4 ms·

Now this Patent Troll has even more ammunition to shakedown companies in future whilst encouraging creation of even more low-life leeching NPE's. Clearly Paten

by mythz 11y ago

Now this Patent Troll has even more ammunition to shakedown companies in future whilst encouraging creation of even more low-life leeching NPE's. Clearly Patent Trolls adds negative value, harms progress and increases cost of business - how long will this legal racketeering be allowed to continue?

replies_to_all 11y ago
Or maybe they act to keep the big players honest?
- mythz 11y ago
  The big players can afford it, their existence just adds a barrier to entry and causes more harm to young/unestablished companies.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  If these were companies that actually did something, instead of waste everyone's time and resources, you'd have a point.
JackFr 11y ago
> low-life leeching NPE's NullPointerExceptions?
- mythz 11y ago
  Non Practicing Entities - i.e. trolls.
  - JackFr 11y ago
    Damn. Cause if someone patented NullPointerExceptions they'd sure be rich.
    - jkyle 11y ago
      Done. [1] 1. http://www.google.co.ug/patents/EP0881577A2?cl=fi http://www.google.co.ug/patents/EP0881577A2?cl=fi
      - ScottBurson 11y ago
        This is an extremely narrow patent that doesn't do anything like claiming all uses of null pointer exceptions. It just claims what strikes me as a rather minor optimization on how attempts to dereference a null pointer can be detected. It surprises me a little that it was considered worth patenting, but I guess it is fairly general in that it could be used in a lot of language implementations. The benefit is hardly worth writing home about, though.
        jkyle 11y ago
        My tongue was firmly in cheek.
        ScottBurson 11y ago
        Oops! Sorry, I missed it :-)
      - bobwaycott 11y ago
        What the fuck.