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Being sued, in East Texas, for using the Google Play Store [video]

1565 points by egb 10y ago

jiiam 10y ago
It's good to raise awareness, especially on the users of the play store (I mean, the developers). For example I learned a lot from this video: in case I decided to sell an app on any store, I'd better contact my lawyer to get advised on where and how to incorporate my company. I don't know if it can be easily resolved by incorporating in another country, but the difficulties of an international litigation should discourage trolls.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  New Zealand. They banned software patents.
  - mobilefriendly 10y ago
    There's broad exclusion for software in Europe as well.
clavalle 10y ago
People will mention the problem with patents but I see another, perhaps bigger, problem: We do not have equal access to our judicial system in the United States. If you have money, you have the power to legally hold people with less over a barrel. That exploitable inequality is poison for a well functioning society. That is the problem that needs solving.
- distances 10y ago
  "Loser pays" would go a long way, I think. Not being that familiar with the US system, what's the reasoning not to have this?
  - NTripleOne 10y ago
    Some people would make a lot less money.
  - teej 10y ago
    It's called the English Rule. People argue that implementing it could disincentivize people bringing forth valid cases and that it could lower the liklihood of settling, increasing legal and court costs for cases that do go through. I don't really have an opinion either way, those are just the common arguments against it.
    - Silhouette 10y ago
      They're common arguments, but the predicted falling skies don't happen very often in practice. Meanwhile, there is far less of a problem with barratry under loser pays than the US system seems to have.
  - saint_fiasco 10y ago
    If loser pays, poor people would be discouraged from even attempting to sue rich people. Even if the poor person has a legitimate claim, there is a small probability that the rich person will win with their superior lawyers and the poor person will be bankrupted by the legal fees. Since they will know that from the beginning, they won't sue in the first place.
    - kefka 10y ago
      It could be done that it is not loser pays by default. Instead, if a case is won, and the case was deemed frivolous, only then could loser-pays be enacted. But it still doesn't solve the idea that the "Law is more equal the more money you have." .
      - brianwawok 10y ago
        This is essentially how it works today, from my understanding. If you lose and your suit was 100% without merrit, you can be sued for lawyer fees. From what I understand, the problem is the bar for meritless is very very very high. Not sure how you legislate that. I think most lawsuits are meritless. A lawyer may have a very different opinion.
- cinquemb 10y ago
  But in all honesty, I do not see things changing anytime soon with regards to what you mention as being a bigger problem in the US (that I've personally experienced when going up against facebook without trying to spend a fortune in civil court). I do see people taking advantage of legal systems in other countries in order to do other behaviors and applying a legal arbitrage of sorts agaisnt another legal system (i.e scihub/libgen vs elsevier), so maybe this will become more prevalent as time goes on as the technical means to do so becomes more available.
- rhino369 10y ago
  It's actually the opposite. These patents trolls are typically very small operations suing massive corporations. They aren't rich guys screwing the little guy. It's the little guy screwing whoever he can. These little guys have too much access to the legal system. That's why it's hard to clamp down on. Nobody wants to make it so only big guys can have access to the legal system.
  - HillaryBriss 10y ago
    With the added wrinkle in this particular case that the patent troll is also suing a bunch of little guys who decided to use Google Play Store.
    - rhino369 10y ago
      Sounds like they are suing whoever they can including Minecraft which isn't a small fish. There is a form of patent trolling that only goes after small guys. But they'd avoid actually litigating the patent and just push a settlement. They'd never take it to trial because little guys can't pay out enough to justify the cost of a patent trial. That form is basically extortion. They ask for a small sum of money to just go away.
      - HillaryBriss 10y ago
        > They ask for a small sum of money to just go away. Outrageous. Surprised there isn't a more meaningful response from Google.
  - tanker 10y ago
    You identified a separate problem from the parent post rather than refuting it. #1: Big corporations can push small guys out of business by tying up their products in patent disputes. #2: Patent trolls can bleed corporations big and small while producing nothing of value. These problems are specific to the patent industry. Are there similar problems in other areas of the law? If so, we may be able to identify and try to solve the larger problem. If not, we just need to focus on patent reform which is an easier problem.
- thegasman 10y ago
  >We do not have equal access to our judicial system in the United States. I agree, but I think we can be more specific. Criminals (or those accused of a crime) are constitutionally guaranteed an attorney. Civil plaintiffs/defendants, by contrast, have no such right. The anecdotes and experiences of HN users overwhelmingly describe the civil side of things. Civil lawsuits, IMO, should carry no guarantee of counsel at the constitutional level. Imagine if they did: free lawyers mean frivolous lawsuits and over-burdened courts. But, I don't think anyone is actually clamoring for such an arrangement. So, specifically, how can we more efficiently allocate limited legal resources to ensure that the average civil litigant is not disadvantaged by a wealth disparity with his opponent? Well, what's the perceived disadvantage to a resource-poor litigant? What's the perceived advantage to a resource-rich litigant? Good facts make good cases much more frequently than good lawyers make good cases.
  - stormbrew 10y ago
    An interesting thought experiment along the lines of resolving this inequality is making it so that sides can only fund their civil case through a fund that both sides contribute to but both sides get an equal share. This means in order to frivolously sue someone, you have to be willing to fund their effort to defend against you. It probably breaks down a lot in cases involving multiple litigants (let alone class actions), but it is an interesting idea.
    - noir_lord 10y ago
      That's a genuinely brilliant idea! The ramifications on corp to corp lawsuits would be amazing.
    - rms_returns 10y ago
      A brilliant idea! I hope this actually gets implemented some day in a legal system of any country.
    - knodi123 10y ago
      "Hi, yes, I'd like to sue Apple for millions, and since I'm an unemployed armchair lawyer, I can make sure it takes a long while and a lot of tedious aggravation to beat me. Also, since I'm suing pro se, Apple would be paying me a salary equal to whatever their legal team makes for the duration of the trial. Or, you know, I'd be happy for Apple to just give me $100,000 to settle." Then repeat for every wealthy corp you can think of. A loss doesn't hurt you, because you're still getting paid from the joint legal fund. Alternatively, Apple could give a lawyer a million dollar gift, with the understanding that he'll defend them in any lawsuits for the next year while charging minimum wage. Then, Apple would be happy to pay an equal amount of minimum wage dollars toward the other side's legal expenses.
- sheepleherd 10y ago
  | We do not have equal access to our judicial system in the United States. If you have money, you have the power... Your POV that money distorts and helps determine winners, while seeming so prima facie obvious, does not come close to getting to the real problem. I know this because I have money and I've spent well over a million dollars on attorneys in the last decade and I got very little in the way of ... not justice, very little in the way of consideration of the core legal questions in each case; in fact, I don't even know how the interesting core legal questions would have been resolved, the courts completely dodged them; and along the way, I saw a vast amount of phony posturing, amplification of minor details, and outright lying and manipulation of the legal system, mostly by attorneys; and the judges eat it up, because they too are attorneys. (and BTW, when a judge sees an unsophisticated indigent defendant, they actually do bend over backward to help them, say a confused tenant who does not pay rent is most usually given many many more chances.) To put it into the context of this guy's patent rant: my point would be, there is a question as to whether this patent is valid or not, and whether it covers this particular issue or not. The "right/just" answer would be found more quickly and more cheaply and more rationally if the judge would simply decide that first in a non-binding way, like "from what I know so far, here's the way this is tilted". Then after that, if the losers wanted to spend money to present a stronger case they could, and the judge could say "warmer...warmer... colder". Then after all that, if you want to try to change the thing on a technicality like "yeah but you didn't serve the notice the right way", then the court would hear that. The way courts decide things is to completely front-load all these arcane minor points, and it has the effect of squeezing the shit out of the litigants to force them to settle. "You think you have a legal dispute that's worth this much? I'll give you dispute resolution that costs more and much of your life. Now do you want to settle? Don't test me, as a judge I'm a former attorney, we win at this game. Now do you want to settle?"
  - clavalle 10y ago
    You are right. Having money equips someone to at least be able to put up a fight to reach a conclusion but that is not the heart of the issue. Whether you have money or not the real problem is the threat of loss due to the /process/ as opposed the merits and likely result of the case. That is the problem that needs to be solved. I'm not saying I know how to remove the expense of the process out of the equation but that is what needs to be done. Your suggestion is a good one. If the result itself is clearer earlier it would take some of the power out of the threat of expensive process.
- steven2012 10y ago
  The other side of that coin is that if you don't have a lot of money then you most likely won't get sued.
- js471 10y ago
  I complained about a corporation that was breaking the law in an online forum. They sued me for defamation, saying flatly that they had no dealings whatsoever in the accused activity. Shortly after they sued someone else in the same state claiming that, in the process of the same illegal activity, which they described in detail, some other party was not acting in good faith. I ask my lawyer "how in America in 2016 can they make two blatantly contradictory lawsuits?" The lawyer told me "This is a pissing contest you don't want to be involved in. You should settle ASAP". So I paid my life savings and tried to move on.
- dragontamer 10y ago
  Or maybe its just a problem with the East Texas court. Almost all bad patent issues resolve from this court. A ton of them are appealed successfully. It doesn't matter how fairly the laws are written if the judges presiding over them are assholes.
JakeWesorick 10y ago
Really seems like Google/Apple should make some kind of statement calling out how ridiculous these lawsuits are.
- Flott 10y ago
  Could Google do more then a statement? It can't be good for their business if people are being sued for simply uploading an app to the Play Store.
  - djrogers 10y ago
    When developers were sued by Lodsys Apple intervened with a motion due to the fact that the developers were covered under Apple's license. After 2 years, the judge refused to hear the motion and threw it out...
  - toss1941 10y ago
    I agree, Google must step in here, pronto.
- rplnt 10y ago
  Doesn't sound like Google. If it had affected Newegg on the other hand...
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  What these tech giants need to do is collude, but this time instead of colluding to screw over their employees by not "poaching" them, they need to collude to cut off all their services to this district of East Texas. Screw over the morons living in this area whose economy lives off this leaching, and also make it so many patent lawsuits can be easily dismissed because the internet services these patents supposedly cover won't be available there, so they can argue the venue is inappropriate.
comboy 10y ago
Couldn't Google offer defense in such cases for its users? Every case is the same so it shouldn't even be that expensive (I guess, IANAL), and it would discourage future cases because the troll would know he will have to fight against Google.
- oddevan 10y ago
  I do feel like when a similar thing happened with the iOS App Store (app devs sued for using in-app purchases), Apple tried to insert itself into the case saying that all the technology used was theirs.
- rhino369 10y ago
  Yea they could in multiple ways. They could sue to the troll for a declaratory judgement of invalidity and non infringement. Or they just indemnify their app stor developers for any patent liability caused by using their product.
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    >Or they just indemnify their app stor developers for any patent liability caused by using their product. What about actual patent violations?
    - matthewmacleod 10y ago
      IANAL, but I don't think there's a reason they couldn't indemnify against patent lawsuits regarding the distribution of applications through their services, while not indemnifying for patent violations in the applications themselves.
    - anthonybsd 10y ago
      >their product "Their" in this case being "Google Play" product and any liability arising from the use of thereof.
- tommoor 10y ago
  Good guy Google should definitely be stepping in here
Claudus 10y ago
Judge Davis retired May 15, 2015 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Davis_(judge) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Davis_(judge)
- CameronBanga 10y ago
  Thank God, all of this should be coming to an end any day now.
  - jules 10y ago
    It won't though. The supply of people willing to sell their soul to make easy money contains more than one person.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      </s>
  - Pica_soO 10y ago
    Son appointed judge, family clan as associates in law-firm... The world does not work this way.
    - jhayward 10y ago
      The president appoints federal judges. Not too likely that he's thinking about how to rig the patent court in East Texas.
- jostmey 10y ago
  And what has such a man accomplished at the end of his life?
  - mfisher87 10y ago
    Probably made a ton of money by ruining people's lives.
tomglynch 10y ago
A comment from a reddit thread states: The gist behind this case is that the Judge's son owns patent law firm in East Texas where they often represent both sides. This guy doesn't live in East Texas. However, the dad lets these stupid cases into the town to bring business to his son. Really shady. I agree with clavelle's comment. It's not so much the laws, but the system that allows this to occur. Link here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4n08jj/developer_is_being_sued_for_using_the_google_play/d405cbn https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4n08jj/developer_i...
- InvisibleCities 10y ago
  > The gist behind this case is that the Judge's son owns patent law firm in East Texas where they often represent both sides. Isn't this a blatant conflict of interest? If this isn't grounds for disbarment, what is?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mfoy_ 10y ago
    Maybe the firm doesn't represent both sides simultaneously. Maybe they usually represent the patent troll, but if someone needs a patent troll defense lawyer they'll do that too. Basically, as long as patent litigation is in town, business is good.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      That helps, but the judge working cases his son's law firm also works is pretty bad too.
      - mfoy_ 10y ago
        Oh absolutely. The judge is entertaining all those patent cases simply because it's good for his son's law practice. Unacceptable.
dingo_bat 10y ago
Someone with money and lawyers needs to sue the state of Texas for allowing a father and son duo to practice in such a conflict of interest fashion. This is a clear cut case of corruption.
- HillaryBriss 10y ago
  Isn't this the federal court system? Not sure: is Texas even able to do anything about this?
- djrogers 10y ago
  I'm not sure where exactly this assertion stands - Judge Davis retires last year, and in 2011 when Lodsys was represented by his son's firm, their cases were always assigned to the other district judge (Gilsap I believe?) due to the conflict of interest. It's sensational and scummy sounding, so it really fits the narrative of the evil patent trolls (a narrative I wholeheartedly support), I don't see any reason to believe it's true.
  - dingo_bat 10y ago
    Ah! I didn't know that! I was going on what the guy in the video said.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  I'm not even sure where to begin with this :) First, you can't sue a state without their permission, they have sovereign immunity. Second, you would have no standing unless you were directly affected Third, outside of violating non-binding legal ethics rules, it's not clear what law you think this somehow violates. The state can pretty much do whatever it wants here. Plus, all of this is federal anyway, so suing the state of texas would accomplish nothing. Outside of random statutes, your best bet would probably be due process violations, but ...
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    A lawsuit might not be appropriate, but there is a separate 'right to petition the government' for that.
curiousgal 10y ago
I'm no advocate of violence but this makes you wonder about the ethics of beating such guys up. The legal system seems pointless.
- davesque 10y ago
  You're wondering about the ethics of beating someone up to get what you want?
  - tim333 10y ago
    It might make the world a better place overall but likely cause problems for the beater.
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      One of those post-bucket list things to do, maybe, after you've been diagnosed with a terminal illness that still leaves you a month or two of personal autonomy.
      - jrockway 10y ago
        Don't worry, life is a terminal illness.
      - curiousgal 10y ago
        The potential silver lining of my breast cancer! I volunteer!
        CamperBob2 10y ago
        This is where I follow up my earlier post to make it crystal clear that it was tongue-in-cheek, not meant to be taken as advice, encouragement or incitement to violence, and that I would personally consider it very, very wrong for someone to confront patent trolls by flattening them with uparmored construction equipment Killdozer-style, taking them out with a deer rifle Texas-style, or pulling up alongside their cars on the highway and attaching limpet mines, Mossad-style. Under no circumstances should anyone do any of those things, because that would be wrong. (And, more seriously, I hope you never have a good excuse to try.)
6stringmerc 10y ago
So, no attempts to bring Davis in front of the Texas BAR association for unethical practices? I'm also curious why numerous developers have not demanded an Insurance Protection Product / Plan that would take a premium in return for subrogation (defense) if a frivolous Patent Suit is filed. I'm rather certain the market exists and while it may be for larger businesses or players, developers forming a Mutual Company and writing on some big name AM Best A paper (or even going to Lloyds) could be helpful. Anybody know of such an organization or idea? I guess my line of thinking here is that "Yes, this is totally unfair and rigged" and then move on to "How do I work around the issues, at least to a limited extent, to avoid these pitfalls?" Sign me up for reform, sure, I'm all for it. Until then, I don't like banging my head against walls, I prefer to figure out ways around or over them.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  > I'm also curious why numerous developers have not demanded an Insurance Protection Product / Plan that would take a premium in return for subrogation (defense) if a frivolous Patent Suit is filed. I'm rather certain the market exists and while it may be for larger businesses or players, developers forming a Mutual Company and writing on some big name AM Best A paper (or even going to Lloyds) could be helpful. It would be very cool if company such as NewEgg could offer this - they already have the in-house counsel/expertise; and since the number of people trolled is very small, I'm sure even a small premium would be enough to cover it (provided you have enough customers).
- ntaylor 10y ago
  > I'm also curious why numerous developers have not demanded an Insurance Protection Product / Plan that would take a premium in return for subrogation (defense) if a frivolous Patent Suit is filed. I'm rather certain the market exists and while it may be for larger businesses or players, developers forming a Mutual Company and writing on some big name AM Best A paper (or even going to Lloyds) could be helpful. I suspect part of the problem is that the monetary and time costs of litigation could not be easily measured. Every case would be, effectively, unique. Not insurmountable, but I have to imagine that the premiums would need to be very high.
eonw 10y ago
i was the victim of a patent trolling company called acacia research. they sent me a bunch of legal threats but had my name spelled incorrectly, which happened to give away who had sold my info to them(in exchange for dropping the case a certain entity traded all of their affiliates info to acacia). i was 19 at the time and laughed it off. nothing ever came of it, but in hindsight it certainly wasn't a laughing matter. in the end i think someone staged a pretty good defense and crushed their patent.
tronium 10y ago
Interestingly, the login button doesn't even work at uniloc.com, and if you look in the source, there's a ton of commented-out paragraphs that say stuff like "<h2>The spirit of innovation is alive and well at Uniloc.</h2>".
- dylan-m 10y ago
  Fun fact: their website has listings turned on and runs an ancient version of WordPress last touched in 2012. http://www.uniloc.com/wp-content/ http://www.uniloc.com/wp-content/ It's like they're trying to be as obviously illiterate as they possibly can.
  - ghurtado 10y ago
    Including publicly accessible database backups. I haven't seen such disregard for security in a very long time. For a "software security company" they sure are begging for their website to be hacked. Or maybe it is a honeypot?
    - glastra 10y ago
      INSERT INTO `wpu_users` VALUES (2, 'bdavis', [...], 'bdavis', 'bdavis@uniloc.com', '', '2010-08-05 18:06:44', '', 0, 'bdavis'); What the hell? Could this be the lawyer the video talks about? Apparently not: > Bradley C. Davis, Brad serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Uniloc USA
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- alexpetralia 10y ago
  They also have port 21 open: https://www.shodan.io/host/108.166.176.214 https://www.shodan.io/host/108.166.176.214
aurizon 10y ago
The only way you can deal with trolls is to slay them. Attribution of costs does not work. Most trolls consist of lawyers who create paper work and file it. They do not hire outside law firms at $500+ per hour - the ones their victims are forced to hire. The only tru costs they have are the file fees, which East Texas keeps low. That town is totally a parasitic town and they award wins to trolls to keep the town in cash that trickles down. I say slay the trolls, slay the judges, slay them all - by legal means if possible. I would love to find an old Texas law that allows trial by combat with no substitutions...
tronium 10y ago
Question: Is a lot of the backend supposed to be available through going directly to the wp-content? If you go to uniloc.com/wp-content/, there's backups, images, plugins, and even a .sql file...
- WhatIsThisIm12 10y ago
  Hah nice. Probably not the kind of firm you want to be messing with, however... Then again I'll just leave this here. http://uniloc.com/wp-content/backup-9b7a1/uniloc_wpu_20120326_014.sql http://uniloc.com/wp-content/backup-9b7a1/uniloc_wpu_2012032...
  - throwawayuniloc 10y ago
    You can find more here: http://pastebin.com/sevdmwzz http://pastebin.com/sevdmwzz
joshbaptiste 10y ago
TLDW - Patent troll sues Xplane creator after he migrated his app to the Google play store. They claim they own the general idea of the Google play store. Law firms create these cases for billable hours for their lawyers and some of their parent judges in Texas. Patent trolls and law firms in the end want to receive a settlement by targeting app creators and not Google themselves who are well equipped to defend themselves, http://www.thepatentscam.com/ http://www.thepatentscam.com/ .
- yrro 10y ago
  Wow, does this happen to many people who put their stuff on Google Play? What about the Apple App Store? Seems like Google/Apple should step in and cover the costs of being sued by a patent troll for using their platform... if they don't want developers to be discouraged from using it. Then again, particularly in Apple's case, it's not like the developers have much of a choice.
- MrMullen 10y ago
  Logically, how is this even possible? Xplane does not own Google Play Store and Xplane is not aware that Google is violating a patent then how is Xplane responsible for the patent violation? This strikes me a 15 minute conversation in front of a judge. "Sir, I did not know Google was violating a patent and I have withdrawn my application after being told so" and that should be the end of it.
  - namlem 10y ago
    Because this particular judge refuses to throw out illegitimate patent cases because he's corrupt as fuck. He recently retired, but presumably someone else just filled his place.
joshuaheard 10y ago
A couple of misconceptions in this video. Patent infringement is not a crime. A son lawyer appearing in front of his judge father would not be allowed for conflict of interest in most circumstances. That being said, patent trolling is obviously a problem, and legislation to fix the problem is making its way through Congress.
- knorker 10y ago
  1) Did he say crime? I don't think he ever did. 2) He never said the son appeared in front of his judge father. I'm almost 100% on that too. So misconceptions in what you misheard, I guess.
  - bruceb 10y ago
    He did say crime but not in a way that meant criminal justice crime. More of a "I am guilty of the crime of being beautiful"
  - addled 10y ago
    Right. The son doesn't have to appear in front of his father to benefit from his father furthering east Texas's reputation of being patent-troll friendly.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - joshuaheard 10y ago
    He said crime. If the son is not appearing in front of the judge, then the judge's rulings don't benefit the son in any way. If you are arguing the judge's ruling is somehow affecting the reputation of the court and attracting cases, the lawyers know it is only that judge, unless you are implying some sort of conspiracy among the federal judges to be patent troll-friendly.
    - knorker 10y ago
      I'm not arguing that. HE appears to be though.
rboyd 10y ago
What's the current state of assassination markets these days?
corysama 10y ago
Here's a vid from the same guy last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8 He had just won a three year litigation with the same group, after which they pointed out that even though he had won a battle, they had enough BS patents to keep him in court for several lifetimes. He is currently in year 4 out of a projected 450.
- 0xfeba 10y ago
  Jesus. I think a hitman is cheaper than the cost of all that.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
barkingdog 10y ago
A while back, I did some research into patent trolls, and came across the history of NPE firms that do DPA (defensive patent aggregation), like RPX [0]. What surprised me from a game theoretical perspective was how murky things got. These situations can be tough on entrepreneurs and seem to create space for said entrepreneur to purchase protection in the form of patent aggregation to mitigate against potential devastation caused by this. On one hand, I can see how it can amount to a protection racket. On the other hand, the existence of patents and how they relate to property are pretty complex. This TechCrunch article about RPX does a good job of going into further detail about this, but truth be told, I am even more on the fence after reading this. I agree that patent reform would be necessary to rectify this situation, but in the meantime, I can't think of a better alternative. The cynic inside me can't help but think that business is always it's own kind of war, sadly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPX_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPX_Corporation [1] http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/24/is-rpxs-defensive-patent-aggregation-simply-patent-extortion-by-another-name/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/24/is-rpxs-defensive-patent-ag...
- buildbuildbuild 10y ago
  Interesting, his case is in their search tool: https://search.rpxcorp.com/lit/txedce-138585-uniloc-v-laminar-research https://search.rpxcorp.com/lit/txedce-138585-uniloc-v-lamina...
  - barkingdog 10y ago
    From what I recall, they acquire IP when its from companies in this situation. I'm not a betting person, but I would not be surprised if this situation was a good opportunity for RPX's PR.
- deepsun 10y ago
  I came from an European country, and the root cause seems pretty clear to me: why defending yourself in court is so damn expensive? In my country, you don't often need an attorney (although for complex cases you certainly do), but even if you do hire an attorney, they cost way, way less. Like $20,000 for a complex case, and it's going to be a team of lawyers. Also, companies just don't sue each other that often. I don't know why US is different.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
How has East Texas not been shut down already?
- Zikes 10y ago
  Everybody in the chain of responsibility capable of doing so stands to financially benefit from this practice continuing. For a business to claim it's "based in" East Texas it'll have to pay its taxes there. Local litigation law firms are bringing tons of money into the area, further increasing local revenue. Shutting it down would probably even knock a significant slice off of the state's income.
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josaka 10y ago
The patent in the video is US 6857067. Claims 1, 20, 22, 30, 31, 67, 107, and 108 were invalidated by the Patent Office in an administrative proceeding, but claims 21 and 22 survived that particular challenge. See IPR2013-00391, Final Decision. Cost for these challenges is around $300k (and often much less for troll suits), rather than the $2-5 million that is typically quoted for district court cases.
kukx 10y ago
What about making an "anti patent troll" website that will allow users to share their legal approaches and documents and the rest of the defense materials. Some of them may be reusable. I guess it should significantly limit the legal costs for everyone and improve their position against trolls, right?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- tim333 10y ago
  I was toying with doing that. Even got a domain name. Might be a bit of a hassle though. Dunno. Thoughts anyone? Would it help? Would I get sued?
  - toss1941 10y ago
    IANAL but I'd setup the corporate entity outside the US and hire a mail forwarding service of some kind to redirect all the mail to your home.
- devrs0 10y ago
  I'm not sure how this works when it comes to a successful defense but it's my understanding that, in the case of a settlement, the defendant must sign an NDA - preventing just this and allowing the racket to continue.
- hansjorg 10y ago
  Another video linked here featuring the same guy links to http://www.trollfighter.com/ http://www.trollfighter.com/ which seems to be an initiative of something called Application Developers Alliance.
mholt 10y ago
"... defend myself for committing the crime of ..." But a lawsuit is a civil case, not a criminal case, right?
deleted 10y ago
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dougmccune 10y ago
Is there a unified place one can donate to that people think is the best way to put some money toward real change in the system? I'm happy to send some money to the EFF, but I'd up that 100 times if I knew it was going 100% toward killing patent trolls and I thought it was the best organization to fight that fight.
- mmaunder 10y ago
  Agreed. I'd love to see Austin set up a gofundme with specific goals, milestones, a well defined team and strategy. We'd contribute if it's something that would bring about real change.
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  This was linked in a description of one of the videos: http://www.trollfighter.com/ http://www.trollfighter.com/
finstell 10y ago
Uniloc has this piece of Google Maps screenshot hosted at their web server. Isn't this not allowed? http://www.uniloc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Screen-shot-2010-08-05-at-10.11.47-AM-300x248.png http://www.uniloc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Screen-shot...
lintiness 10y ago
welcome to a political system (and indeed a world) run by lawyers.
- treehau5 10y ago
  And the 'democratic' party just 'nominated' a lawyer-at-heart as well, who has perfectly demonstrated that lawyeresque doublespeak can shield you from any blame or responsibility of actions that would have lesser plebeians dishonored, fired on the spot, jailed or any combination thereof. I guess we must secretly love getting screwed over.
deleted 10y ago
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davemel37 10y ago
It's time to call in John Oliver...He's our last and only hope!
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  He's already done a video on this, the same guy was featured in it
hhsnopek 10y ago
I find it oddly funny how Google hasn't stepped in to support their "clients", I'd think they'd help shutdown patent trolls so developers can continue to improve and distribute applications
- optimiz3 10y ago
  Seriously - what the fuck Google? It's only a matter of time until a patent troll writes a for loop on the store index to send out infringement suits DMCA-takedown style.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - deleted 10y ago
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  - daenz 10y ago
    > It's only a matter of time until a patent troll writes a for loop on the store index to send out infringement suits DMCA-takedown style. Perhaps a competing troll owns the iteration patent.
    - krisdol 10y ago
      No, iteration is fair game, but `for` is an API name patented by Oracle. Legally, a patent troll would have to write a `whenceforth`, `do...thither`, or `oft` loop.
      - greydius 10y ago
        The next time I'm forced to write C code... #define whenceforth for
        Zikes 10y ago
        #define supposing if #define whereas else
deleted 10y ago
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blubb-fish 10y ago
How about a patent about placing the right foot into a solid hollow object with three to four cylinder shaped objects (with low height to radius ratio) separating that hollow object from the surface of the earth - yeah - and well, then driving with it ... will have to think about how to make that sound smart and original. How is this even for real - why is Google not putting an end to it?
fouric 10y ago
While I applaud what Austin Meyer is doing by raising awareness about patent trolls, does anyone here but me wish that the content had been made available in some sort of text medium instead? I can't think of any important parts of the video that couldn't have been reasonably conveyed through the use of text.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  I agree, but maybe because he said he wants to raise the awareness of 'simple' people, such as jurors, etc. Video is probably better medium to go viral than some text about software parents regarding non techies.
- awqrre 10y ago
  Not as condensed as true text, but you can download the CC: http://downsub.com/index.php?title=I+am+being+sued%2C+in+East+Texas%2C+for+using+Google&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fapi%2Ftimedtext%3Fexpire%3D1465438618%26key%3Dyttt1%26v%3DeatfgXTMFf0%26asr_langs%3Dfr%252Cja%252Cnl%252Cen%252Cpt%252Cit%252Cko%252Cru%252Cde%252Ces%26hl%3Den_US%26caps%3Dasr%26sparams%3Dasr_langs%252Ccaps%252Cv%252Cexpire%26signature%3DBA095EAF082053F9B653CD538F35047A949A94D3.7AB0907C5AC18836E2689FE72477F417535F8A46%26kind%3Dasr%26lang%3Den http://downsub.com/index.php?title=I+am+being+sued%2C+in+Eas...
slmyers 10y ago
I'm not sure if this would help, but I think we should all tweet a link to this video clip to John Oliver. https://twitter.com/iamjohnoliver?lang=en https://twitter.com/iamjohnoliver?lang=en or maybe this twitter account https://twitter.com/LastWeekTonight?lang=en https://twitter.com/LastWeekTonight?lang=en
- devrs0 10y ago
  He has already covered it once: https://youtu.be/3bxcc3SM_KA?t=96 https://youtu.be/3bxcc3SM_KA?t=96
FesterCluck 10y ago
I thought we already squashed this shit: http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/26/uniloc-patent-troll-defeated/ http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/26/uniloc-patent-troll-defea...
vosbert 10y ago
Can these services just be disabled in East Texas to avoid their jurisdiction? At the very least, it would force the patent trolls into more neutral territory.
- swsieber 10y ago
  That's a very interesting idea. I wonder if it's a viable option. edit: It'd actually be pretty effective if you stop to think about it, even if it doesn't technically prevent litigation. Just think: "Sorry, this product isn't available in you're area due to patent litigation concerns". Part of me wonders if that happened with Netflix, Google Maps, etc. wouldn't the people start hating the patent litigation instead of being content with it?
  - captainmuon 10y ago
    That is kind of the nuclear option of the big internet companies. I'm sure they realize that they have this power, but they can only use it rarely, maybe once, before there is public outcry against this "abuse of power". They're probably saving this card it for a bigger issue.
  - thirdsun 10y ago
    Interesting thought. You should ask german Youtube users how they feel about GEMA. You certainly won't hear rave reviews.
- ramblenode 10y ago
  I have been wondering the same thing. If not outright disabling the service, would it be sufficient to license one's software in a way that prohibits it being used in East Texas? Would that remove standing to sue in the district?
- jhayward 10y ago
  Wouldn't work. The plaintiff only needs to show a nexus to the venue; all they have to do is open an office there to achieve that.
kevinpet 10y ago
I happened to read this article about recusal recently and I don't understand how some of these allegations wouldn't be explicit grounds for recusal, specifically the son being a lawyer with a firm that tries cases in the father's court. https://popehat.com/2016/06/06/lawsplainer-when-must-federal-judges-recuse-themselves-anyway/ https://popehat.com/2016/06/06/lawsplainer-when-must-federal... Article is in the context of Trump, but you needn't let that turn you off.
bitchmade37 10y ago
Bulls hit if it does not have a patent pending sticker then anything can be shared or used by another person So come on with da game dumbasses check ya shit before posting to make it look real!!!
bitchmade37 10y ago
Bulls hit if it does not have a patent pending sticker then anything can be shared or used by another person So come on with da game dumbasses check ya shit before posting to make it look real!!!
djsumdog 10y ago
America needs to follow New Zealand's example: Ban software patents!
- vacri 10y ago
  In the video, he says that the politicians stopped the issue from even being voted on. That's without Silicon Valley stepping in to really lobby against that kind of ban (NZ has no equivalent of SV)
  - deepsun 10y ago
    Big companies in Silicon Valley can defend themselves, so they don't care. It's small businesses that are affected. And big companies do not really want competition from small businesses.
- fredguth 10y ago
  Software is not patentable in Brazil either. Honest question: have anyone seen any software innovation been really protected by a patent litigation? All articles I have seen are about trolls.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Well if you're going to ask that question, I'm going to ask a corollary: Has anyone seen any innovation that has been really protected by patents, that couldn't have been protected merely with trade secrets and industrial capability (i.e., big companies are physically and organizationally able to make things that small companies cannot due to their resources, therefore they're really the last ones to need patent protection, but they're also the ones most able to afford spending huge sums of money on patent fees and enforcement)?
    - NEDM64 10y ago
      Medicine, for example, they have to tell what's inside the bottle.
mmaunder 10y ago
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8XknFl1l_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8XknFl1l_8 He visits East Texas and shows that the 'offices' of the 'companies' that hold each patent are empty shells.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  To save someone 8 minutes: Tl;dr: He visits the listed offices of several dozen patent trolls in East Texas, including one directly across from the court house. Each one is empty with no sign of human activity. One has a secretary who claims the address is the accounting firm for those businesses. Then one person comes out to say that he is "a representative" of the businesses, and that those businesses "are based in East Texas" though. He recites one sentence about patents being property and then the video creator is kicked out.
  - quest88 10y ago
    Ah yes. Former East Texan here. One company, Personal Web (http://www.personalweb.com/about.html http://www.personalweb.com/about.html), setup shop near the courthouse. They came to our school claiming they were going to be working on the next version of the web, web 3.0. They were recruiting for part-time only students. I asked why they chose east texas, and they said because they owned many patents wanted to be near the court that here's many technology patent cases. 1) The patent reason is a giveaway what they were really up to. 2) Why would you only hire part-time students? They were simply trying to build up a credible reputation in the community as a "small, local shop hiring locals" going against the big guys.
    - ultramancool 10y ago
      Any chance you know anyone who got a position with them? Really curious what kind of make work projects they had people doing.
      - toomim 10y ago
        Wouldn't it be great if someone got a job with these companies, as a mole? Then snoop through their activities, and write it up as an exposé?
johansch 10y ago
How do you americans still allow East Texas to be a part of the United States? They're clearly rogue?
cft 10y ago
One practical thing one could do is to forward this to an influential tech journalist, ideally to a mainstream publication that has a technology section, like CNN or WSJ.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
superbatfish 10y ago
At least that totally rad cliff diving video that YouTube queued up afterwards was a nice chaser.
- shivsta 10y ago
  Might have been specifically recommended for you. Mine was different.
iLoch 10y ago
Is the process of filing a patent patented?
Alupis 10y ago
Judge Leonard Davis presides over a large amount of these "Patent Troll" cases, and his son (!!) Bo Davis is a Lawyer who represents these very same Patent Trolls in court! If that's not a racket, I don't know what is.
captainmuon 10y ago
There's only so far a justice system can get dysfunctional before people say fukitall and it looses its legitimacy. It's not just patents, civil forfeiture is another thing that comes to mind and I'm sure there more. I imagine if in future somebody gets such a patent lawsuit, they'd just rip up the letter and throw it away. Police comes to carry out court orders because they decided in absence? "Sorry officer, the reason you're here is just patent bullshit." - "Oh well, I won't lift a finger for these idiots. Sorry for bothering you, have a nice day!" Or a more extreme reaction: already in this thread, a couple of people are fantasizing about violence, hiring a hitman and so on. I realize it is mostly meant jokingly, but self-justice is another effect of a justice system that's lost legitimacy. Rule-of-law is a great thing to have, but it only works if these laws are somewhat reasonable and in accord with peoples moral values...
VonGuard 10y ago
OK HN, get out there and find this man some prior art so we can all just put this company out of business...
KON_Air 10y ago
All the Mobile Marketplaces are on fire. Nice. Posted from my Windows Phone 8.1
masswerk 10y ago
What to do about this? I'm told, you may be put to trial in East Texas, if you're selling your goods or services there. – So, why not stop selling to East Texas and let them settle the resulting collision of interests themselves?
- throwawaysocks 10y ago
  Can a lawyer or something with legal background please weigh in on this?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  (1) That would probably work under the existing rules. (2) There is an active legal challenge to the existing rules (arguing that they misapply two separate provisions of law as if one controls a definition in the other, when that is not the case), which if successful would radically shake up patent venue and pretty much end the "drag everyone into ED Texas" thing we have going on right now. [0] [0] http://patentlyo.com/patent/2016/04/circuit-continues-allowance.html http://patentlyo.com/patent/2016/04/circuit-continues-allowa...
veeragoni 10y ago
Someone patent "the idea of having a patent" and Sue these companies in Hawaii.
stevesun21 10y ago
WTF! This is ridiculous. later these people might start sue people use cell phone.
dak1 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Richardson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Richardson "Ric Richardson is an Australian inventor. He is the holder of multiple granted patents including the Uniloc patent US5490216 and the Logarex patent 6400293. Although he spent twelve years in California to promote and develop products produced by Uniloc, Richardson grew up in Sydney and currently resides just outside Byron Bay. He is the founder of Uniloc, a company based on the technology he first patented in 1992." Here's his picture from the Uniloc web site: http://uniloc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ricrichardson.png http://uniloc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ricrichardson.p... He's apparently insanely talented, having "invented" the panic button, the visual voice recorder, the 3G skype phone, the secure browser, the universal database, the carbon scrubber, the book dispensor, "media objects", the "Internet Computer", QR Codes, DRM, a password replacement system, TV muting, and several dozen other devices, just in the past 16 years alone.[1] [1] https://sites.google.com/site/ricricho/ric-s-inventions https://sites.google.com/site/ricricho/ric-s-inventions
- igravious 10y ago
  Full name: Frederick Bailier Richardson III Am thinking these activities devalue the terms invention and inventor. Would prefer that to patent some process that you had invented you ought to have to come up with a device to implement said process. You may not even know how to realise your idea in practise which is kind of where all the hard work is. An not saying idea for processes are ten a penny but the bar needs to be raised.
Sharma 10y ago
How about creating a petition here about this issue and we all sign it? https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/
nichochar 10y ago
Welcome to america
touchofevil 10y ago
Would incorporating your tech company in England instead of the USA protect your company from these patent troll lawsuits? It's extremely easy to start a company based in England, even as a US citizen living in the USA. With the patent trolling this out of control in the US at the moment, would basing your company abroad offer you any protection?
- woah 10y ago
  No.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  Yes, if your product or service is only available in England. No, if you sell your product or service in the US (or at least East Texas). It doesn't matter where your company is incorporated, it only matters where you do business.
froo 10y ago
Someone really needs to create a patent that defines methods of patent trolling, so every time one of these scumbags starts a lawsuit you can sue them.
- mcbits 10y ago
  Someone (Halliburton!) already tried: http://www.google.com/patents/US20080270152 http://www.google.com/patents/US20080270152 Edit: And IBM apparently got one granted: http://www.google.com/patents/US8386350 http://www.google.com/patents/US8386350
  - chadcmulligan 10y ago
    lol, after a quick glance at the IBM one it seems to be patenting software that manages patent portfolios (maybe). How utterly bizarre
mdip 10y ago
Patent trolling issues aside (they're valid, but discussed and I'm just another one of the "software patents suck guys"), I'm surprised that Google doesn't provide protection for developers using the Play Store. It's a very critical service for developers writing code for Android -- though it's not always required it is if you want your app to be seen. They certainly don't have to and I'm not sure if Apple or Microsoft do or not for their equivalents, but I know Microsoft offers patent indemnification for a lot of things these days. It would be in Google's best interest to have a patent indemnification policy for Google Play store. I'd love to know what the actual numbers look like but I'd be willing to bet that the costs are extremely low since it works as a deterrent to these kinds of lawsuits. Patent trolls go after these lone developers because they'll settle rather than incur the cost. It's an easy buck. This guy didn't make Google Play, he didn't write the code that "supposedly" infringed on the patent. He simply used it because that's the only way for practical purposes to publish an Android app. And since the patent covers a large set of features that Play uses for licensing, he couldn't have published through Play and not infringed in the eyes of Uniloc. The law allows anyone in the chain (including the guy playing with the Flight Simulator) to be sued for infringement, but they'd be very unlikely to do this kind of garbage if they knew Google would bring their legal team into the fold. By not protecting their developers, Google has a deterrent to people using their platform.
abrookewood 10y ago
Here's written coverage of the situation in case you don't have time to watch the video: http://www.technobuffalo.com/2016/06/07/x-plane-flight-simulator-patent-troll-uniloc/ http://www.technobuffalo.com/2016/06/07/x-plane-flight-simul...
jitix 10y ago
Somehow this all seems illegal. I'm not that familiar with the US law so can somebody explain if the defendant can claim that the judge has a conflict of interest and is not fit to handle the case because his son profits from it?
- arcticfox 10y ago
  Well it's very unlikely the judge directly works his son's cases due to that obvious conflict. Rather, the judge works a random set of cases brought in East Texas and works them favorably for trolls. So many troll cases get brought in that district, hoping for this judge or other friendly judges. It's obviously rotten but that one-step removed corruption is probably not explicitly codified as wrong anywhere. Hopefully the legal system finds a way to root it out.
BuckRogers 10y ago
If Google won't step in and litigate the patent trolls into poverty, ruining everyone's life who is involved and possibly even promising to ruin their children's and grandchildren's lives long after the actual patent trolls are dead... that would stop it. But in the meantime, guess I'll just be writing webapps.
thinkcomp 10y ago
The docket for the lawsuit in question is here: http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/sknqayqz/texas-eastern-district-court/uniloc-usa-inc-et-al-v-laminar-research-llc/ http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/sknqayqz/texas-eastern-dist...
dematio 10y ago
If Peter Thiel could do it, why not Google? It does not cost much for Google to invalidate the patent.
rwhitman 10y ago
Yet another example of the consumer software industry being completely impotent when it comes to defending itself. Patent trolls file these frivolous lawsuits because they make millions and suffer zero consequences for their actions. Why? Because there is no industry trade group representing the software industry with any sort of teeth. They know software developers have money, and they know software developers are absurdly weak when it comes to defending themselves. Software developers are easy prey. Other than the EFF who is out there to represent us with any measure of real leverage over the legal process? Who is out there with the muscle to make patent trolls and software unfriendly lawmakers have second thoughts when targeting developers? With no lobbies or trade associations with any sort of power out there representing consumer software, anyone with even minor influence over government can simply walk all over software developers, again and again and again. The consumer software industry has enormous amounts of cash at it's disposal, surely a few cash rich companies can pool enough resources together to kick off a trade association worthy of punching back, hard
- dancablam 10y ago
  Somebody needs to create a FUPA for anti-patent trolling
bnycum 10y ago
I live less than an hour from Marshall, TX. Maybe an hour and a half from Tyler, TX. I'd love to help in any way I could, but since I'm not a lawyer I bet anything I could do is slim to nothing.
floatalong 10y ago
As angry as this video makes me, I'd point out that we've been making some progress in the fight against trolls. Yes, they're still a problem, but some things that have weakened them: The Supreme Court's ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank, which dealt a fatal blow to a lot of software patents out there (especially the awful, vague and overly broad patents that trolls love so much). The Supreme Court reaffirmed that merely "adding a generic computer to perform generic computer functions" does not make an otherwise abstract idea patentable. [0] This ruling helps get rid of cases earlier. While it doesn't kill off patent litigation, it makes it easier for us to fight low-quality assertions. More importantly, this puts a tougher filter for prosecution of new patent applications, the vast majority of which are dumb and overly broad. Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings, which are rather expensive (average $278,000) [1], but are much cheaper than litigation. Third parties can use IPRs to challenge patent claims (patentability) based on prior art patents and publications. In the case of Austin Meyer's patent defense, many of the patent claims were invalidated through this kind of proceeding, and petitioned by a consortium (Distinctive Developments, Ltd., Electronic Arts Inc., Gameloft S.E., Halfbrick Studios Pty Ltd., Laminar Research LLC, Mojang AB and Square Enix, Inc.). [2] Heightened pleading standards. Before December 2015, it used to be that trolls could sue dozens of companies with cookie-cutter complaints, citing no real facts, and put on pressure for settlements by threatening lengthy and costly discovery proceedings. But thanks to decisions in Iqbal/Twombly, complaints must plead facts and recite aspects of the accused product that are alleged to infringe. This butchers the spam lawsuit tactic, and the day before this went into effect, trolls filed a one day record for new suits. [3] Shameful, yes, but it's helped clarify standards governing motions to dismiss. [0] https://www.eff.org/files/2014/06/19/alice-corp._v._cls-bank_opinion.pdf https://www.eff.org/files/2014/06/19/alice-corp._v._cls-bank... [1] https://www.rpxcorp.com/2015/07/02/iprs-reality-amid-the-pyrotechnics/ https://www.rpxcorp.com/2015/07/02/iprs-reality-amid-the-pyr... [2] search patent number 6857067 and document 37 at https://ptabtrials.uspto.gov https://ptabtrials.uspto.gov [3] http://fortune.com/2015/12/02/patent-lawsuit-record/ http://fortune.com/2015/12/02/patent-lawsuit-record/
throwawayuniloc 10y ago
The main site is: http://uniloc.com http://uniloc.com I found a bunch of security flaws, hosts and user credentials. Now they're here: http://pastebin.com/sevdmwzz http://pastebin.com/sevdmwzz
owaislone 10y ago
Will Peter Thiel help? These trolls are actually destroying lives.
cgtyoder 10y ago
"I'm not here to raise awareness! Ok, yes, maybe that's what I'm doing."
zoner 10y ago
So do not register your company in the USA, otherwise you have to deal with patent trolls.
TheMagicHorsey 10y ago
The American patent system is a dead weight drag on the American software economy. The quality of software patents is atrocious, and the value of the tiny fraction of good patents in this space does not make up for the Billions lost to trolls and the costs of administering the system.
pascalxus 10y ago
For all the entrepreneurs looking for a problem to solve, here it is: Create a company/product that automates legal services (start with the niche case for defending against Patent Trolls): then offer it as a service, say with a flat fee. If the cost of this service is on the order of hundreds of dollars, say less than 500$, it should solve the problem of frivolous law suits. This sub-niche is huge!
x13 10y ago
Glad to see he won. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8

1565 points by egb 10y ago

jiiam 10y ago

It's good to raise awareness, especially on the users of the play store (I mean, the developers). For example I learned a lot from this video: in case I decided to sell an app on any store, I'd better contact my lawyer to get advised on where and how to incorporate my company. I don't know if it can be easily resolved by incorporating in another country, but the difficulties of an international litigation should discourage trolls.

djsumdog 10y ago
New Zealand. They banned software patents.
- mobilefriendly 10y ago
  There's broad exclusion for software in Europe as well.

clavalle 10y ago

People will mention the problem with patents but I see another, perhaps bigger, problem: We do not have equal access to our judicial system in the United States. If you have money, you have the power to legally hold people with less over a barrel. That exploitable inequality is poison for a well functioning society. That is the problem that needs solving.

distances 10y ago
"Loser pays" would go a long way, I think. Not being that familiar with the US system, what's the reasoning not to have this?
- NTripleOne 10y ago
  Some people would make a lot less money.
- teej 10y ago
  It's called the English Rule. People argue that implementing it could disincentivize people bringing forth valid cases and that it could lower the liklihood of settling, increasing legal and court costs for cases that do go through. I don't really have an opinion either way, those are just the common arguments against it.
  - Silhouette 10y ago
    They're common arguments, but the predicted falling skies don't happen very often in practice. Meanwhile, there is far less of a problem with barratry under loser pays than the US system seems to have.
- saint_fiasco 10y ago
  If loser pays, poor people would be discouraged from even attempting to sue rich people. Even if the poor person has a legitimate claim, there is a small probability that the rich person will win with their superior lawyers and the poor person will be bankrupted by the legal fees. Since they will know that from the beginning, they won't sue in the first place.
  - kefka 10y ago
    It could be done that it is not loser pays by default. Instead, if a case is won, and the case was deemed frivolous, only then could loser-pays be enacted. But it still doesn't solve the idea that the "Law is more equal the more money you have." .
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      This is essentially how it works today, from my understanding. If you lose and your suit was 100% without merrit, you can be sued for lawyer fees. From what I understand, the problem is the bar for meritless is very very very high. Not sure how you legislate that. I think most lawsuits are meritless. A lawyer may have a very different opinion.
cinquemb 10y ago
But in all honesty, I do not see things changing anytime soon with regards to what you mention as being a bigger problem in the US (that I've personally experienced when going up against facebook without trying to spend a fortune in civil court). I do see people taking advantage of legal systems in other countries in order to do other behaviors and applying a legal arbitrage of sorts agaisnt another legal system (i.e scihub/libgen vs elsevier), so maybe this will become more prevalent as time goes on as the technical means to do so becomes more available.
rhino369 10y ago
It's actually the opposite. These patents trolls are typically very small operations suing massive corporations. They aren't rich guys screwing the little guy. It's the little guy screwing whoever he can. These little guys have too much access to the legal system. That's why it's hard to clamp down on. Nobody wants to make it so only big guys can have access to the legal system.
- HillaryBriss 10y ago
  With the added wrinkle in this particular case that the patent troll is also suing a bunch of little guys who decided to use Google Play Store.
  - rhino369 10y ago
    Sounds like they are suing whoever they can including Minecraft which isn't a small fish. There is a form of patent trolling that only goes after small guys. But they'd avoid actually litigating the patent and just push a settlement. They'd never take it to trial because little guys can't pay out enough to justify the cost of a patent trial. That form is basically extortion. They ask for a small sum of money to just go away.
    - HillaryBriss 10y ago
      > They ask for a small sum of money to just go away. Outrageous. Surprised there isn't a more meaningful response from Google.
- tanker 10y ago
  You identified a separate problem from the parent post rather than refuting it. #1: Big corporations can push small guys out of business by tying up their products in patent disputes. #2: Patent trolls can bleed corporations big and small while producing nothing of value. These problems are specific to the patent industry. Are there similar problems in other areas of the law? If so, we may be able to identify and try to solve the larger problem. If not, we just need to focus on patent reform which is an easier problem.
thegasman 10y ago
>We do not have equal access to our judicial system in the United States. I agree, but I think we can be more specific. Criminals (or those accused of a crime) are constitutionally guaranteed an attorney. Civil plaintiffs/defendants, by contrast, have no such right. The anecdotes and experiences of HN users overwhelmingly describe the civil side of things. Civil lawsuits, IMO, should carry no guarantee of counsel at the constitutional level. Imagine if they did: free lawyers mean frivolous lawsuits and over-burdened courts. But, I don't think anyone is actually clamoring for such an arrangement. So, specifically, how can we more efficiently allocate limited legal resources to ensure that the average civil litigant is not disadvantaged by a wealth disparity with his opponent? Well, what's the perceived disadvantage to a resource-poor litigant? What's the perceived advantage to a resource-rich litigant? Good facts make good cases much more frequently than good lawyers make good cases.
- stormbrew 10y ago
  An interesting thought experiment along the lines of resolving this inequality is making it so that sides can only fund their civil case through a fund that both sides contribute to but both sides get an equal share. This means in order to frivolously sue someone, you have to be willing to fund their effort to defend against you. It probably breaks down a lot in cases involving multiple litigants (let alone class actions), but it is an interesting idea.
  - noir_lord 10y ago
    That's a genuinely brilliant idea! The ramifications on corp to corp lawsuits would be amazing.
  - rms_returns 10y ago
    A brilliant idea! I hope this actually gets implemented some day in a legal system of any country.
  - knodi123 10y ago
    "Hi, yes, I'd like to sue Apple for millions, and since I'm an unemployed armchair lawyer, I can make sure it takes a long while and a lot of tedious aggravation to beat me. Also, since I'm suing pro se, Apple would be paying me a salary equal to whatever their legal team makes for the duration of the trial. Or, you know, I'd be happy for Apple to just give me $100,000 to settle." Then repeat for every wealthy corp you can think of. A loss doesn't hurt you, because you're still getting paid from the joint legal fund. Alternatively, Apple could give a lawyer a million dollar gift, with the understanding that he'll defend them in any lawsuits for the next year while charging minimum wage. Then, Apple would be happy to pay an equal amount of minimum wage dollars toward the other side's legal expenses.
sheepleherd 10y ago
| We do not have equal access to our judicial system in the United States. If you have money, you have the power... Your POV that money distorts and helps determine winners, while seeming so prima facie obvious, does not come close to getting to the real problem. I know this because I have money and I've spent well over a million dollars on attorneys in the last decade and I got very little in the way of ... not justice, very little in the way of consideration of the core legal questions in each case; in fact, I don't even know how the interesting core legal questions would have been resolved, the courts completely dodged them; and along the way, I saw a vast amount of phony posturing, amplification of minor details, and outright lying and manipulation of the legal system, mostly by attorneys; and the judges eat it up, because they too are attorneys. (and BTW, when a judge sees an unsophisticated indigent defendant, they actually do bend over backward to help them, say a confused tenant who does not pay rent is most usually given many many more chances.) To put it into the context of this guy's patent rant: my point would be, there is a question as to whether this patent is valid or not, and whether it covers this particular issue or not. The "right/just" answer would be found more quickly and more cheaply and more rationally if the judge would simply decide that first in a non-binding way, like "from what I know so far, here's the way this is tilted". Then after that, if the losers wanted to spend money to present a stronger case they could, and the judge could say "warmer...warmer... colder". Then after all that, if you want to try to change the thing on a technicality like "yeah but you didn't serve the notice the right way", then the court would hear that. The way courts decide things is to completely front-load all these arcane minor points, and it has the effect of squeezing the shit out of the litigants to force them to settle. "You think you have a legal dispute that's worth this much? I'll give you dispute resolution that costs more and much of your life. Now do you want to settle? Don't test me, as a judge I'm a former attorney, we win at this game. Now do you want to settle?"
- clavalle 10y ago
  You are right. Having money equips someone to at least be able to put up a fight to reach a conclusion but that is not the heart of the issue. Whether you have money or not the real problem is the threat of loss due to the /process/ as opposed the merits and likely result of the case. That is the problem that needs to be solved. I'm not saying I know how to remove the expense of the process out of the equation but that is what needs to be done. Your suggestion is a good one. If the result itself is clearer earlier it would take some of the power out of the threat of expensive process.
steven2012 10y ago
The other side of that coin is that if you don't have a lot of money then you most likely won't get sued.
js471 10y ago
I complained about a corporation that was breaking the law in an online forum. They sued me for defamation, saying flatly that they had no dealings whatsoever in the accused activity. Shortly after they sued someone else in the same state claiming that, in the process of the same illegal activity, which they described in detail, some other party was not acting in good faith. I ask my lawyer "how in America in 2016 can they make two blatantly contradictory lawsuits?" The lawyer told me "This is a pissing contest you don't want to be involved in. You should settle ASAP". So I paid my life savings and tried to move on.
dragontamer 10y ago
Or maybe its just a problem with the East Texas court. Almost all bad patent issues resolve from this court. A ton of them are appealed successfully. It doesn't matter how fairly the laws are written if the judges presiding over them are assholes.

JakeWesorick 10y ago

Really seems like Google/Apple should make some kind of statement calling out how ridiculous these lawsuits are.

Flott 10y ago
Could Google do more then a statement? It can't be good for their business if people are being sued for simply uploading an app to the Play Store.
- djrogers 10y ago
  When developers were sued by Lodsys Apple intervened with a motion due to the fact that the developers were covered under Apple's license. After 2 years, the judge refused to hear the motion and threw it out...
- toss1941 10y ago
  I agree, Google must step in here, pronto.
rplnt 10y ago
Doesn't sound like Google. If it had affected Newegg on the other hand...
Grishnakh 10y ago
What these tech giants need to do is collude, but this time instead of colluding to screw over their employees by not "poaching" them, they need to collude to cut off all their services to this district of East Texas. Screw over the morons living in this area whose economy lives off this leaching, and also make it so many patent lawsuits can be easily dismissed because the internet services these patents supposedly cover won't be available there, so they can argue the venue is inappropriate.

comboy 10y ago

Couldn't Google offer defense in such cases for its users? Every case is the same so it shouldn't even be that expensive (I guess, IANAL), and it would discourage future cases because the troll would know he will have to fight against Google.

oddevan 10y ago
I do feel like when a similar thing happened with the iOS App Store (app devs sued for using in-app purchases), Apple tried to insert itself into the case saying that all the technology used was theirs.
rhino369 10y ago
Yea they could in multiple ways. They could sue to the troll for a declaratory judgement of invalidity and non infringement. Or they just indemnify their app stor developers for any patent liability caused by using their product.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  >Or they just indemnify their app stor developers for any patent liability caused by using their product. What about actual patent violations?
  - matthewmacleod 10y ago
    IANAL, but I don't think there's a reason they couldn't indemnify against patent lawsuits regarding the distribution of applications through their services, while not indemnifying for patent violations in the applications themselves.
  - anthonybsd 10y ago
    >their product "Their" in this case being "Google Play" product and any liability arising from the use of thereof.
tommoor 10y ago
Good guy Google should definitely be stepping in here

Claudus 10y ago

Judge Davis retired May 15, 2015 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Davis_(judge) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Davis_(judge)

CameronBanga 10y ago
Thank God, all of this should be coming to an end any day now.
- jules 10y ago
  It won't though. The supply of people willing to sell their soul to make easy money contains more than one person.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    </s>
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  Son appointed judge, family clan as associates in law-firm... The world does not work this way.
  - jhayward 10y ago
    The president appoints federal judges. Not too likely that he's thinking about how to rig the patent court in East Texas.
jostmey 10y ago
And what has such a man accomplished at the end of his life?
- mfisher87 10y ago
  Probably made a ton of money by ruining people's lives.

tomglynch 10y ago

A comment from a reddit thread states: The gist behind this case is that the Judge's son owns patent law firm in East Texas where they often represent both sides. This guy doesn't live in East Texas. However, the dad lets these stupid cases into the town to bring business to his son. Really shady. I agree with clavelle's comment. It's not so much the laws, but the system that allows this to occur. Link here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4n08jj/developer_is_being_sued_for_using_the_google_play/d405cbn https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4n08jj/developer_i...

InvisibleCities 10y ago
> The gist behind this case is that the Judge's son owns patent law firm in East Texas where they often represent both sides. Isn't this a blatant conflict of interest? If this isn't grounds for disbarment, what is?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mfoy_ 10y ago
  Maybe the firm doesn't represent both sides simultaneously. Maybe they usually represent the patent troll, but if someone needs a patent troll defense lawyer they'll do that too. Basically, as long as patent litigation is in town, business is good.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    That helps, but the judge working cases his son's law firm also works is pretty bad too.
    - mfoy_ 10y ago
      Oh absolutely. The judge is entertaining all those patent cases simply because it's good for his son's law practice. Unacceptable.

dingo_bat 10y ago

Someone with money and lawyers needs to sue the state of Texas for allowing a father and son duo to practice in such a conflict of interest fashion. This is a clear cut case of corruption.

HillaryBriss 10y ago
Isn't this the federal court system? Not sure: is Texas even able to do anything about this?
djrogers 10y ago
I'm not sure where exactly this assertion stands - Judge Davis retires last year, and in 2011 when Lodsys was represented by his son's firm, their cases were always assigned to the other district judge (Gilsap I believe?) due to the conflict of interest. It's sensational and scummy sounding, so it really fits the narrative of the evil patent trolls (a narrative I wholeheartedly support), I don't see any reason to believe it's true.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  Ah! I didn't know that! I was going on what the guy in the video said.
DannyBee 10y ago
I'm not even sure where to begin with this :) First, you can't sue a state without their permission, they have sovereign immunity. Second, you would have no standing unless you were directly affected Third, outside of violating non-binding legal ethics rules, it's not clear what law you think this somehow violates. The state can pretty much do whatever it wants here. Plus, all of this is federal anyway, so suing the state of texas would accomplish nothing. Outside of random statutes, your best bet would probably be due process violations, but ...
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  A lawsuit might not be appropriate, but there is a separate 'right to petition the government' for that.

curiousgal 10y ago

I'm no advocate of violence but this makes you wonder about the ethics of beating such guys up. The legal system seems pointless.

davesque 10y ago
You're wondering about the ethics of beating someone up to get what you want?
- tim333 10y ago
  It might make the world a better place overall but likely cause problems for the beater.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    One of those post-bucket list things to do, maybe, after you've been diagnosed with a terminal illness that still leaves you a month or two of personal autonomy.
    - jrockway 10y ago
      Don't worry, life is a terminal illness.
    - curiousgal 10y ago
      The potential silver lining of my breast cancer! I volunteer!
      - CamperBob2 10y ago
        This is where I follow up my earlier post to make it crystal clear that it was tongue-in-cheek, not meant to be taken as advice, encouragement or incitement to violence, and that I would personally consider it very, very wrong for someone to confront patent trolls by flattening them with uparmored construction equipment Killdozer-style, taking them out with a deer rifle Texas-style, or pulling up alongside their cars on the highway and attaching limpet mines, Mossad-style. Under no circumstances should anyone do any of those things, because that would be wrong. (And, more seriously, I hope you never have a good excuse to try.)

6stringmerc 10y ago

So, no attempts to bring Davis in front of the Texas BAR association for unethical practices? I'm also curious why numerous developers have not demanded an Insurance Protection Product / Plan that would take a premium in return for subrogation (defense) if a frivolous Patent Suit is filed. I'm rather certain the market exists and while it may be for larger businesses or players, developers forming a Mutual Company and writing on some big name AM Best A paper (or even going to Lloyds) could be helpful. Anybody know of such an organization or idea? I guess my line of thinking here is that "Yes, this is totally unfair and rigged" and then move on to "How do I work around the issues, at least to a limited extent, to avoid these pitfalls?" Sign me up for reform, sure, I'm all for it. Until then, I don't like banging my head against walls, I prefer to figure out ways around or over them.

forgotpwtomain 10y ago
> I'm also curious why numerous developers have not demanded an Insurance Protection Product / Plan that would take a premium in return for subrogation (defense) if a frivolous Patent Suit is filed. I'm rather certain the market exists and while it may be for larger businesses or players, developers forming a Mutual Company and writing on some big name AM Best A paper (or even going to Lloyds) could be helpful. It would be very cool if company such as NewEgg could offer this - they already have the in-house counsel/expertise; and since the number of people trolled is very small, I'm sure even a small premium would be enough to cover it (provided you have enough customers).
ntaylor 10y ago
> I'm also curious why numerous developers have not demanded an Insurance Protection Product / Plan that would take a premium in return for subrogation (defense) if a frivolous Patent Suit is filed. I'm rather certain the market exists and while it may be for larger businesses or players, developers forming a Mutual Company and writing on some big name AM Best A paper (or even going to Lloyds) could be helpful. I suspect part of the problem is that the monetary and time costs of litigation could not be easily measured. Every case would be, effectively, unique. Not insurmountable, but I have to imagine that the premiums would need to be very high.

eonw 10y ago

i was the victim of a patent trolling company called acacia research. they sent me a bunch of legal threats but had my name spelled incorrectly, which happened to give away who had sold my info to them(in exchange for dropping the case a certain entity traded all of their affiliates info to acacia). i was 19 at the time and laughed it off. nothing ever came of it, but in hindsight it certainly wasn't a laughing matter. in the end i think someone staged a pretty good defense and crushed their patent.

tronium 10y ago

Interestingly, the login button doesn't even work at uniloc.com, and if you look in the source, there's a ton of commented-out paragraphs that say stuff like "<h2>The spirit of innovation is alive and well at Uniloc.</h2>".

dylan-m 10y ago
Fun fact: their website has listings turned on and runs an ancient version of WordPress last touched in 2012. http://www.uniloc.com/wp-content/ http://www.uniloc.com/wp-content/ It's like they're trying to be as obviously illiterate as they possibly can.
- ghurtado 10y ago
  Including publicly accessible database backups. I haven't seen such disregard for security in a very long time. For a "software security company" they sure are begging for their website to be hacked. Or maybe it is a honeypot?
  - glastra 10y ago
    INSERT INTO `wpu_users` VALUES (2, 'bdavis', [...], 'bdavis', 'bdavis@uniloc.com', '', '2010-08-05 18:06:44', '', 0, 'bdavis'); What the hell? Could this be the lawyer the video talks about? Apparently not: > Bradley C. Davis, Brad serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Uniloc USA
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
alexpetralia 10y ago
They also have port 21 open: https://www.shodan.io/host/108.166.176.214 https://www.shodan.io/host/108.166.176.214

aurizon 10y ago

The only way you can deal with trolls is to slay them. Attribution of costs does not work. Most trolls consist of lawyers who create paper work and file it. They do not hire outside law firms at $500+ per hour - the ones their victims are forced to hire. The only tru costs they have are the file fees, which East Texas keeps low. That town is totally a parasitic town and they award wins to trolls to keep the town in cash that trickles down. I say slay the trolls, slay the judges, slay them all - by legal means if possible. I would love to find an old Texas law that allows trial by combat with no substitutions...

tronium 10y ago

Question: Is a lot of the backend supposed to be available through going directly to the wp-content? If you go to uniloc.com/wp-content/, there's backups, images, plugins, and even a .sql file...

WhatIsThisIm12 10y ago
Hah nice. Probably not the kind of firm you want to be messing with, however... Then again I'll just leave this here. http://uniloc.com/wp-content/backup-9b7a1/uniloc_wpu_20120326_014.sql http://uniloc.com/wp-content/backup-9b7a1/uniloc_wpu_2012032...
- throwawayuniloc 10y ago
  You can find more here: http://pastebin.com/sevdmwzz http://pastebin.com/sevdmwzz

joshbaptiste 10y ago

TLDW - Patent troll sues Xplane creator after he migrated his app to the Google play store. They claim they own the general idea of the Google play store. Law firms create these cases for billable hours for their lawyers and some of their parent judges in Texas. Patent trolls and law firms in the end want to receive a settlement by targeting app creators and not Google themselves who are well equipped to defend themselves, http://www.thepatentscam.com/ http://www.thepatentscam.com/ .

yrro 10y ago
Wow, does this happen to many people who put their stuff on Google Play? What about the Apple App Store? Seems like Google/Apple should step in and cover the costs of being sued by a patent troll for using their platform... if they don't want developers to be discouraged from using it. Then again, particularly in Apple's case, it's not like the developers have much of a choice.
MrMullen 10y ago
Logically, how is this even possible? Xplane does not own Google Play Store and Xplane is not aware that Google is violating a patent then how is Xplane responsible for the patent violation? This strikes me a 15 minute conversation in front of a judge. "Sir, I did not know Google was violating a patent and I have withdrawn my application after being told so" and that should be the end of it.
- namlem 10y ago
  Because this particular judge refuses to throw out illegitimate patent cases because he's corrupt as fuck. He recently retired, but presumably someone else just filled his place.

joshuaheard 10y ago

A couple of misconceptions in this video. Patent infringement is not a crime. A son lawyer appearing in front of his judge father would not be allowed for conflict of interest in most circumstances. That being said, patent trolling is obviously a problem, and legislation to fix the problem is making its way through Congress.

knorker 10y ago
1) Did he say crime? I don't think he ever did. 2) He never said the son appeared in front of his judge father. I'm almost 100% on that too. So misconceptions in what you misheard, I guess.
- bruceb 10y ago
  He did say crime but not in a way that meant criminal justice crime. More of a "I am guilty of the crime of being beautiful"
- addled 10y ago
  Right. The son doesn't have to appear in front of his father to benefit from his father furthering east Texas's reputation of being patent-troll friendly.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- joshuaheard 10y ago
  He said crime. If the son is not appearing in front of the judge, then the judge's rulings don't benefit the son in any way. If you are arguing the judge's ruling is somehow affecting the reputation of the court and attracting cases, the lawyers know it is only that judge, unless you are implying some sort of conspiracy among the federal judges to be patent troll-friendly.
  - knorker 10y ago
    I'm not arguing that. HE appears to be though.

rboyd 10y ago

What's the current state of assassination markets these days?

corysama 10y ago

Here's a vid from the same guy last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8 He had just won a three year litigation with the same group, after which they pointed out that even though he had won a battle, they had enough BS patents to keep him in court for several lifetimes. He is currently in year 4 out of a projected 450.

0xfeba 10y ago
Jesus. I think a hitman is cheaper than the cost of all that.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

barkingdog 10y ago

A while back, I did some research into patent trolls, and came across the history of NPE firms that do DPA (defensive patent aggregation), like RPX [0]. What surprised me from a game theoretical perspective was how murky things got. These situations can be tough on entrepreneurs and seem to create space for said entrepreneur to purchase protection in the form of patent aggregation to mitigate against potential devastation caused by this. On one hand, I can see how it can amount to a protection racket. On the other hand, the existence of patents and how they relate to property are pretty complex. This TechCrunch article about RPX does a good job of going into further detail about this, but truth be told, I am even more on the fence after reading this. I agree that patent reform would be necessary to rectify this situation, but in the meantime, I can't think of a better alternative. The cynic inside me can't help but think that business is always it's own kind of war, sadly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPX_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPX_Corporation [1] http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/24/is-rpxs-defensive-patent-aggregation-simply-patent-extortion-by-another-name/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/24/is-rpxs-defensive-patent-ag...

buildbuildbuild 10y ago
Interesting, his case is in their search tool: https://search.rpxcorp.com/lit/txedce-138585-uniloc-v-laminar-research https://search.rpxcorp.com/lit/txedce-138585-uniloc-v-lamina...
- barkingdog 10y ago
  From what I recall, they acquire IP when its from companies in this situation. I'm not a betting person, but I would not be surprised if this situation was a good opportunity for RPX's PR.
deepsun 10y ago
I came from an European country, and the root cause seems pretty clear to me: why defending yourself in court is so damn expensive? In my country, you don't often need an attorney (although for complex cases you certainly do), but even if you do hire an attorney, they cost way, way less. Like $20,000 for a complex case, and it's going to be a team of lawyers. Also, companies just don't sue each other that often. I don't know why US is different.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

How has East Texas not been shut down already?

Zikes 10y ago
Everybody in the chain of responsibility capable of doing so stands to financially benefit from this practice continuing. For a business to claim it's "based in" East Texas it'll have to pay its taxes there. Local litigation law firms are bringing tons of money into the area, further increasing local revenue. Shutting it down would probably even knock a significant slice off of the state's income.

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swalsh 10y ago
And this people, is what you get for $5 when you buy SEO services from UpWork.com

umerraza 10y ago

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josaka 10y ago

The patent in the video is US 6857067. Claims 1, 20, 22, 30, 31, 67, 107, and 108 were invalidated by the Patent Office in an administrative proceeding, but claims 21 and 22 survived that particular challenge. See IPR2013-00391, Final Decision. Cost for these challenges is around $300k (and often much less for troll suits), rather than the $2-5 million that is typically quoted for district court cases.

kukx 10y ago

What about making an "anti patent troll" website that will allow users to share their legal approaches and documents and the rest of the defense materials. Some of them may be reusable. I guess it should significantly limit the legal costs for everyone and improve their position against trolls, right?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tim333 10y ago
I was toying with doing that. Even got a domain name. Might be a bit of a hassle though. Dunno. Thoughts anyone? Would it help? Would I get sued?
- toss1941 10y ago
  IANAL but I'd setup the corporate entity outside the US and hire a mail forwarding service of some kind to redirect all the mail to your home.
devrs0 10y ago
I'm not sure how this works when it comes to a successful defense but it's my understanding that, in the case of a settlement, the defendant must sign an NDA - preventing just this and allowing the racket to continue.
hansjorg 10y ago
Another video linked here featuring the same guy links to http://www.trollfighter.com/ http://www.trollfighter.com/ which seems to be an initiative of something called Application Developers Alliance.

mholt 10y ago

"... defend myself for committing the crime of ..." But a lawsuit is a civil case, not a criminal case, right?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dougmccune 10y ago

Is there a unified place one can donate to that people think is the best way to put some money toward real change in the system? I'm happy to send some money to the EFF, but I'd up that 100 times if I knew it was going 100% toward killing patent trolls and I thought it was the best organization to fight that fight.

mmaunder 10y ago
Agreed. I'd love to see Austin set up a gofundme with specific goals, milestones, a well defined team and strategy. We'd contribute if it's something that would bring about real change.
vanderZwan 10y ago
This was linked in a description of one of the videos: http://www.trollfighter.com/ http://www.trollfighter.com/

finstell 10y ago

Uniloc has this piece of Google Maps screenshot hosted at their web server. Isn't this not allowed? http://www.uniloc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Screen-shot-2010-08-05-at-10.11.47-AM-300x248.png http://www.uniloc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Screen-shot...

lintiness 10y ago

welcome to a political system (and indeed a world) run by lawyers.

treehau5 10y ago
And the 'democratic' party just 'nominated' a lawyer-at-heart as well, who has perfectly demonstrated that lawyeresque doublespeak can shield you from any blame or responsibility of actions that would have lesser plebeians dishonored, fired on the spot, jailed or any combination thereof. I guess we must secretly love getting screwed over.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

davemel37 10y ago

It's time to call in John Oliver...He's our last and only hope!

cloudjacker 10y ago
He's already done a video on this, the same guy was featured in it

hhsnopek 10y ago

I find it oddly funny how Google hasn't stepped in to support their "clients", I'd think they'd help shutdown patent trolls so developers can continue to improve and distribute applications

optimiz3 10y ago
Seriously - what the fuck Google? It's only a matter of time until a patent troll writes a for loop on the store index to send out infringement suits DMCA-takedown style.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- daenz 10y ago
  > It's only a matter of time until a patent troll writes a for loop on the store index to send out infringement suits DMCA-takedown style. Perhaps a competing troll owns the iteration patent.
  - krisdol 10y ago
    No, iteration is fair game, but `for` is an API name patented by Oracle. Legally, a patent troll would have to write a `whenceforth`, `do...thither`, or `oft` loop.
    - greydius 10y ago
      The next time I'm forced to write C code... #define whenceforth for
      - Zikes 10y ago
        #define supposing if #define whereas else

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

blubb-fish 10y ago

How about a patent about placing the right foot into a solid hollow object with three to four cylinder shaped objects (with low height to radius ratio) separating that hollow object from the surface of the earth - yeah - and well, then driving with it ... will have to think about how to make that sound smart and original. How is this even for real - why is Google not putting an end to it?

fouric 10y ago

While I applaud what Austin Meyer is doing by raising awareness about patent trolls, does anyone here but me wish that the content had been made available in some sort of text medium instead? I can't think of any important parts of the video that couldn't have been reasonably conveyed through the use of text.

angry-hacker 10y ago
I agree, but maybe because he said he wants to raise the awareness of 'simple' people, such as jurors, etc. Video is probably better medium to go viral than some text about software parents regarding non techies.
awqrre 10y ago
Not as condensed as true text, but you can download the CC: http://downsub.com/index.php?title=I+am+being+sued%2C+in+East+Texas%2C+for+using+Google&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fapi%2Ftimedtext%3Fexpire%3D1465438618%26key%3Dyttt1%26v%3DeatfgXTMFf0%26asr_langs%3Dfr%252Cja%252Cnl%252Cen%252Cpt%252Cit%252Cko%252Cru%252Cde%252Ces%26hl%3Den_US%26caps%3Dasr%26sparams%3Dasr_langs%252Ccaps%252Cv%252Cexpire%26signature%3DBA095EAF082053F9B653CD538F35047A949A94D3.7AB0907C5AC18836E2689FE72477F417535F8A46%26kind%3Dasr%26lang%3Den http://downsub.com/index.php?title=I+am+being+sued%2C+in+Eas...

slmyers 10y ago

I'm not sure if this would help, but I think we should all tweet a link to this video clip to John Oliver. https://twitter.com/iamjohnoliver?lang=en https://twitter.com/iamjohnoliver?lang=en or maybe this twitter account https://twitter.com/LastWeekTonight?lang=en https://twitter.com/LastWeekTonight?lang=en

devrs0 10y ago
He has already covered it once: https://youtu.be/3bxcc3SM_KA?t=96 https://youtu.be/3bxcc3SM_KA?t=96

FesterCluck 10y ago

I thought we already squashed this shit: http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/26/uniloc-patent-troll-defeated/ http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/26/uniloc-patent-troll-defea...

vosbert 10y ago

Can these services just be disabled in East Texas to avoid their jurisdiction? At the very least, it would force the patent trolls into more neutral territory.

swsieber 10y ago
That's a very interesting idea. I wonder if it's a viable option. edit: It'd actually be pretty effective if you stop to think about it, even if it doesn't technically prevent litigation. Just think: "Sorry, this product isn't available in you're area due to patent litigation concerns". Part of me wonders if that happened with Netflix, Google Maps, etc. wouldn't the people start hating the patent litigation instead of being content with it?
- captainmuon 10y ago
  That is kind of the nuclear option of the big internet companies. I'm sure they realize that they have this power, but they can only use it rarely, maybe once, before there is public outcry against this "abuse of power". They're probably saving this card it for a bigger issue.
- thirdsun 10y ago
  Interesting thought. You should ask german Youtube users how they feel about GEMA. You certainly won't hear rave reviews.
ramblenode 10y ago
I have been wondering the same thing. If not outright disabling the service, would it be sufficient to license one's software in a way that prohibits it being used in East Texas? Would that remove standing to sue in the district?
jhayward 10y ago
Wouldn't work. The plaintiff only needs to show a nexus to the venue; all they have to do is open an office there to achieve that.

kevinpet 10y ago

I happened to read this article about recusal recently and I don't understand how some of these allegations wouldn't be explicit grounds for recusal, specifically the son being a lawyer with a firm that tries cases in the father's court. https://popehat.com/2016/06/06/lawsplainer-when-must-federal-judges-recuse-themselves-anyway/ https://popehat.com/2016/06/06/lawsplainer-when-must-federal... Article is in the context of Trump, but you needn't let that turn you off.

bitchmade37 10y ago

Bulls hit if it does not have a patent pending sticker then anything can be shared or used by another person So come on with da game dumbasses check ya shit before posting to make it look real!!!

bitchmade37 10y ago

Bulls hit if it does not have a patent pending sticker then anything can be shared or used by another person So come on with da game dumbasses check ya shit before posting to make it look real!!!

djsumdog 10y ago

America needs to follow New Zealand's example: Ban software patents!

vacri 10y ago
In the video, he says that the politicians stopped the issue from even being voted on. That's without Silicon Valley stepping in to really lobby against that kind of ban (NZ has no equivalent of SV)
- deepsun 10y ago
  Big companies in Silicon Valley can defend themselves, so they don't care. It's small businesses that are affected. And big companies do not really want competition from small businesses.
fredguth 10y ago
Software is not patentable in Brazil either. Honest question: have anyone seen any software innovation been really protected by a patent litigation? All articles I have seen are about trolls.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  Well if you're going to ask that question, I'm going to ask a corollary: Has anyone seen any innovation that has been really protected by patents, that couldn't have been protected merely with trade secrets and industrial capability (i.e., big companies are physically and organizationally able to make things that small companies cannot due to their resources, therefore they're really the last ones to need patent protection, but they're also the ones most able to afford spending huge sums of money on patent fees and enforcement)?
  - NEDM64 10y ago
    Medicine, for example, they have to tell what's inside the bottle.

mmaunder 10y ago

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8XknFl1l_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8XknFl1l_8 He visits East Texas and shows that the 'offices' of the 'companies' that hold each patent are empty shells.

tedmiston 10y ago
To save someone 8 minutes: Tl;dr: He visits the listed offices of several dozen patent trolls in East Texas, including one directly across from the court house. Each one is empty with no sign of human activity. One has a secretary who claims the address is the accounting firm for those businesses. Then one person comes out to say that he is "a representative" of the businesses, and that those businesses "are based in East Texas" though. He recites one sentence about patents being property and then the video creator is kicked out.
- quest88 10y ago
  Ah yes. Former East Texan here. One company, Personal Web (http://www.personalweb.com/about.html http://www.personalweb.com/about.html), setup shop near the courthouse. They came to our school claiming they were going to be working on the next version of the web, web 3.0. They were recruiting for part-time only students. I asked why they chose east texas, and they said because they owned many patents wanted to be near the court that here's many technology patent cases. 1) The patent reason is a giveaway what they were really up to. 2) Why would you only hire part-time students? They were simply trying to build up a credible reputation in the community as a "small, local shop hiring locals" going against the big guys.
  - ultramancool 10y ago
    Any chance you know anyone who got a position with them? Really curious what kind of make work projects they had people doing.
    - toomim 10y ago
      Wouldn't it be great if someone got a job with these companies, as a mole? Then snoop through their activities, and write it up as an exposé?

johansch 10y ago

How do you americans still allow East Texas to be a part of the United States? They're clearly rogue?

cft 10y ago

One practical thing one could do is to forward this to an influential tech journalist, ideally to a mainstream publication that has a technology section, like CNN or WSJ.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

superbatfish 10y ago

At least that totally rad cliff diving video that YouTube queued up afterwards was a nice chaser.

shivsta 10y ago
Might have been specifically recommended for you. Mine was different.

iLoch 10y ago

Is the process of filing a patent patented?

Alupis 10y ago

Judge Leonard Davis presides over a large amount of these "Patent Troll" cases, and his son (!!) Bo Davis is a Lawyer who represents these very same Patent Trolls in court! If that's not a racket, I don't know what is.

captainmuon 10y ago

There's only so far a justice system can get dysfunctional before people say fukitall and it looses its legitimacy. It's not just patents, civil forfeiture is another thing that comes to mind and I'm sure there more. I imagine if in future somebody gets such a patent lawsuit, they'd just rip up the letter and throw it away. Police comes to carry out court orders because they decided in absence? "Sorry officer, the reason you're here is just patent bullshit." - "Oh well, I won't lift a finger for these idiots. Sorry for bothering you, have a nice day!" Or a more extreme reaction: already in this thread, a couple of people are fantasizing about violence, hiring a hitman and so on. I realize it is mostly meant jokingly, but self-justice is another effect of a justice system that's lost legitimacy. Rule-of-law is a great thing to have, but it only works if these laws are somewhat reasonable and in accord with peoples moral values...

VonGuard 10y ago

OK HN, get out there and find this man some prior art so we can all just put this company out of business...

KON_Air 10y ago

All the Mobile Marketplaces are on fire. Nice. Posted from my Windows Phone 8.1

masswerk 10y ago

What to do about this? I'm told, you may be put to trial in East Texas, if you're selling your goods or services there. – So, why not stop selling to East Texas and let them settle the resulting collision of interests themselves?

throwawaysocks 10y ago
Can a lawyer or something with legal background please weigh in on this?
dragonwriter 10y ago
(1) That would probably work under the existing rules. (2) There is an active legal challenge to the existing rules (arguing that they misapply two separate provisions of law as if one controls a definition in the other, when that is not the case), which if successful would radically shake up patent venue and pretty much end the "drag everyone into ED Texas" thing we have going on right now. [0] [0] http://patentlyo.com/patent/2016/04/circuit-continues-allowance.html http://patentlyo.com/patent/2016/04/circuit-continues-allowa...

veeragoni 10y ago

Someone patent "the idea of having a patent" and Sue these companies in Hawaii.

stevesun21 10y ago

WTF! This is ridiculous. later these people might start sue people use cell phone.

dak1 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Richardson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Richardson "Ric Richardson is an Australian inventor. He is the holder of multiple granted patents including the Uniloc patent US5490216 and the Logarex patent 6400293. Although he spent twelve years in California to promote and develop products produced by Uniloc, Richardson grew up in Sydney and currently resides just outside Byron Bay. He is the founder of Uniloc, a company based on the technology he first patented in 1992." Here's his picture from the Uniloc web site: http://uniloc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ricrichardson.png http://uniloc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ricrichardson.p... He's apparently insanely talented, having "invented" the panic button, the visual voice recorder, the 3G skype phone, the secure browser, the universal database, the carbon scrubber, the book dispensor, "media objects", the "Internet Computer", QR Codes, DRM, a password replacement system, TV muting, and several dozen other devices, just in the past 16 years alone.[1] [1] https://sites.google.com/site/ricricho/ric-s-inventions https://sites.google.com/site/ricricho/ric-s-inventions

igravious 10y ago
Full name: Frederick Bailier Richardson III Am thinking these activities devalue the terms invention and inventor. Would prefer that to patent some process that you had invented you ought to have to come up with a device to implement said process. You may not even know how to realise your idea in practise which is kind of where all the hard work is. An not saying idea for processes are ten a penny but the bar needs to be raised.

Sharma 10y ago

How about creating a petition here about this issue and we all sign it? https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/

nichochar 10y ago

Welcome to america

touchofevil 10y ago

Would incorporating your tech company in England instead of the USA protect your company from these patent troll lawsuits? It's extremely easy to start a company based in England, even as a US citizen living in the USA. With the patent trolling this out of control in the US at the moment, would basing your company abroad offer you any protection?

woah 10y ago
No.
Grishnakh 10y ago
Yes, if your product or service is only available in England. No, if you sell your product or service in the US (or at least East Texas). It doesn't matter where your company is incorporated, it only matters where you do business.

froo 10y ago

Someone really needs to create a patent that defines methods of patent trolling, so every time one of these scumbags starts a lawsuit you can sue them.

mcbits 10y ago
Someone (Halliburton!) already tried: http://www.google.com/patents/US20080270152 http://www.google.com/patents/US20080270152 Edit: And IBM apparently got one granted: http://www.google.com/patents/US8386350 http://www.google.com/patents/US8386350
- chadcmulligan 10y ago
  lol, after a quick glance at the IBM one it seems to be patenting software that manages patent portfolios (maybe). How utterly bizarre

mdip 10y ago

Patent trolling issues aside (they're valid, but discussed and I'm just another one of the "software patents suck guys"), I'm surprised that Google doesn't provide protection for developers using the Play Store. It's a very critical service for developers writing code for Android -- though it's not always required it is if you want your app to be seen. They certainly don't have to and I'm not sure if Apple or Microsoft do or not for their equivalents, but I know Microsoft offers patent indemnification for a lot of things these days. It would be in Google's best interest to have a patent indemnification policy for Google Play store. I'd love to know what the actual numbers look like but I'd be willing to bet that the costs are extremely low since it works as a deterrent to these kinds of lawsuits. Patent trolls go after these lone developers because they'll settle rather than incur the cost. It's an easy buck. This guy didn't make Google Play, he didn't write the code that "supposedly" infringed on the patent. He simply used it because that's the only way for practical purposes to publish an Android app. And since the patent covers a large set of features that Play uses for licensing, he couldn't have published through Play and not infringed in the eyes of Uniloc. The law allows anyone in the chain (including the guy playing with the Flight Simulator) to be sued for infringement, but they'd be very unlikely to do this kind of garbage if they knew Google would bring their legal team into the fold. By not protecting their developers, Google has a deterrent to people using their platform.

abrookewood 10y ago

Here's written coverage of the situation in case you don't have time to watch the video: http://www.technobuffalo.com/2016/06/07/x-plane-flight-simulator-patent-troll-uniloc/ http://www.technobuffalo.com/2016/06/07/x-plane-flight-simul...

jitix 10y ago

Somehow this all seems illegal. I'm not that familiar with the US law so can somebody explain if the defendant can claim that the judge has a conflict of interest and is not fit to handle the case because his son profits from it?

arcticfox 10y ago
Well it's very unlikely the judge directly works his son's cases due to that obvious conflict. Rather, the judge works a random set of cases brought in East Texas and works them favorably for trolls. So many troll cases get brought in that district, hoping for this judge or other friendly judges. It's obviously rotten but that one-step removed corruption is probably not explicitly codified as wrong anywhere. Hopefully the legal system finds a way to root it out.

BuckRogers 10y ago

If Google won't step in and litigate the patent trolls into poverty, ruining everyone's life who is involved and possibly even promising to ruin their children's and grandchildren's lives long after the actual patent trolls are dead... that would stop it. But in the meantime, guess I'll just be writing webapps.

thinkcomp 10y ago

The docket for the lawsuit in question is here: http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/sknqayqz/texas-eastern-district-court/uniloc-usa-inc-et-al-v-laminar-research-llc/ http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/sknqayqz/texas-eastern-dist...

dematio 10y ago

If Peter Thiel could do it, why not Google? It does not cost much for Google to invalidate the patent.

rwhitman 10y ago

Yet another example of the consumer software industry being completely impotent when it comes to defending itself. Patent trolls file these frivolous lawsuits because they make millions and suffer zero consequences for their actions. Why? Because there is no industry trade group representing the software industry with any sort of teeth. They know software developers have money, and they know software developers are absurdly weak when it comes to defending themselves. Software developers are easy prey. Other than the EFF who is out there to represent us with any measure of real leverage over the legal process? Who is out there with the muscle to make patent trolls and software unfriendly lawmakers have second thoughts when targeting developers? With no lobbies or trade associations with any sort of power out there representing consumer software, anyone with even minor influence over government can simply walk all over software developers, again and again and again. The consumer software industry has enormous amounts of cash at it's disposal, surely a few cash rich companies can pool enough resources together to kick off a trade association worthy of punching back, hard

dancablam 10y ago
Somebody needs to create a FUPA for anti-patent trolling

bnycum 10y ago

I live less than an hour from Marshall, TX. Maybe an hour and a half from Tyler, TX. I'd love to help in any way I could, but since I'm not a lawyer I bet anything I could do is slim to nothing.

floatalong 10y ago

As angry as this video makes me, I'd point out that we've been making some progress in the fight against trolls. Yes, they're still a problem, but some things that have weakened them: The Supreme Court's ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank, which dealt a fatal blow to a lot of software patents out there (especially the awful, vague and overly broad patents that trolls love so much). The Supreme Court reaffirmed that merely "adding a generic computer to perform generic computer functions" does not make an otherwise abstract idea patentable. [0] This ruling helps get rid of cases earlier. While it doesn't kill off patent litigation, it makes it easier for us to fight low-quality assertions. More importantly, this puts a tougher filter for prosecution of new patent applications, the vast majority of which are dumb and overly broad. Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings, which are rather expensive (average $278,000) [1], but are much cheaper than litigation. Third parties can use IPRs to challenge patent claims (patentability) based on prior art patents and publications. In the case of Austin Meyer's patent defense, many of the patent claims were invalidated through this kind of proceeding, and petitioned by a consortium (Distinctive Developments, Ltd., Electronic Arts Inc., Gameloft S.E., Halfbrick Studios Pty Ltd., Laminar Research LLC, Mojang AB and Square Enix, Inc.). [2] Heightened pleading standards. Before December 2015, it used to be that trolls could sue dozens of companies with cookie-cutter complaints, citing no real facts, and put on pressure for settlements by threatening lengthy and costly discovery proceedings. But thanks to decisions in Iqbal/Twombly, complaints must plead facts and recite aspects of the accused product that are alleged to infringe. This butchers the spam lawsuit tactic, and the day before this went into effect, trolls filed a one day record for new suits. [3] Shameful, yes, but it's helped clarify standards governing motions to dismiss. [0] https://www.eff.org/files/2014/06/19/alice-corp._v._cls-bank_opinion.pdf https://www.eff.org/files/2014/06/19/alice-corp._v._cls-bank... [1] https://www.rpxcorp.com/2015/07/02/iprs-reality-amid-the-pyrotechnics/ https://www.rpxcorp.com/2015/07/02/iprs-reality-amid-the-pyr... [2] search patent number 6857067 and document 37 at https://ptabtrials.uspto.gov https://ptabtrials.uspto.gov [3] http://fortune.com/2015/12/02/patent-lawsuit-record/ http://fortune.com/2015/12/02/patent-lawsuit-record/

throwawayuniloc 10y ago

The main site is: http://uniloc.com http://uniloc.com I found a bunch of security flaws, hosts and user credentials. Now they're here: http://pastebin.com/sevdmwzz http://pastebin.com/sevdmwzz

owaislone 10y ago

Will Peter Thiel help? These trolls are actually destroying lives.

cgtyoder 10y ago

"I'm not here to raise awareness! Ok, yes, maybe that's what I'm doing."

zoner 10y ago

So do not register your company in the USA, otherwise you have to deal with patent trolls.

TheMagicHorsey 10y ago

The American patent system is a dead weight drag on the American software economy. The quality of software patents is atrocious, and the value of the tiny fraction of good patents in this space does not make up for the Billions lost to trolls and the costs of administering the system.

pascalxus 10y ago

For all the entrepreneurs looking for a problem to solve, here it is: Create a company/product that automates legal services (start with the niche case for defending against Patent Trolls): then offer it as a service, say with a flat fee. If the cost of this service is on the order of hundreds of dollars, say less than 500$, it should solve the problem of frivolous law suits. This sub-niche is huge!

x13 10y ago

Glad to see he won. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8