved.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > Could you give examples of such companies
|
| One example is ARM, which licenses the processor designs
| they create, and do not build or sell the chips themselves.
| maxloh wrote:
| ARM for example.
| dosethree wrote:
| just abolish the patent system entirely. at minimum, for
| software
| mistrial9 wrote:
| compare and contrast to industry practices today
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-patents.en.html
| dosethree wrote:
| fantastic article
| declaredapple wrote:
| I'm on board with this. It shouldn't exist for software, I'd
| be happy to see it go for hardware too.
|
| I'd be more on-board with the idea if non-software patents
| only had say a 5 year lifespan
| willvarfar wrote:
| Whilst good intentioned, it might well work the other way:
|
| Dedicated patent trolls will trivially overcome any hurdles by
| cheaply doing just enough to legally demonstrate they are
| working on future commercial applications blah blah honest.
|
| Meanwhile, it likely puts up a prohibitive cost that will
| prevent the smallest genuine inventors from inventing?
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's the big problem with societies based on the letter of
| the law vs. the spirit of the law. Human nature has
| repeatedly demonstrated that if the letter of the law is what
| matters, people will work night and day to _technically
| comply with the letter of the law_ , so they can continue to
| do the bad thing legally. Whole cottage industries will
| spring up to guide businesses right up to that legal line and
| sell them the tools and techniques to ensure they barely
| don't cross it.
|
| In such a society, the rules need to be enormous and complex,
| much more than a 2 sentence HN post, to eliminate all the
| edge cases and loopholes everyone will naturally want to take
| advantage of.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Patents are property and we need taxes/fee on it. $500/year per
| patent, will ensure use it (if you think it is valuable) or
| lose it. This is no different from domain names, most people
| pay $10 - $100/year just to keep a domain name. Some domain
| names are used, most aren't. These taxes can fund free
| education or healthcare or defense.
| pwg wrote:
| > Patents are property and we need taxes/fee on it. $500/year
| per patent
|
| Those 'taxes' already exist (at least in the US system). They
| are called "maintenance fees".
|
| See https://www.fr.com/insights/ip-law-essentials/everything-
| abo...
|
| Failing to pay the fee causes the patent to expire, and be
| unable to be used to sue someone. So these troll firms must
| also be paying these fees to be able to sue based on the
| patent.
| madsbuch wrote:
| This is interesting. So Oracle holding around 52000 patents
| pays around 23.000.000 USD a year in maintenance?
| ako wrote:
| Yes, having patents is expensive. Large corporations
| often file patents for defensive reasons, and for this
| they employ multiple patent lawyers full time.
| madsbuch wrote:
| Yeah, so add a couple of millions on _top_ oof the
| 23.000.000 a year for lawyers and other staff.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > These taxes can fund free education or healthcare or
| defense
|
| Why only those things?
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Appeal to emotion. Taxes go towards all publicly funded
| projects, but it's easier to convince people that a new tax
| is a good thing when it goes towards these things that
| benefit everyone.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > $500/year per patent, will ensure use it (if you think it
| is valuable) or lose it.
|
| Not really.
|
| Some patents are fantastically valuable to patent trolls.
| Some are not. A $500/year fee isn't going to deter a
| "company" of lawyers who are making millions soaking
| businesses with patents that should never have been granted.
|
| If you want a scheme that actually does what you want, you'd
| need something like:
|
| The owner of the patent chooses the fee that they pay per
| year. And anyone can pay that fee * the remaining years on
| the patent * some multiplier (probably in the 2-10 range) to
| prematurely end the patent.
|
| So, if someone's got a patent on a hamster powered submarine,
| they can keep it for $1 per year (or whatever the minimum
| should be). And that's fine... because it isn't harming any
| one since no one wants to build such a thing.
|
| But a patent that a troll is using to milk the industry with
| will need to have a pretty stiff fee or people won't play
| ball, they'll just buy out the troll.
| freejazz wrote:
| >making millions soaking businesses with patents that
| should never have been granted.
|
| Invalidity arguments and IPRs suddenly aren't things?
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Invalidity arguments and IPRs suddenly aren't things?
|
| I'm sure that you're aware that when you go to court, the
| result is never certain. Bad ruling happen all the time.
| freejazz wrote:
| The vast majority of these decisions are against the
| patent owners, which I'm sure you are aware of. Also, I
| wasn't the one who characterized something as a patent
| that "should never have been granted."
| brlewis wrote:
| The troll can price their licenses slightly less than the
| presumed legal costs. Then most victims won't fight.
|
| Presumption of validity is what makes patent trolling
| more lucrative than other forms of predatory litigation.
| You're guilty until proven innocent, because the law
| assumes that the patent office is generally doing the
| right thing.
| freejazz wrote:
| > Presumption of validity
|
| It's just an evidentiary presumption that is trivially
| rebutted with any evidence.
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe when you file the patent, you have to submit an
| anticipated value statement and you are taxed some % / year
| on that anticipated value. If somebody violates the patent,
| you can sue them for up to the amount you anticipated, but
| not more.
|
| In the future you can amend the value claim, but you can
| only adjust it down.
| echelon wrote:
| That's awful for protecting innovation. You don't know
| the market value of each individual invention with that
| level of granularity.
|
| Companies and researchers should be free to patent to
| protect themselves, but patent trolls with no clear
| technological development (no lab, no product, no
| licensing+developing) should be stopped.
|
| It seems easy to me to draw a bounding box around these
| behaviors with a simple test. Perhaps like a Howey test
| [1], but for patent trolling.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._W._J._Howey_Co.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| So someone inventing something for say mobile phones in
| the 80s that is still used would have estimated their
| patentent to not be so useful because the number of
| mobile phones wasnt that high. And if Apple violated
| their patent they would just pay pennies because of that?
| It is extremly hard to estimate the worth of a tech 30
| years into the future invented today. Take a tech
| invented today and tell me what the market value will be
| in 30 years and how sure you are about that predicition.
| criddell wrote:
| Yeah, that's roughly how it would work, except 30 years
| feels way too long.
|
| If other people are better than you at seeing what some
| technology could be used for it, then maybe we should
| lower the barriers for those people. The whole point of
| the patent system should be to provide the greatest
| benefit to the greatest number of people.
| petsfed wrote:
| If you invented and patented something in the US in 1989,
| you'd have protections until 2009 at the latest. If it
| wasn't usable until 2013, then that sucks for you, but it
| is what it is. Your invention doesn't get 20 guaranteed
| years of profitability. You get 20 years to figure out
| how to make it profitable.
|
| The two are very different concepts.
|
| _edit_ : this is why you don't patent every damned
| thing, just the things that you believe will be
| profitable over the next 20 years. Otherwise, the cost of
| researching and filing the patent, as well as maintaining
| it, may well exceed whatever profit you actually get from
| the thing.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _this is why you don 't patent every damned thing, just
| the things that you believe will be profitable over the
| next 20 years_
|
| _Unless_ you work for a corporation, that owns your
| intellectual output anyway, and encourages you to submit
| forms for anything that looks even remotely patentable.
| petsfed wrote:
| I want to be clear here: you submit a form for
| everything, then people in the legal and business
| development teams decide if its actually worth patenting.
|
| But even then, if you devise some thing that will be very
| useful if we ever get teleportation working, your
| employer may still not patent it, if they believe that
| teleportation is more than 20 years away.
| mike_d wrote:
| > The owner of the patent chooses the fee that they pay per
| year. And anyone can pay that fee * the remaining years on
| the patent * some multiplier (probably in the 2-10 range)
| to prematurely end the patent.
|
| So basically ending patents? If you invent something
| fantastic, say a way for a self driving car to perfectly
| sense its surroundings, Ford could just come in and pay
| whatever amount to invalidate your patent and prevent you
| from bringing your invention to market?
| efitz wrote:
| I don't think that the patent should be allowed to be
| ended early; the fee is paid to keep the patent
| protection in place.
| cynix wrote:
| Not having a patent doesn't _prevent_ you from bringing
| your invention to market, it just accelerates _someone_
| bringing it to market, and that's a net good for society
| if the invention is useful, no?
| mike_d wrote:
| Patents are vital to bringing things to market. It
| lessens the risk associated with investors getting
| returns, which allows funding for development.
|
| I get that people don't like patents because they
| sometimes get abused, but on the whole I think we
| wouldn't have a lot of the things we take for granted if
| they didn't exist.
| chx wrote:
| Let me add a personal anecdote: my uncle has developed a
| better sprinkler head. Think of bearded inventor
| tinkering in his garage for a decade. This was late 80s
| /early 90s so not much CAD was involved.
|
| This is where the patent system shines. Because he got a
| patent he could shop around, sell it to a company which
| made a tidy profit on it. He didn't need to raise capital
| to establish a factory and all that to bring it to market
| and the company buying it seriously got ahead without
| spending an inordinate amount of money and time inventing
| the thing.
| jimkoen wrote:
| > If you invent something fantastic, say a way for a self
| driving car to perfectly sense its surroundings
|
| That sounds like a highly constructed example, and even
| if we take it for bare value, makes a lot of assumptions,
| for example that whatever you invent is patentable.
|
| The way you phrase it also makes it sound like patents
| are all about individual contributions, when in reality
| the era of lone genius inventors is long over (if they
| ever existed). In the US, it's practice for your funding
| institution to keep all the rights to your inventions, so
| if you invented the perfect sense for self driving, it's
| highly likely that a company like Ford already has the
| patent, because they quite literally own your
| intellectual output.
|
| Imo, I feel the same way like OP, there needs to be a use
| it or loose it doctrine, just like there is with
| trademarks. Overall the legislation around intellectual
| property and copyright feels to be in favor of big corps
| at the moment and should be heavily castrated.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| Doesnt sounds constructed to me.
|
| The "you" in that case could very easily be a startup
| rpnx wrote:
| The number of patents owned by startups is greatly
| dwarfed by the number owned by large companies.
| Furthermore, the competition opportunity for small
| businesses to offer similar products at lower prices
| greatly outweighs the value of patent invention.
|
| Some people would say large businesses can make things
| cheap in a way that small businesses can't compete with.
| However, that turned out to not happen in practice as big
| companies chase huge profit margins, supported only by
| the government.
|
| China doesn't have this problem the US does because they
| have weaker patent laws. Patents need to be eradicated
| ASAP or we will not be globally competitive. We are also
| harming humanity as a whole as the inventive utility of
| patents simply doesn't scale in proportion to the harms,
| with the large populations we have now, they are clearly
| harmful on balance.
|
| The fundamental problem with patents is that the benefit
| has lower asymptotic complexity with respect to
| population size than than the harm does. When you exceed
| some population size, patents become harmful.
|
| The utility of copying is N^2 since you have O(N) copiers
| and O(N) inventions to copy from.
|
| The harm of patents is therefore O(N^2) since this is the
| copying that patents prevent.
|
| What we find is that the benefits of patents seem to
| scale at most around some O(N /log N) ish metric.
| Doubling the population size increases the number of
| inventors, but the chance an invention was already
| invented by someone else increases as population size
| increases. Hence the benefits of patents scale worse than
| O(N). Applying that to the harm and we still get
| O(N(N/logN)) for harm and O(N/logN) for benefits. Clearly
| patents do not scale.
|
| * Here I am using Log N as a substituite for the
| difficulty increase of finding an invention not already
| invented. This exact measure is difficult to estimate.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Some patents are fantastically valuable to patent trolls.
| Some are not. A $500/year fee
|
| Part of the problem is having a huge number of BS patents
| driving up the cost of going through all of them to figure
| out what's what.
|
| Its not the only problem with patents, but i think a
| "property tax" solution would solve some of the issues. I'd
| like it to be incrementing each year - like first year
| $0/year, and increasing each year so the longer you keep
| things out of the public domain the more you need to be
| able to self-jystify its value.
| noqc wrote:
| >a scheme that actually does what you want
|
| This seems like a pretty bad attempt at such a scheme.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>These taxes can fund free education or healthcare or
| defense.
|
| is it is always a bad idea to ear mark a tax for a specific
| purpose. Especially if you desire to use the tax as a
| punitive measure to reduce that which you deem bad for
| society, if it works now you need to come up with the money
| for the thing you funded elsewhere because all government
| programs are permanent
|
| Look at smoking, all kind of things were funded on the back
| of smoking taxes, and when those punitive taxes worked to
| reduce smoking the revenue dried up but the budgets for for
| those programs did not so now the money had to come from
| somewhere else....
|
| Using the tax code to punish or reward behavior is always bad
| ahtihn wrote:
| > Using the tax code to punish or reward behavior is always
| bad
|
| Isn't that pretty much the entire purpose of the tax code
| and why it's so complicated?
|
| It's one of the tools the government has to shape behavior.
|
| Actual tax revenue doesn't really matter since a permanent
| deficit and ever-growing debt is apparently fine.
| adverbly wrote:
| This is an interesting point of view. Reminds me in some
| sense of some of the ethical justifications behind land value
| tax or property taxes.
|
| The intention of legally enforced ownership is primarily to
| encourage development - and not to incentivize speculation as
| we seem to be doing in many situations. It seems reasonable
| to tax such speculation.
|
| I'm inclined to agree with you.
| efitz wrote:
| No, the fee should be exponential, to keep people from
| keeping technology out of the public domain longer than
| necessary.
|
| For example, maybe the fee is $10000 for the first year. This
| doesn't come close to recouping the cost of a single
| enforcement action, but it makes sure that someone has some
| skin in the game. Then every year the cost gets 10x more
| expensive. Of course you are free to choose your own base and
| multiplier.
|
| For someone to keep a patent for 5 years, the total cost
| would be $10k + $100k + $1M + $10M + $100M = $111110000.
| Maybe it's worth it for a patent like the light bulb.
| Probably not worth it for a drinking bird toy. But either
| way, the value decision is up to the patent holder, and the
| cost of the patent incentivizes rapid monetization rather
| than squatting.
| perlgeek wrote:
| Another valuation/taxation scheme I've read about is: you can
| value your patent however you want, and it's taxed based on
| that value.
|
| The kicker is: the values are public, and if anybody wants to
| buy it for something higher than the assigned value (or maybe
| some fixed percentage above the assigned value), you HAVE to
| sell. Of course, the buyer is then taxed at the higher value.
| karaterobot wrote:
| [delayed]
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Domain names pay per year because there's an ongoing service
| attached. There's no such thing for patent (besides fee to
| file)
|
| Why punish patent holders because of patent trolls or garbage
| patents ?
|
| Make it unprofitable to be a troll, and they will go away.
| Trolls need to be tagged , like pirates. There should be
| rules to make hunting for trolls profitable. For that, you
| need a "bounty". Here's my take:
|
| In any patent dispute[1], the loser will pay as punitive
| damages (this is the "bounty") to the winner, the lower of
| (i) the winner's legal costs, OR the loser's legal costs x 2,
| plus (ii) loser must disclose the ultimate name of the
| beneficial owners (or material, if public) of the loser. EINs
| not allowed. The "trolls" are thus, branded.
|
| The next lawsuit ensues. During research, it is found that
| one of the parties is a known troll that has lost 1 prior
| case. Now the damages, should troll lose, are 2X of any
| settlement OR punitive amount.
|
| Should troll lose again, an extra 2x (total, 4x) gets applied
| on the punitive damage[1] to the troll and so on. If troll
| wins, his x is halved.
|
| This does 3 things:
|
| 1- Incentivize public to seek out weak patents, or trolls,
| for a payout.
|
| 2- Makes Trolling much harder at scale.
|
| 3- Ensures huge companies face risks if they throw their
| weight around. Bigco can afford $$ penalties vs small fish,
| but cannot afford to be tagged a 2-4x troll. It makes them an
| attractive target for bigger fish looking for the 2X or 4X
| reward challenge of Bigco patent portfolio.
| notfed wrote:
| > Domain names pay per year because there's an ongoing
| service attached. There's no such thing for patent
|
| Erm, what service? A record in a database? How's that
| different from a patent office? I guess there's fancy
| registrar website...to do what...help me pay my recurring
| bill?
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I don't think you are arguing in good faith.
|
| OK fine want an ongoing patient fee ? Make it $9.99 per
| year just like a registrar, who gives you convenient ways
| to renew and pay fees from a working, modern site, and
| allow migration , with a few clicks.
|
| Is that going to prevent trolls ? Unequivocally, no.
|
| Parent was arguing for some ridiculous, unnecessary ,
| tax. Then cited registrars as an example.
|
| My point, 1 gives a service, one does not. If you want to
| charge for a service, then make it transparent and make
| the fee reflect the service, not argue "hey we already
| charge for registrars" to make his/her point about a new,
| unecessary tax.
| jeltz wrote:
| I do not think you know the domain business, which I
| happen to work in (I own a small registrar and know
| people at registries). The reason domain costs money is
| to make it more expensive to hoard, not to pay for any
| service. There is a service but it just costs a tiny
| fraction of the registry fee the rest they often use for
| funding various non-profit initiatives to improve the
| internet not related at all the providing any service.
| The fee is set where it is to discourage hoarding.
|
| Edit: It is also there to make it slightly more expensive
| to create scam sites, but mostly for the anti-hoarding.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Makes complete sense. Domain hoarding is not cool and
| makes sense to mitigate using fees as you describe.
|
| Now, Patents already require fees and also substantial
| paperwork. In effect that is the "hoarding" control.
|
| I stand corrected that the point of ICANN and registrars
| to charge something is to introduce a barrier to entry.
| Yet, I'd argue you are still providing a service if the
| fees go towards nonprofit activity to improve
| interoperability.
|
| Yet, introducing a huge fee to patents wouldn't really be
| conductive to anything on the patent side, which is at
| the core my issue: I'm not making a judgement about the
| margin on fees, i'm questioning whether there's a
| semblance of service. From my vantage point, registrars
| have made massive improvements in accessibility and ease
| of use, and as you said, they have lowered the barriers
| to entry. | I can't say the same at all for patents.
| cynix wrote:
| > loser must disclose the ultimate name of the beneficial
| owners (or material, if public) of the loser. EINs not
| allowed. The "trolls" are thus, branded.
|
| So TrollCo will just pay a different homeless person $100
| to be the owner on paper for each of their patents?
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Sure. Let them deal with getting the homeless persons to
| sign up. Open a bank account, pay taxes, get credit
| cards, run payroll, process permits, etc.
|
| I don't think you fully appreciate how tough is to run a
| business with someone's name on top of every document.
| Not to say its not possible for a determined actor, but
| its going to eliminate a lot of options from the get go.
|
| Then, let a judge find out!
| jeltz wrote:
| > Domain names pay per year because there's an ongoing
| service attached. There's no such thing for patent (besides
| fee to file)
|
| I work for a registrar and know people working at
| registries so I know that is not the case. The reason they
| charge more than like 1-2 dollars per year is to make it
| expensive to hoard domains.
| theshackleford wrote:
| Sadly though, not expensive enough to actually prevent
| anyone other than the very low end of consumers from
| hoarding domains.
|
| I worked for a registrar for a decade+ and worked with a
| lot of hoarders. Very early on in my career I actually
| dobbed one in to our local registry authority (because I
| was naive, and he was CLEARLY breaching the requirements
| for our ccTLD and so I thought 'Well this is wrong and I
| should report it') and is how I discovered nobody
| actually cares about hoarding and just wants to maximise
| revenue. (Well duh I suppose.)
| atoav wrote:
| Never used a fixed number for anything. Just tie it to a
| percentage of yearly revenue of the entity. This way you can
| ensure:
|
| - small companies and private people can afford patents
|
| - big corps do not get an advantage, in fact the bigger they
| get, the more expensive holding a patent becomes, ensuring
| they _have_ to use those patents and not patent everything
| just because
|
| - number of patents any single entity can hold is limited,
| unless they want to go in debt for holding patents
|
| - there could still be a minimum yearly amount as proposed by
| you
| thechao wrote:
| Tie it to the expected value of the IP? If you think your
| idea is worth $1 billion, pay $10 million (1%) every year.
| ummonk wrote:
| That just means patent trolls would split their patent
| portfolios into hundreds of holding companies. Also people
| would start filing bigger and bigger patents, stuffing more
| and more claims into a single patent.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| patent maintenance fees are already higher than that.
|
| amusing opinions that remind me not to trust them
| benlivengood wrote:
| We need a fair-valuation tax; patents taxed yearly on their
| declared value and _mandatory sale_ of the patent to anyone
| willing to pay the declared value. Some kind of deferred tax
| schedule (maybe 5-10 years?) for R &D.
| oezi wrote:
| I would be in favor of a fee that is 1024 * 2^n USD where n
| is the nth year you want to keep the patent.
|
| 1st year = 2000 USD
|
| 10th year = 1m USD per year
|
| 20th year = 1bn USD per year
|
| It becomes prohibitively expensive if you don't use it. After
| 23 years it would make only sense for the most insane
| blockbuster drugs to keep going for another year.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Why would we tax that property (at the federal level) and not
| others?
|
| What would this do to people who file their own patents to
| protect their own inventions? Historically, that's been the
| vast bulk of all useful inventions in this country.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| I think a better model would just be something like adverse
| possession, where if the owner of the patent hasn't developed
| it, or done certain things it can be nullified.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I offer as an alternative:
|
| IP is property, and it's taxed at the value you declare that
| it's worth.
|
| However, if you swear to the IRS that it's worth $500/yr,
| then you can't claim in court that a violation of it is
| costing you $10,000,000/yr in losses. That would be perjury.
|
| Your patent is worth $10,000,000? Awesome! I bet your local
| school district will love to hear how much you'll be paying
| in taxes on it.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| But property usually isn't taxed. Trading is. If you
| license a patent to someone else for $500/year, you'd pay
| tax on that $500. But if it's actually worth more, of
| course you wouldn't charge such a low fee.
| kstrauser wrote:
| To my knowledge, all US states have property tax.
| eitland wrote:
| That's the point up thread.
|
| It isn't now, but we could make it so.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Property is almost always taxed. In Texas, property taxes
| on homes are 2.5 - 3% of value, most people pay between
| 8K - 30K every year. And this keeps going up! Over a 30
| year mortgage, I'm sure most people pay more on property
| taxes than on their home. Approximately 50% of property
| taxes go to school districts, the rest for other
| municipal services.
|
| Some states also tax car as property.
|
| What is not taxed is Intellectual Property. Because it is
| almost completely owned by the super rich. And, of
| course, these billionaires need all the help they can
| get. How about we change this? We can think of wiping out
| property taxes for homeowners (making homes affordable)
| and fund education from patent taxes. After all, the
| super rich are deriving these patents from the education
| system, its only fair they pay their fair share.
| IanCal wrote:
| Something I've wondered about - you specify a value and pay
| a tax accordingly. Anyone is then able to buy it from you
| for that price. Have some short term part for free, then
| fees scale over time.
| eitland wrote:
| A slightly different version was in use in Denmark:
|
| a ship declared the value of their cargo for toll
| purposes. They decided the price, but the catch was the
| customs could buy the cargo at that price.
| jstarfish wrote:
| That is fiendishly clever.
| balderdash wrote:
| It sounds nice in principal but I think it's not so easy
| in practice, if I asked you what's your car worth you
| probably say something along the lines of well it would
| cost x to replace it, or I paid y for it, or I could sell
| it for z on eBay (all three different prices) but if you
| then said that well whatever price you say someone can
| buy your car for and you're stuck with without a car
| while you go figure out replacing is actually a price is
| not any of those prices, and is probably higher than the
| actual value, and may even be higher than the cost to
| replace it - you might say that's the idea but ultimately
| it feels creepy to make people pay a tax to avoid the
| risk of an asset they rely on not to be taken away at an
| inconvenient time...
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| This creates a clear and obvious arbitrage opportunity
| that finance people on Wall Street will exploit almost
| instantly.
| ardel95 wrote:
| That would effectively kill software patents. Which is a
| fine outcome.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| This is better than what I proposed.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Something like this genuinely does hurt very small
| businesses or inventors who invent something actually
| valuable but don't have time to quickly scale up.
|
| What I like for IP laws is as follows:
|
| When you create a protected work, you pay a very small fee.
| Say, $1 for copyright, maybe $500 for a patent.
|
| Each year thereafter, if you wish to maintain your IP
| protection, you must pay double what was paid the previous
| year. Otherwise the property reverts to the public domain.
|
| This ensures a period of protection if it's genuinely
| needed, but ensures that everything will eventually enter
| the public domain, _especially_ in the case where no one is
| making any economic use of the material.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Patent protection already is not indefinite. It seems
| much simpler and more fair to shorten the protection
| period.
| beefield wrote:
| I offer one more alternative. Double the tax every year,
| and once the ip holder decides not to pay the tax, IP is
| released to public domain. No compnay has money to keep IP
| indefinitely in such a scheme.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I would suggest only for corporations above a certain
| size. I would appreciate if some old music composer
| somewhere gets to continue being old and stuff without
| worrying about this sort of thing.
| polishTar wrote:
| A lot of patent trolls are very small companies though
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It would have to be managed by tracking the number of
| active patents. You get 100 active patents tax free. Over
| that, and you have to pay an annual fee. This allows for
| independent inventors to operate as the system intended
| while clamping down on NPEs.
| DylanDmitri wrote:
| Music compositions get covered by copyright. Patents are
| another section of law.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Music is coveredby copyright , an entirely different law
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| What do you think will happen if IP becomes impossible to
| afford, as it surely will under such a policy? Do you
| think companies that value IP will bother investing
| further in R&D, let alone even stay in your country?
|
| Congratulations on the massive net loss in taxable income
| in your country.
|
| EDIT: Removed some mean words.
| dustingetz wrote:
| in the software ip case, they can invest in building
| competitive products in an open market. If your software
| IP is a secret then don't publish!
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| So, for example, the secret sauce that makes the CPLEX
| and Gurobi solvers tens or hundreds of times faster than
| open source equivalents should simply be released to the
| public, leading to the immediate loss of 90% of those
| products' competitive advantage?
|
| You don't see how such a policy would spur terror among
| large, profitable companies with trade secrets, leading
| to them moving overseas?
| Rygian wrote:
| If it's secret sauce, it's not a patent.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| In these threads it always end up being: "Sure Foo would
| be nice, but, I don't know if you are aware, we are
| actually held at gunpoint by the status quo; its all
| really a non starter when you consider this fact."
|
| If this is the only real problem, than why not just let
| them go overseas? Let the market play it out? The boon of
| progress and freedom X country would get from becoming
| even little more rational about IP would pay for itself
| and be better for actual people.
| kortilla wrote:
| I don't think you understand how patents are used. It's
| not secret sauce if it's patented.
| hervature wrote:
| You do not seem to understand how patents work because of
| other comments thinking that you can patent something
| without publicly disclosing the invention. In and of
| itself, this comment is silly because the answer to your
| question "What do you think will happen if IP becomes
| impossible to afford, as it surely will under such a
| policy?" is "exactly what happens when patents expire
| currently." It appears you are unaware that companies
| still invest in R&D knowing they at most get a few
| decades of exclusive rights.
| patmcc wrote:
| It'll only be impossible to hold for long periods of
| time. We can start the tax at $1, it hits $1mil after 20
| years - and for 99.9999% of IP by year 20 it's either
| clearly worth zero or clearly worth >$1mil so it'll be an
| easy choice. It'll force things into the public domain
| faster and make it expensive to hold a big bullshit
| patent catalog, but for actively used properties it'll be
| fine.
|
| Companies are going to want to sell in one of the richest
| markets in the world; they can either pay for IP
| protection or not be granted it.
|
| edit: I'm not suggesting these exact $ values as clearly
| being the correct ones, it's just an example.
| brookst wrote:
| Doesn't work.
|
| Lots of people don't know what their IP is worth, and it
| can change with market and tech trends.
|
| And the damages aren't based on the harm to the IP owner,
| but on the benefit to the infringer.
|
| I could have a patent that I think is worthless, but in 10
| years I discover that a multinational flat out stole the IP
| after an NDA meeting. What is the value that I should have
| declared?
| balderdash wrote:
| I generally think the principal of taxing property is
| fundamentally flawed (especially as it relates to property
| that has a market value that can be quite volatile or hard to
| value and even more so if the property generates no current
| income).
|
| My rationale is that it means that only people that are rich
| can own property as they can afford the taxes, and especially
| if the property has increased in value over time and has no
| or small associated cash flows. By all means tax gains on
| realization (though I'd argue there should be a CPI
| adjustment to the basis but that's another conversation)
| cft wrote:
| They will fake usage. Software parents should not exist
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| law of unintended consequences
|
| the moment you put an expiration date on patents due to lack of
| use, watch moneyed competitors sitting around waiting for your
| patent to expire instead of using yours to bring it to market
| yieldcrv wrote:
| then you shouldn't form the patent then as you would still
| just be increasing costs for the industry by existing and
| delaying things
|
| you could have just written about it on your blog and been
| the same place and been a net positive for society
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I'm not arguing that its OK to patent code or abstract
| ideas that are the basis for BS "catch all" patent
| infringement lawsuits or amazon 1-click buy nonsense.
|
| I'm talking is about real inventions. Television, radio,
| wheeled luggage, etc.
|
| I also think that code should be copyrighted, not patented.
|
| Patents use to mean something else, and I can see we are
| talking about different things.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| You mean it would bring the price of licensing the patent
| down? I don't see the downside.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I'm not sure how small inventors could benefit from their
| creativity.
|
| What is at the core of this need to steal other people's
| ideas? HN is supposed to respect the rule of law and
| western respect for innovation and collecting the fruits of
| your labor.
|
| If someone won't give you a decent price, reverse engineer
| their work and come up with a creative alternative.
|
| I'm not arguing that its OK to patent code or abstract
| ideas that are the basis for BS "catch all" patent
| infringement lawsuits or amazon 1-click buy nonsense. I'm
| talking is about real inventions. Television, radio,
| wheeled luggage, etc.
|
| I also think that code should be copyrighted, but cannot be
| patented.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| 100% agree.
|
| Pretty sure the original idea of patents was to protect the
| inventor while they brought a product to market or licensed the
| patent to others to improve their products.
|
| Holding a patent without even attempting to bring the idea to
| market should invalidate the patent after some reasonable
| amount of time.
|
| The whole system as it is today needs a hard sanity check.
| ummonk wrote:
| So if I invent something but don't have the capital to
| manufacture it myself, I shouldn't be able to make money from
| licensing it to companies?
| iamthirsty wrote:
| Wouldn't that be a "use it" situation?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| How are patent trolls not "using it" then? If licensing the
| patent is using it, this suggestion does nothing to prevent
| trolling.
| declaredapple wrote:
| > but don't have the capital to manufacture it myself
|
| You're looking at 10k to file it, and then all it gives you
| is the ability to sue. If [insert company] violates it, you
| could easily be looking at 100k+ for litigation that you may
| or may not win.
|
| > So if I invent something
|
| My problem is you don't need to "invent" anything. You just
| need to be the first to file the paperwork (and have the cash
| to do so).
|
| "[sensor] on [smartwatch, glasses, goggles, belts, chairs,
| whatever]" and now nobody else can do it for 20 years. Even
| if it's blatantly obvious that an chair can sense if you're
| sitting in it to turn on the tv automatically.
| grishka wrote:
| Would work even better if patents were non-transferable and
| only assignable to actual people, not companies or other
| entities.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| While appealing to me as an entrepreneur, if I step back, I
| don't see how this law could work. Patent Law is the regulation
| of intellectual property, as such, the way property is
| regulated, informs the way intellectual property should be
| regulated.
|
| Would it be possible to pass a law that says you can't own a
| patch of land unless you develop it sufficiently for some
| public utility? You can't own it unless you build a house on
| it, or an office? What about all the rough land, that isn't
| close to a development yet, but is anticipated to be? If
| someone can tell me how a law like this has been shown to work,
| perhaps even in a limited case like densely populated zones,
| then I might be persuaded.
| hervature wrote:
| > Would it be possible to pass a law that says you can't own
| a patch of land unless you develop it sufficiently for some
| public utility?
|
| This is exactly how mineral rights work. The federal law says
| you need to do $100 worth of development on every claim every
| year to maintain it [1]. This is not something new.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-43/subtitle-B/chapter-
| II/...
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Ah okay, thanks. This is what I was looking for.
| fuhrtf wrote:
| Cloudflare is like Google early days. They could spend resources
| on things for the good of the all. In this case they're spending
| millions when they could have settled for much cheaper. Thanks
| Cloudflare.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Hope they wouldn't end like google. But you are right. Thank
| you Cloudflare.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| May their future noble side quests be successful.
| aftbit wrote:
| You either die a hero or you live long enough to become a
| villain.
| yread wrote:
| CloudFlare will be much scarier than Google as a villain
| adabyron wrote:
| Newegg was famous for doing this as well. Glad to see
| Cloudflare keeping the "Don't be evil" concept alive.
| coldpie wrote:
| Newegg's fall was so sad to see. From an top-notch seller of
| tech with an admirable legal team that made headlines, to yet
| another no-name online flea market.
| bashinator wrote:
| So true. Thank goodness for Microcenter and B&H. Especially
| the latter still has a hand-curated product selection.
| worewood wrote:
| I think this is just basic game theory.
|
| If they settled the trolls would just keep coming.
|
| If they fight the patent extortion then trolls are going to
| think twice before suing them, for fear of losing .
| croemer wrote:
| Sure it might well be in Cloudflare's self-interest, but it's
| still good they're doing it this way. If it was very
| obviously the best thing to do, other companies would do
| likewise. The fact that Cloudflare's approach appears novel
| suggests it's not just simple self-interest.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The company that I used to work for, had a _vast_ patent
| portfolio.
|
| They were also getting sued regularly, by patent trolls.
|
| They had really good lawyers, and had a basic policy, to
| _never_ settle with trolls. It wasn 't altruistic. They just
| didn't want to get bullied. I'm sure that they also went
| after other companies, and there was probably a lot of
| wheeling and dealing. That's one of the reasons that
| corporations like to hoard patents.
|
| They used to require their engineers to file a couple of
| patents a year. I am on a patent. I got a dollar for it.
| DistractionRect wrote:
| It probably wouldn't have been cheaper. The settlement would
| likely look like a fixed fee for previous use + yearly fee for
| X years before renegotiation, renegotiated y times before the
| patent expired.
|
| It's likely that over the lifetime of the patent, the total
| cost would have been more than the cost to fight it, and as the
| a sibling pointed out, settling begets more suits +
| settlements. It adds up fast.
|
| This isn't Cloudflare being "good," it's in their best interest
| to fight frivolous suits.
| gkiely wrote:
| Why did none of the other companies listed in the article
| fight it, if this is the case?
| nightpool wrote:
| Maybe Sable saw Cloudflare as a juicier target, since the
| other companies listed are all hardware manufactures and
| don't operate a large consumer business like Cloudflare
| (leading to very, very different usage numbers). Or maybe
| Cloudflare thought that they had a better chance at trial
| against hardware patents, since they don't make router
| hardware themselves.
| jwr wrote:
| Worth mentioning: Newegg is another company that doesn't blink
| and goes after patent trolls with a vengeance, at least they used
| to: https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-
| when-...
| adabyron wrote:
| I don't believe they still do this & not sure their culture is
| the same. They were purchased by a company based out of China
| years ago. Lee Cheng I believe is responsible for a lot of that
| effort. He no longer works there.
| fargle wrote:
| Awesome job! Thank you cloudflare.
|
| maybe this is the path to kill the trolls. tech companies could
| fund an insurance-like mutual scheme to defend instead of pay off
| the trolls and then drive them out of business. it can also
| research and invalidate their ridiculous patents.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Somehow Sable reminds me of a wart. A big ugly wart with a few
| hairs and just as useless. It's not much of a problem but you
| would be better without it.
| kloch wrote:
| Wasn't one of the key purposes of Patents to catalog inventions
| (not just to encourage their creation)?
|
| Today we have Wikipedia and other free open databases for that.
| schmichael wrote:
| > One of our outstanding engineers described what it's like to
| create a new product
|
| This is a good reminder to enthusiastically help out your legal
| team if your company is the target of trolls!
|
| I had the opportunity to do it once. Our legal team was helpful,
| patient, and curious. The work was pretty annoying because you
| have to try to help them work out whether some bizarrely worded
| unrelated thing could possibly be construed to be part of our
| product.
|
| In our case the troll went away as soon as we made it clear we
| were serious about taking it to court.
|
| I cannot tell you how thankful I am for Cloudflare taking it as
| far as they can. The cost and risk must be considerable to them.
| drcongo wrote:
| This was a great write-up and getting a win like that in West
| Texas is no mean feat. Thanks for fighting for it Cloudflare.
| Havoc wrote:
| Doesn't this just mean trolls will sue everyone except CF going
| forward?
|
| Seems like a valiant stance but still short of what is needed
| something industry wide - something to invalidates this "business
| model" entirely
| withinboredom wrote:
| If you don't enforce a patent as soon as you become aware of
| it, it becomes much harder to sue (similar to trademark I
| believe). I could be wrong, IANAL
| ark4579 wrote:
| @CloduFlare Sell Movie rights to this story to cover legal fees
| please! That would be so funny.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >The patents relied on by Sable were filed around the turn of the
| century, and they addressed the hardware-based router technology
| of the day.
|
| At first I was wondering what routers existed back in 1900, then
| realized it was not that turn of the century. I think this is the
| first time I have see 'turn of the century' refer to 1999->2000.
|
| Chicago Manual of Style has some good usage suggestions on
| this...
|
| https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/U...
|
| >A: Instead, write "at the beginning of the twentieth century,"
| or "at the end of the nineteenth century," or "in the years
| around 1900." "The turn of the century" is useful only when the
| context makes it obvious which turn you're talking about.
|
| Of course when talking routers I guess the context was clear.
| saintfire wrote:
| FWIW I also defaulted to 1900 and think mentioning the
| millennium is far less ambiguous than the century.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| This is great. It's very expensive to take these cases to trial.
| Cloudflare could have just settled and spent less.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| this is an excellent summary of how the system works.
|
| Every month HN has a thread like this, and every month the usual
| suspects rant about how patents are fucked up, and there needs to
| be this, that, or the other. And nothing changes.
|
| Ask your local candidates for Congress if they'll support
| removing patentability for software. That's how you solve this
| problem.
| ronsor wrote:
| They won't.
|
| The reason patents (and copyright) have gotten so bad is a
| mixture of corrupt lobbying activity and a quagmire of
| questionable international treaties.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Politics happen. Things that were previously unthinkable
| suddenly become thinkable.
|
| It only seems "suddenly" because all the behind-the-scenes
| activity was going on when no one was looking.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > Ask your local candidates for Congress if they'll support
| removing patentability for software. That's how you solve this
| problem.
|
| That's not how any of this works. You don't think some people
| have already "asked their local candidates for Congress" about
| this? Surely you have personally done that? If you have, then
| how come the problem still exists? Clearly your action of
| "asking your local candidate for Congress" did _not_ solve the
| problem...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > You don't think some people have already "asked their local
| candidates for Congress" about this?
|
| Actually, no, I don't think they have. Judging by the lack of
| ANY bills in Congress, even bills that get shitcanned by the
| leadership -- no, no one has.
|
| I was going to quote the rest of your post, but it's _all_
| ignorant.
|
| I know how the lobbying in Congress goes; I personally helped
| hire one of Google's DC political representatives. Do you
| know anything?
|
| The way it goes is, the big pharma companies block any patent
| reforms. The way to get them out of the picture is to remove
| software from the patent system.
|
| As for "Clearly your action of "asking your local candidate
| for Congress" did not solve the problem" you have some warped
| idea of how representative politics works. You don't just
| talk to someone and your wishes get magically carried out.
| Rather it's a sustained struggle where the enemy gets to have
| their say, too.
| shmerl wrote:
| It should go beyond invalidating patents. Patent abusers should
| be persecuted for racketeering. Because it's exactly what they
| are doing.
| creeble wrote:
| No mention of Cloudflare's own large portfolio of software
| patents.
|
| Wonder when they'll start enforcing their patent on CNAME
| flattening, for example:
|
| https://patents.justia.com/patent/11159479
|
| Edit; clarity
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| Why should there be a mention about their patents?
| creeble wrote:
| So that one can begin to judge how duplicitous their claims
| in defence of another's 'invalid' patent my be.
| patmcc wrote:
| If Cloudflare starts trying to sue or shake down folks with
| their patents, this will be a very valid point. Until then
| it's a little silly; everybody holds patents for (at least)
| defensive reasons.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Exactly. As long as that's how the game is played you
| _must_ play it or you will be sued out of existence.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| It's a defensive patent portfolio. They use it to counter sue
| if a competitor sues them.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Edit: Removed a bone-headed hypothetical.
| brlewis wrote:
| You lose a trademark if you don't defend it. I don't
| believe the same is true of patents.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| My face is red. Thanks. I didn't stop and think long
| enough before I posted.
| toast0 wrote:
| > My understanding is a patent holder must defend their
| rights, if they are aware of the infringement, at the peril
| of losing them.
|
| Pretty sure that's just for trademarks.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Agh. Absolutely. Wrong flavor of "intellectual property".
| Thanks.
| michael1999 wrote:
| And that's why Stallman is so firm that there is no such
| thing as "intellectual property". As soon as you start
| using that term, you start believing there is something
| more general and meaningful to it and start muddying the
| concepts. But it is just a mirage.
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html
| greyface- wrote:
| Have they made any commitments, binding or non-binding, to
| this effect?
| zoobab wrote:
| "stop the trolls through prior art"
|
| Use Alice instead.
|
| Using prior art is a waste of time.
| udev4096 wrote:
| Reminds me of the patent troll from Silicon Valley
| jokoon wrote:
| Imagine I'm a small software company, and I can't fight a patent
| troll, and I don't want to pay them or go bankrupt in legal
| costs.
|
| Can't I short-circuit that by just selling services elsewhere?
|
| Aren't there companies that just refuse to abide or negotiate
| with patent trolls, out of spite, what happens then? Can a patent
| troll shut down a company? At some point, wouldn't that make the
| news? What are the risks? What allows patent trolls to have
| legitimacy?
|
| I can understand that it's mostly a scam operation to extort
| money to those who want them to go away, but that can't always
| work.
|
| I've heard it's mostly a few courts in Texas or elsewhere. Isn't
| it possible to just not interact with the states where those
| patent trolls are?
| yashap wrote:
| Nice to see Cloudflare fighting the good fight, but patent trolls
| aren't the only issue with software patents. A major issue that
| people talk about way less is well funded/large companies getting
| bullshit patents, and using them to sue their small startup
| competitors into the ground. It doesn't even matter if they win -
| when a company with billions in the bank sues a company with
| millions in the bank, the small company is basically just screwed
| no matter what because they can't afford the legal fees. It's a
| cheap way for big, bloated, slow moving companies to eliminate
| fast moving, lean, disruptive competition.
|
| A major source of this problem IMO is the granting of bullshit
| patents in the first place - patents that should never have been
| granted because they're obvious and/or there was prior art.
| Patent clerks aren't actually subject matter experts in the
| field, and there's little incentive for them to deny bullshit
| patents. They maybe deny them once or twice, but dedicated
| companies just keep applying and eventually get them granted,
| because the applicant has a major incentive to get the bullshit
| patent, and the patent office has only minor incentives to deny
| bullshit patents. I think these incentives need to be changed -
| for example, if company A sues company B over patent C, company B
| spends $10 million on their defence, and wins with the patent
| being deemed invalid, I think company B should get MAJOR
| financial rewards from BOTH company A and the patent office, on
| the order of 10x+ what they spent on their defence. If granting a
| bullshit patent was a $100 mil mistake, patent offices would be
| WAY more careful with the patents they grant, and applying for
| patents would be WAY more expensive, and those are both good
| things!
|
| The right incentives could keep the good parts of the patent
| system while eliminating the (currently pretty massive, out of
| control) downsides. Patents are currently a mediocre idea
| implemented incredibly poorly.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| I think this is the main problem, rather than companies owning
| patents they do not implement, and suing the ones that do
| without a licence.
|
| There are so many bogus patents being granted. Prior art search
| done by patent clerks, from what I have read, can just be
| searching existing patents. So if something was invented long
| ago but never patented, then that might not even be caught in a
| search, even if there are many web pages or academic papers
| that describe that prior art. And like you said, they may not
| be able to realise that the invention is actually obvious,
| because they are not subject matter experts.
|
| There is another problem where the patent is valid but the
| defendant's product does not violate it. It is often too
| expensive for the victim to litigate it in court. Depending on
| the jurisdiction, the plaintiff may not even have to tell you
| exactly which patents they are alleging that you have violated,
| until they sue you. So you cannot even check whether their
| claim is reasonable.
|
| It needs to be easier and cheaper to challenge bad patents and
| false claims of infringement.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| > A major issue that people talk about way less is well
| funded/large companies getting bullshit patents, and using them
| to sue their small startup competitors into the ground.
|
| Do you have any examples?
| mike_hock wrote:
| Simple solution: Abolish patents. All the rhetoric about
| incentivizing innovation is bullshit. They stifle innovation,
| and they stifle competition. They're designed to protect slow,
| inefficient established corporations. That's all they ever did
| and that's all they'll ever do.
| jMyles wrote:
| Hear hear.
|
| But how?
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Agreed. I shouldn't be banned from inventing something just
| because somebody else already invented it. Patents suck.
| palata wrote:
| I think it's a bit more nuanced than that, because in some
| industries patents _may_ make sense.
|
| I would say "Simple solution: abolish patents on software".
| t43562 wrote:
| There's obviously inefficiency in the system - a big cost every
| time a decision involves lawyers and even more if there are
| juries.
|
| So we should understand that we don't have a way to be perfect
| and think about where to balance the trade-offs.
|
| We want to give people a chance to make money before they are
| wiped out by those that copy them but I don't think we have an
| interest in someone "cornering the market" indefinitely.
|
| We could reduce their lifetime - that would cut a lot of
| decisions.
|
| We could limit the amount of money a patent is allowed to return
| based on an estimate of what it cost to create plus a reasonable
| profit rather like a kickstarter campaign.
|
| We could cancel software patents altogether.
| errantmind wrote:
| There is no evidence patents increase innovation. I suggest
| reading 'The Case Against Patents':
|
| https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/wp/2012/2012-035.p...
| thih9 wrote:
| > the jury went further and found that Sable's old and broadly-
| written patent claim was invalid and never should have been
| granted in the first place-meaning they can no longer assert the
| claim against anyone else
|
| Perhaps people/institutions that grant overly broad patents
| should be held responsible in a scenario like this?
| cloogshicer wrote:
| Serious question: What if you run a small blog with a newsletter
| and some troll comes along and sues you - how do you defend
| yourself?
|
| Even if the troll's claims are completely ridiculous, if you
| don't have a few $100k lying around for legal fees, you might not
| even have the option of going to trial. What do you do in such a
| case?
| jackblemming wrote:
| You bend the knee. The legal system exists to serve the rich.
| pjerem wrote:
| I'm not in the US so, YMMV, but in France, I subscribed a
| "legal insurance".
|
| It will cover enough fees to at least give you enough insight
| about what is happening, if you should defend your case, if you
| are faulty or if you should just ignore the threat.
|
| Also, even if our judiciary system isn't perfect, I doubt you
| will find a judge that wouldn't be comprehensive of a random
| being attacked by a corporation. Especially if there is no
| obvious malicious intent or personal benefit, you only risk
| some symbolic fine and the order to stop.
|
| So, I would probably ask for judiciary advice and either ignore
| or comply to the troll.
| pulse7 wrote:
| How can it be, that the US legal system derailed so much that
| such trolls can exist? A regular person or small business >>can't
| afford<< to go to trail and is therefore willing to settle... and
| patent trolls are living on this situation like parasites...
| janpieterz wrote:
| It would be an interesting idea to fund a company (probably best
| as a non-profit) that takes patent trolls to court selecting
| cases based on what trolls are suing and where we can find prior
| art. Troll the trolls.
| rexreed wrote:
| Patent trolls are a wart on the tumor that is software patents.
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