13 ms·
Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game
- jannotti 9y agoTrying to find other companies under the same threat is a great approach. In a similar situation, this allowed my company to fight a patent troll and share costs, so we didn't cave under the, "It'll cost us this much in legal fees anyway" argument.
- rhcom2 9y agoThis is the strategy that helped defeat the patent on podcasting. Also I would contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
- durkie 9y agoAgreed! We found a great lawyer through eff for our own patent troll case.
- Kelbit 9y agoWhile it doesn't help in this case (since there is already a looming legal threat from an NPE), you can buy patent troll insurance now: https://www.rpxcorp.com/ https://www.rpxcorp.com/. This covers your legal fees in the event of litigation, which can scare off a patent troll who just wants a hit-and-run settlement.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- DenisM 9y agoDo you know what's the ballpark cost by any chance?
- williamstein 9y agoI got a quote from them 2 or 3 years ago for a company and the amount was for $7K/year. RPX said they came up with the price based on the likely danger of patent trolls to this company, so I don't know if the price they would quote now or to another company would be the same.
- staticautomatic 9y agoThat's pretty reasonable compared to the litigation costs.
- kelnos 9y agoIt is ridiculously disheartening that this sort of thing even has to exist. It's just taking the money you'd be forced to pay some exploitative patent troll, and giving it (well, probably/hopefully less of it, but still) to an exploitative insurance firm instead.
- gowld 9y agoThe insurance firm isn't exploitative. The patent troll is actively harmfully attacking people. The insurance firm (assuming they aren't secretly creating demand for their product) is mitigating the damage. Locksmiths and firefighters aren't exploitative.
- roganartu 9y agoInsurance doesn't mitigate damage, it amortizes it (typically across a group of entities). The expected average annual claims on an insurer's policies need to be lower than the sum of the premiums or the insurer loses money. This is why people in high risk categories pay more for insurance (eg young people and people with high performance cars have higher car insurance premiums because statistically they crash more often and/or have higher rates of total loss)
- cestith 9y ago> The expected average annual claims on an insurer's policies need to be lower than the sum of the premiums or the insurer loses money. All this time I thought they invested the float.
- Ma8ee 9y agoWell, yes and no. For the single insured it is there to mitigate damages that otherwise would be catastrophic. I hope that I will lose money by buying insurance, because that means nothing really bad happened to me.
- Retric 9y agoIn this case it does because someone with insurance is a poor target for patent trolls. Assuming it becomes common you get 'herd immunity' as patent trolls become less effective which also lowers the cost of the insurance.
- EvanAnderson 9y agoI wonder if they patented the "business process" of selling insurance against patent trolls.
- PaulAJ 9y agoTwo problems: First, you won't be able to get insurance for this case, because it predates your policy. A bit like getting fire insurance when your house is already on fire. Second, an insurance company won't just write you a blank cheque for legal fees, they will take over the case and look for the cheapest way out, which will probably be settlement.
- rocqua 9y agoAn insurance company dedicated to patent trolls might have a policy of fighting every case in court. If you have the resources to back up this threat, it means patent trolls are much less likely to actually go to court. Hence, specific insurance against patent trolls could work by effectively taking away the easy targets for patent trolls. It's a bit like home-insurance companies that offer discounts on good locks to keep out thieves. Everyone except for the criminals are better off afterwards.
- Kelbit 9y agoYes, hence why I pointed out it didn't help in this case (there's already an NPE demanding license fees). I don't know if the second point is a big deal. Even if they choose to settle, you've still mitigated your risk without going to court. And I suspect a patent litigation insurance agency is going to be motivated to negotiate very small settlements and/or actually fight it out in court, lest they gain a reputation as the company that hands out license fees.
- danvoell 9y agoIsn't this what they did on Silicon Valley?
- viraptor 9y agoYes, although with bad result of the other companies negotiating lower fees and throwing the protagonist under the bus. (If I remember correctly) I hope that in real world there would be some legal paperwork ensuring this doesn't happen.
- maaarghk 9y agoI noticed the response from Playsaurus' attorney, as well as stating why CH2 is not infringing, lays out arguments suggesting the 838 patent should not be valid. I'm curious if someone familiar with the matter happens to be reading - is there any provision in the system for Playsaurus to now have the case taken the court regardless of the fact GTX did not infact file a lawsuit, i.e. attempt to have it invalidated even if GTX drop the threat of the lawsuit? Or would they need to piggy back / support one of the other companies listed in this blog?
- rhizome 9y agoSee here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaratory_judgment#Declaratory_judgment_actions_in_patent_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaratory_judgment#Declarato...
- amahani 9y agoYes, you can seek a declaratory action in federal court, and more recently, you can seek to invalidate with the USPTO's PTAB through an inter partes review (IPR).
- josaka 9y agoYes. They would arguably have standing to bring a declaratory judgment action, asking a court to invalidate the patent. They should also look for (now relatively common) state law provisions that provide damages for bad faith demand letters.
- jrochkind1 9y agoThat would be pretty expensive though. Is why nearly any non-huge company is going to take someone dropping their claim as a huge victory, and not try to go to court anyway.
- scarmig 9y agoThere should be some kind of patent troll clearinghouse. Companies can check it to see if other companies are reporting the same shakedown tactics for a given patent. Though, could a patent troll could get around that by spacing out the trolling? So by the time any company finds another company that's been trolled, they've already paid it up and don't have as much incentive to fight the patent troll after the fact. They could even offer a "discount" conditional upon mandatory non-disclosure of the legal threat.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago> Though, could a patent troll could get around that by spacing out the trolling? So by the time any company finds another company that's been trolled, they've already paid it up and don't have as much incentive to fight the patent troll after the fact. That's still a minor win, since it mitigates the amount of damage the trolls can do per unit time.
- deeg 9y agoAccording to the OA there's only two years left on the patent. Spacing them out would at least limit the number of small companies targeted.
- matttah 9y agoThat's a great idea...perhaps a quick weekend project there we'll talk on!
- cortesoft 9y agoAs a sister comment pointed out, thankfully it has already been done! https://trollingeffects.org/ https://trollingeffects.org/
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mchannon 9y agohttps://trollingeffects.org https://trollingeffects.org
- b1gtuna 9y agoOf course these trolls have no face or names. Hope someone can track the actual owners down.
- sli 9y agohttp://gtxcorp.com/ http://gtxcorp.com/ Appears to be this company. Or they're using this company's name, but that would be wildly stupid of them to attempt if they want any chance at all of winning (which they already don't seem to have -- way too much prior art).
- strictnein 9y agoSpecifically says at the bottom of the post that it's not: > "As far as I can tell, the guys shaking us down are NOT these guys in particular: http://www.gtxcorp.com/" http://www.gtxcorp.com/"
- ng-user 9y agoThe article explicitly states that is NOT the company, but rather another company with exact same name.
- maaarghk 9y agoIt is clearly this company - http://www.gtx.com/ http://www.gtx.com/ The inventor of the patent is listed on the register as Marvin T Ling. [1] The gtx.com website has a press release stating the owner and founder of the company is Marvin T. Ling. [2] [1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7177838.PN.&OS=PN/7177838&RS=PN/7177838 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H... [2] http://www.gtx.com/about/press/aml_president_pr.asp http://www.gtx.com/about/press/aml_president_pr.asp
- rs999gti 9y ago> Method and apparatus for conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens So cam girl sites are under threat?
- sli 9y agoPretty obvious patent trolling if they're only going for this rather smalltime developer and none of the high profile F2P game developers and big time game developers releasing AAA games with a premium currency.
- CyberDildonics 9y agoThey may be trying to work their way up with settlements.
- teej 9y agoYep. I imagine if they went after Supercell that Apple or Google might get involved, at which point a tiny patent troll would get destroyed.
- chapill 9y ago>Pretty obvious patent trolling Not really. The patent was filed in 2000. Approved in 2007. It hasn't changed hands. The company makes software. Believe it or not, this is the US system working as intended. An obvious troll is a patent holding company, with no products, who purchases old patents, then goes on a suing spree for any company that uses printers.
- TillE 9y agoLike the peculiarly specific definition of "startup" which is often used here, I don't believe that very specific definition of patent trolling is commonly accepted. I'm sure you could find examples from Slashdot 10+ years ago where it's clearly intended as a more general "abusive exploitation of patents for monetary gain".
- chapill 9y agoThe problem with accepting HN or Slashdot's definition is both groups are extremely biased in this matter. The general consensus is patent troll == non practicing entity. https://thelawdictionary.org/patent-troll/ https://thelawdictionary.org/patent-troll/ Everyone here can disagree all they want, but they're still wrong as far as most lay persons are concerned.
- Ecco 9y agoHow is the price settled upon? I mean, why ask $35k specifically? Why not 3.5k or 350k?
- scarmig 9y ago350k is too high a price to shake down from small companies. 3.5k won't recoup enough value.
- josaka 9y agoThat's about what it costs to draft and file a 12(b)(6) motion to kill the patent at the start of a case for lack of subject matter eligibility under Alice v. CLS Bank.
- chrismcb 9y agoThe price is set "low" to make it more appealing to just settle rather than pay the lawyer and court costs.
- zerostar07 9y agoCan american patent trolls equally easy bully companies outside the US?
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoIANAL, but no (if I understand correctly). Companies outside the US (all the way outside, with no US footprint) are subject to the laws of their own land. You could sue them in US court, and never collect a dime. You could sue them in their own courts, have the lawsuits be subject to the laws of their land, have to spend a lot more money on lawyers... and still (probably) never collect a dime. If they have an office in the US, though, you can sue the US division in US court. If they have no office but some sales in the US, I'm a little less clear on...
- mchannon 9y agoProbably not. US Patents are the cheapest patents to get. If, say, a German company infringed on a US Patent by selling to a customer in France, that would be completely legal, unless the US Patentholder also had a French patent, which is often not the case. They'd have to prosecute in French court as well, which, given the size of France's market vs. the US, would be Pyrrhic (with a capital P) at best. The calculus for being a patent troll requires a bizarre confluence of factors (size of market, expense of litigation, certainty of litigation, cost of patents, venue procedures) that are likely to limit the phenomenon to the US.
- Kelbit 9y agoOther countries also have a loser-pays-costs rule for lawsuits, so the risk to NPEs are much higher if they lose an expensive case.
- realusername 9y agoAnd also software patents are non-existent in the EU as far as I know so it would not work at all.
- vadimberman 9y agoOnly if the company outside of the US trades in the US. But that normally involves setting up a subsidiary, in which case they do have a US company. There is no such thing as an international patent.
- chapill 9y agoThis is hating the player, not the game. The only way to win is not to play. Relocate to a country with no software patents. I hear Estonia is great. Do all your filing online. Be a remote working foreign contractor for your own company :P
- viraptor 9y agoIf you're still selling to the US, I don't think this would protect you. Your product can be banned anyway.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoYour product could be banned, but the sue-er would never collect any money. So, if the sue-er is a patent troll, why would they bother? They don't care about banning competition. They'd burn a lot of money on lawyers for zero income. That's not a fight that they want to pick.
- viraptor 9y agoTheir gain would be a chance that you pay the fees. Because outside of specific local markets, no small game producer could afford dropping the US market (and possibly US-based delivery systems like Steam, Play, and AppStore) and succeed.
- subroutine 9y agoIf the company was making 35k/yr operating in the US and you sue for 35k one-time fee, do you think they'd do it?
- gowld 9y agoIf you own an Estonian corporation, they can sue you.
- oh_sigh 9y agoOkay, they ban you, you lose all the US revenue. Then, other companies see that they may get banned as well and lose their revenue, so they give in.
- devit 9y agoLooks like software patents can actually benefit society in some cases.
- apthnz 9y agoNot sure I follow - I think you're saying the way the patent is worded means the game dev is protected, but if there was no patent at all there would be nothing to attack them with in the first place?
- wooly_bully 9y agoThey're taking a jab at in-app purchases.
- swarnie_ 9y agoHow did you arrive at that conclusion after reading the linked statement?
- teej 9y agoI assumed it was a snarky shot at in app purchases for games.
- shmerl 9y ago> their behavior to be abusive and terribly unethical. Yep, it's called protection racket.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y agoId like to see worse. Let every patent be stripped from these predators. They also advertise: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7016536 https://patents.google.com/patent/US7016536 which surely has plenty of prior art in image processing.
- l3 9y agohas someone tried patenting making money buy being a patent troll? that of course would make one mega patent troll to deal with.
- zaroth 9y agoThis patent is absurd... selling credits was invented about a day after the concept of money itself. Accounting for those credits in a database was done by the fucking Egyptians. What the heck does this patent actually teach? It teaches absolutely nothing. It goes on for pages describing technology that already existed at the time and for decades prior to 2000. It’s a disgrace and an embarrassment.
- cortesoft 9y agoI think credits actually pre-date currency.
- kinghajj 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
- OrganicMSG 9y agoWriting seems to have developed initially to keep track of favours.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- oldcynic 9y agoHard to decide how I feel here. I hate software patents and patent trolls, but I also hate what f2p and premium currencies have done to gaming. Which is the lesser of these evils?
- brink 9y ago"Is murder okay, as long as you're murdering Hitler?"
- wand3r 9y agoPeople need to stop casually invoking Hitler when making serious or semi-serious arguments or analogies. Like, I hate patent trolls and think in game payments are pretty terrible. However lets put those 2 concepts in the same neighborhood. That neighborhood is nowhere near the neighborhood of the systemic annihilation of a population in as ruthless and demeaning a fashion as Hitler did. That neighborhood, to carry the analogy, is somewhere on Elon's mars colony if patent trolls & ingame payments are in Brooklyn.
- umanwizard 9y agoYeah, and suing someone isn't murder. Making an analogy doesn't imply that the things being compared are of similar magnitude. That's not even the point of analogies.
- brink 9y agoMy argument wasn't really serious.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- heroprotagonist 9y agoThis company actually left the F2P model for the second version: http://www.clickerheroes2.com/paytowin.php http://www.clickerheroes2.com/paytowin.php
- codingdave 9y agoLetters can be ignored. Lawsuits must be responded to. And that same 35K will be offered as a deal after they file, if they file. They are trying to save THEIR legal costs, not yours. Let them sue. Fight it in court. Hopefully win. Counter-sue for your legal fees. Booyah. Note: IANAL, and any actual lawyer would be less flippant. But seriously... don't let attorneys bully you.
- rlabrecque 9y agoDoesn't the article say this patent has been successfully used in the past and thus there's likely precedence? :/
- CodeWriter23 9y agoYeah, 10 years ago. The anti-troll arsenal has grown extensively since then. Personally, I'd file for a USPTO patent review and try to take the patent away from them on the basis that it is neither novel nor innovative.
- CodeWriter23 9y agoArmchair Lawyer here. I've successfully fended off letters like this by simply not responding to them at all. My silence (and the implied BIG middle finger therein) laid down the gauntlet that their only options are to hire their lawyers to file their case, or STFU.
- mysterypie 9y agoIn the PDF documents that Playsaurus has put online, the accuser's lawyers have redacted one line, and that's in the "The lawsuit they will file if we don't pay" document at the bottom, where it says: THE deBRUIN FIRM, LLC [Redacted] David W. deBruin (#4846) 1201 N. Orange Street, Suite 500 Wilmington, Delaware 19801 Telephone: (302) 660-2744 Facsimile: (302) 650-1574 ddebruin@thedebruinfirm.com Of Counsel: RUBIN AND RUDMAN LLP Leslie L. Jacobs, Jr. (pro hac vice forthcoming) 800 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20006 Telephone: (240) 356-1549 Facsimile: (202) 223-1849 ljacobs@rubinrudman.com gcoman@rubinrudman.com Attorney for Plaintiff GTX Corp. I was curious what was being redacted. Examining it with Acrobat Professional, I was able to discover that it says: /s/ David W. deBruin So it's just a signature. Btw, I'm pretty sure that the redaction was done by accusing lawyers and not by Playsaurus because the document author is "Leslie L. Jacobs", who is one of the accuser's lawyers. Though it's still not clear to me why the accuser has two sets of lawyers (THE deBRUIN FIRM and RUBIN AND RUDMAN). Anyone know what might be up with that?
- dragonwriter 9y agoIt looks like Leslie L. Jacobs, Jr., of Rubin and Rudman is associated with working in some manner on this case for the deBruin Firm, despite not being in the regular employ of the firm, and hence is listed in the filing as “Of Counsel” [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_counsel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_counsel
- mysterypie 9y agoDo you suppose that the deBruin Firm did this deliberately to distance themselves from the case, so they still get a cut of the money, but Leslie L. Jacobs, Jr. and his firm Rubin and Rudman get the potentially bad publicity for being patent trolls? Leslie L. Jacobs wrote pro hac vice ("for this occasion only") after his name, which makes it sound like a one time engagement and not a frequent collaboration with the deBruin Firm.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
- Oblouk 9y agoI have a feeling the accuser simply googled "premium currency" and found the article posted by Playsaurus about abandoning F2P. They probably just took the top 10 results skimming for smaller companies that were F2P. I guess this is what you get for self publishing a game.
- Lasher 9y agoI passed this on to a friend of mine who has been doing virtual currency in online games since the mid 1990s (MUDs) and has been called as an expert witness in the past to defeat some of these "virtual currency" patents.
- fragsworth 9y agoHey. Developer of Clicker Heroes here. More examples of prior art are very helpful, so that would help us out a lot. Do you have any examples of any of these MUDs that had virtual currency?
- jasonlaramburu 9y agoHave you ever considered taking action against the lawyers representing the trolls? Most likely they are working on a contingency basis and will keep 1/3 of whatever the trolls can extract from you. It's likely that their friends, family and the people in their community have no idea they engage in these activities. I have heard of defendants using PR campaigns effectively in these cases. Oftentimes a potential $10k payout is not worth your friends and neighbors finding out how you really make your money.
- fragsworth 9y agoI already named them and dumped the documents, and stated facts. I worry that doing anything to proactively impact their lives in a bad way could be used against us in a trial, because they could highlight it to paint a pretty bad picture, making us look really bad in front of a jury. We haven't done anything like that yet. It doesn't matter that they started it or that we are in the right. If you ruin someone's life, it looks bad even if you had a good reason to do it. They're the ones ruining our lives right now. I think a court will also see it this way. I think that helps us get them to walk away.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoIf you already don't have much money for legal fees, making things personal with an unscrupulous lawyer who doesn't mind filing petty lawsuits seems like a dangerous idea.
- chrismcb 9y agoDoesn't this basically boil down to "Something on a COMPUTER" and thus should be invalidated by the Alice Corp decision? Not to mention the TON of prior art, even prior to the 2000 patent (what does the 2007 patent provide over the 2000 patent?) I'm positive you could purchase credits on BBSes that you could then use for ecommerce. I haven't read the entire patent, but I fail to see the difference between the 2000 filing, and the 2007 filing. So how does that work?
- WalterBright 9y agoBack in the 1970s, I played Monopoly on the PDP-10. The Monopoly money was "virtual".
- danschumann 9y agoAccording to their flow, they collect user information after displaying a policy. My point is, if you re-arrange their flow chart, do you "invent around" the problem? (thereby negating their claim that you violate their patent(since their patent still relies on a specific process)?
- OrganicMSG 9y agoPerhaps teach an expert system to automate selecting a flowchart on the fly for each user, that will accomplish a given set of requirements and also not be found in a search of the existing patent corpus. Don't forget to patent it though.
- danschumann 9y agoOi, an AI that automatically generates patents? Sounds awful! It would just attempt to patent every current idea but in a different order.... oh man, please no.
- OrganicMSG 9y agoI think it is called IBM.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yohann305 9y agoThis might sound stupid but hear me out. Can you sell physical rubies that people can print on a paper or you could ‘ship’ them to the buyer? Meanwhile users can use their digital equivalent just like a gift card works. This would bypass the system.. brilliant isn’t it?!
- natch 9y agoUnfortunately they may have more tricks up their sleeve. That is, once they get payment for one patent, effectively getting an implied acknowledgment of the merits of the (meritless imho) patent, they might then reveal their other related patents, and offer to license those for even more money. I wonder how many of these can be invalidated with trivial filings? These patents all have PayByClick Corporation as the assignee: 7,676,432: Methods and apparatus for transacting electronic commerce using account hierarchy and locking of accounts http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,676,432.PN.&OS=pn/7,676,432&RS=PN/7,676,432 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H... 7,376,621: Method and apparatus for conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,376,621.PN.&OS=pn/7,376,621&RS=PN/7,376,621 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H... 7,328,189: Method and apparatus for conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,328,189.PN.&OS=pn/7,328,189&RS=PN/7,328,189 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H... 7,249,099: Method and apparatus for conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,249,099.PN.&OS=pn/7,249,099&RS=PN/7,249,099 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H... 7,249,060: Systems and methods for distributing on-line content http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,249,060.PN.&OS=pn/7,249,060&RS=PN/7,249,060 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H... 7,177,838: Method and apparatus for conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,177,838.PN.&OS=pn/7,177,838&RS=PN/7,177,838 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H... 6,876,979: Electronic commerce bridge system http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=6,876,979.PN.&OS=pn/6,876,979&RS=PN/6,876,979 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...
- vadimberman 9y ago> EDIT (March 2, 2018): It appears that there are multiple "GTX Corps", so I want to make it clear that the ones going after us don't have much of an online presence IANAL, just was curious about the identity and did some amateur sleuthing. Results below... The GTX Corp in Wikipedia seems like a real trading company but there is a couple of odd things about it. It's a public company made of 7 (seven) people; they have tracking products and 80 patents. Theoretically, it could be that they supplement the legit business with patent trolling. But yes, it's not very likely. So I went to look up the patent info instead. If you google "US patent 7,177,838", you see that it's somewhat of a holy grail for the patent trolls. It was used to sue Amazon, Apple, Visa, News Corp, Starbucks, and the whole alphabet of multinationals. Many of these settled, as the lawyer of Playsaurus mentioned. The name of the suing entity was Actus, LLC (https://www.socialgameslaw.com/2010/06/actus-sues-for-virtual-currency-patent-infringement.html https://www.socialgameslaw.com/2010/06/actus-sues-for-virtua..., https://www.law360.com/articles/124471/apple-amazon-out-of-actus-patent-battle https://www.law360.com/articles/124471/apple-amazon-out-of-a..., https://www.law360.com/articles/165880/visa-m-t-bank-resolve-actus-e-payment-patent-spat https://www.law360.com/articles/165880/visa-m-t-bank-resolve...). They don't seem to have any presence online, although there is a website for Actus (http://www.actus.company http://www.actus.company) but even though it looks like a front for foreign intelligence operations, it does not seem to have anything in common with that Actus. The patent public record is here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7177838B1/en?oq=7%2c177%2c838 https://patents.google.com/patent/US7177838B1/en?oq=7%2c177%.... It contains a history of assignments, giving a clue to what GTX actually is. The first re-assignee was GTX Corporation (Arizona). The current one is GTX Corporation (California). Between that, it was PayByClick and Actus, which is when the mega-suits were filed. It seems improbable that the two GTX companies are completely different. The search in the California register turned nothing meaningful (https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/CBS/SearchResults?SearchType=CORP&SearchCriteria=GTX&SearchSubType=Keyword https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/CBS/SearchResults?SearchTy...). It's either the entities are named somewhat differently or dissolved. The search in Arizona, on the other hand, produced interesting results. This is the right GTX: http://ecorp.azcc.gov/Details/Corp?corpId=F00380025 http://ecorp.azcc.gov/Details/Corp?corpId=F00380025. Founded in 1987, business type: technology. Details below. The patent was filed by Marvin Ling on Jan 26, 2000. Already in May it was reassigned to GTX. A family or an acquaintance? Let's see: the current CEO is Andrew Ling. From the foundation until 2008, however, the president was Marvin Ling, including the year 2000 when the patent was filed and reassigned. Andrew Ling appears to be a lawyer in Arizona; his LinkedIn profile confirms that he is the right person: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlingattorney https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlingattorney. And the website actually exists where it's supposed to be, just not liked by Google: http://www.gtx.com/about/press/aml_president_pr.asp http://www.gtx.com/about/press/aml_president_pr.asp. The patent itself was reassigned to Pay By Click (sounds like an entity materially interested in the patent) in 2002, after which the annual report filing became irregular. In 2005, GTX received a notice with a threat of the license revocation; same happened in 2013 and 2014. It became better after that which coincided with the reassignment of the patent. Summary. It looks like it's not a proxy set up by lawyers to sue. It appears to be an old family business which was dormant for a while and now wants to capitalise on an old patent that either someone else or a different structure used to shake down a few giants. While the GTX is registered in Arizona where its owners live, it seems to be a Delaware corporation. I don't understand why they hired a law firm in Boston to threaten a company in California. The guy is a lawyer; does it mean he is not serious about the lawsuit? Does he expect you to haggle and offer, Russell Peters style, $34,500 as the last price? Good luck.
- tabulatouch 9y agoI think that a real statistic on previous trolls actions and settlement or litigation outcomes would greatly simplify the reasoning. Would the open data from thetrollingeffect website be of any use for building a model?
- walrus01 9y agoone example of prior art that has virtual currency in a multi-player game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Wars
- codecamper 9y agoI hope this message reaches you over all the noise here. GTX Corp. may be a corporation whose securities are traded publicly. However, they ARE NOT legitimate. They are pure scum on another level beyond what they are doing to you. They have had their stock promoted. Pump & Dump. Have a look over these articles on Seeking Alpha for more. https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GTXO/analysis-and-news https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GTXO/analysis-and-news I'm not sure how I would go about handling these guys if they came after me for something. I don't think I would be so polite.