4 ms·

Cloudflare Declares War on a Patent Troll with $50,000 Bounty

77 points by nitin_flanker 9y ago

pearjuice 9y ago
>[...] Blackbird, popped up last year after several attorneys quit their jobs at big law firms to try their hand at "patent trolling" Sadly, "Patent trolling" is to law as to what "creating an unicorn startup" is to tech. High risk, everyone dislikes it but the payout is great if it works.
- nikanj 9y ago
  Where's the risk?
  - pearjuice 9y ago
    A company (like Cloudflare) pulling a 180.
distances 9y ago
Previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14316486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14316486.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jmmcd 9y ago
Next twist: Blackbird provides the prior art and claims the bounty.
moonshinefe 9y ago
I hope Cloudflare wins this one because screw patent trolls. I have to say though, a company that's looking at massive patent fees vs. the paltry $50k offered for someone to play lawyer for them, and the fact their security bug bounty program gets you a whole 1 year's free service + a limited edition t-shirt (!!) + on some website hall of fame... I don't understand why their policy is literally "Let's toss 1 dollar bills at people and hopefully someone will go to bat for us!" instead of paying regular fees for real lawyers or anywhere near industry standards for bounties. It seems almost insulting.
- toyg 9y ago
  I think this is in addition to actual lawyering - it's an extra "public research" budget of sort, open to everyone, in the hope that people can help them amass bits of info to form an unstoppable wave of prior art.
jwilk 9y ago
Archived copy, which can be read without JS enabled: https://archive.fo/zjFdt https://archive.fo/zjFdt
- sha666sum 9y ago
  I ran into a CloudFlare DDoS protection screen and had to enable JS. The irony is real.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    Turns out you can make the original article readable by fiddling a bit with CSS. In Firefox, go to style editor (Shift+F7) and remove the .hide-fonts rule. Or add this to your userContent.css: @-moz-document domain(fortune.com) { .hide-fonts * { visibility: visible !important; } }
JacobJack 9y ago
Such a vague patent shouldn't have been accepted in the first place. It's essentially an idea with no specific details. How long before we get a patent on "Something that serves a purpose of any kind" ? http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/7174362 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=H...
rodionos 9y ago
Not to undermine the effort, but $50K doesn't qualify as war by any measure. A war-like outcome would be seeking to bankrupt the troll or at least severely constraint its ability to abuse the legal system in the future.
JokerDan 9y ago
This is just more ammo in the 'Patent system is broken, just abolish it' argument. From my point of view it harms innovation. Sadly there is the valid view that it helps the newer inventor though. The whole Patent system makes me sad.

77 points by nitin_flanker 9y ago

>[...] Blackbird, popped up last year after several attorneys quit their jobs at big law firms to try their hand at "patent trolling" Sadly, "Patent trolling" is to law as to what "creating an unicorn startup" is to tech. High risk, everyone dislikes it but the payout is great if it works.

nikanj 9y ago
Where's the risk?
- pearjuice 9y ago
  A company (like Cloudflare) pulling a 180.

distances 9y ago

Previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14316486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14316486.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jmmcd 9y ago

Next twist: Blackbird provides the prior art and claims the bounty.

moonshinefe 9y ago

I hope Cloudflare wins this one because screw patent trolls. I have to say though, a company that's looking at massive patent fees vs. the paltry $50k offered for someone to play lawyer for them, and the fact their security bug bounty program gets you a whole 1 year's free service + a limited edition t-shirt (!!) + on some website hall of fame... I don't understand why their policy is literally "Let's toss 1 dollar bills at people and hopefully someone will go to bat for us!" instead of paying regular fees for real lawyers or anywhere near industry standards for bounties. It seems almost insulting.

toyg 9y ago
I think this is in addition to actual lawyering - it's an extra "public research" budget of sort, open to everyone, in the hope that people can help them amass bits of info to form an unstoppable wave of prior art.

jwilk 9y ago

Archived copy, which can be read without JS enabled: https://archive.fo/zjFdt https://archive.fo/zjFdt

sha666sum 9y ago
I ran into a CloudFlare DDoS protection screen and had to enable JS. The irony is real.
- jwilk 9y ago
  Turns out you can make the original article readable by fiddling a bit with CSS. In Firefox, go to style editor (Shift+F7) and remove the .hide-fonts rule. Or add this to your userContent.css: @-moz-document domain(fortune.com) { .hide-fonts * { visibility: visible !important; } }

JacobJack 9y ago

Such a vague patent shouldn't have been accepted in the first place. It's essentially an idea with no specific details. How long before we get a patent on "Something that serves a purpose of any kind" ? http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/7174362 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=H...

rodionos 9y ago

Not to undermine the effort, but $50K doesn't qualify as war by any measure. A war-like outcome would be seeking to bankrupt the troll or at least severely constraint its ability to abuse the legal system in the future.

JokerDan 9y ago

This is just more ammo in the 'Patent system is broken, just abolish it' argument. From my point of view it harms innovation. Sadly there is the valid view that it helps the newer inventor though. The whole Patent system makes me sad.