10 ms·
Rothschild Patent Imaging appears to be the company holding the rights to a number of dubious patents filed by Leigh M. Rothschild, who appears to have a well-d
by thaumaturgy 7y ago
Rothschild Patent Imaging appears to be the company holding the rights to a number of dubious patents filed by Leigh M. Rothschild, who appears to have a well-deserved reputation as a patent troll [1][2].
I hope Gnome is able to take a Newegg approach here and kill the patent.
[1]: http://www.unhappyfranchisee.com/qr-code-patent-troll-sues-dickeys-barbecue/ http://www.unhappyfranchisee.com/qr-code-patent-troll-sues-d...
[2]: "A Florida inventor named Leigh M. Rothschild is the largest single NPE based on the number of defendants who have been added to patent lawsuits he filed, according to the the report." https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/0106/Despite-crackdown-from-courts-patent-suits-still-battered-tech-companies-in-2015 https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/0106/Despite-crack...
- mcherm 7y ago> I hope Gnome is able to take a Newegg approach here and kill the patent. How do you propose paying for that? It is fantastically expensive.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tombert 7y agoIf anyone from the Gnome team is listening, if you guys started a GoFundMe or something to help with legal fees to challenge this, I would throw twenty bucks your way. I'd be happy if someone held me to that.
- hipsterstal1n 7y agoIt cost Newegg $60,000 to fight their patent troll. Gnome team is going to need a lot more then $20.
- hondadriver 7y agoHe will not be the only one throwing $20...
- tombert 7y agoI know, but $60,000 / $20/person = ~3,000 people. That really isn't that much in the scope of things.
- input_sh 7y agoDonating to an open source project to combat a software patent troll? I could already see this story making headlines in pretty much every tech news outlet there is. They'd get a few thousand individual donations for sure.
- amelius 7y agoAnd sadly it will be the lawyers laughing their way to the bank. Or will some of the money be recovered if the case is won? Thinking about it, wouldn't it be fair if you were more than compensated in case you won a lawsuit filed against you?
- codedokode 7y agoAren't expenses for lawyers compensated by the losing party?
- tjalfi 7y agoLoser pays (the English rule[0]) can apply in the U.S. but is quite uncommon. Most of the time both parties are responsible for their own legal fees[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fees) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fee... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney's_fees) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney's_fees...
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago> Federal courts also possess inherent authority to assess attorney’s fees and litigation costs against a plaintiff who has acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly or for oppressive reasons. Patent trolls obviously act in bad faith.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago> It cost Newegg $60,000 to fight their patent troll. Gnome team is going to need a lot more then $20. Wow, that's all? That's actually really encouraging, if true. I would have assumed it was millions.
- sjwright 7y agoEven if that is correct, you still need to have a couple hundred grand in reserve in case the judge is a dumbass and you lose.
- danShumway 7y agoI would donate to an effort to kill this patent as well. We have to start getting more aggressive in these scenarios. If the patent isn't killed, they're just going to turn around and sue someone else with it. So if we want a world where small players can compete with the likes of Microsoft or Facebook, we need to retaliate against trolls who go after small players.
- djsumdog 7y agoIt's not just the patent. That whole company needs to be killed. They serve no useful purpose; the epitome of bullshit jobs. Honestly I wish more countries would take New Zealand's approach and just outright ban all software patents. There is no reason any software patent should exist.
- danShumway 7y agoI don't disagree, but I don't think you can bring a legal case to a judge that a company can't exist. But if every one of their threats resulted in someone dragging them into an expensive fight over whether or not that patent was valid, maybe eventually they'd just go bankrupt from the legal fees. Essentially, use their own strategy against them. Whenever they sue someone, they have two choices: roll over and let the patent get invalidated, or fight an expensive lawsuit against a party that refuses to settle.
- freeopinion 7y agoWhere is the satisfaction of having a troll bankrupted by litigation? If the troll went bankrupt, it probably means: * The lawyers got paid so much money there is no more money left to pay the receptionist and the power company and the copier rental. * The troll is protected from paying any damages to the legal team that defeated them. So the lawyers/executives suck up all the money and move on, leaving a wake of destruction behind them. In many cases, that should be considered criminal.
- coldpie 7y ago> That whole company needs to be killed. And the owners both bankrupted and jailed, or they'll just do it again.
- microcolonel 7y agoThe GNOME Foundation takes donations[0], I think it would probably be good if they had some way to signal that you only want the money in a legal defense fund (especially given that sometimes they put Foundation resources behind controversial things which I myself don't want to support). Nonetheless I'm throwing some money into the pot, hopefully it is used to fight this troll case, which thankfully may be so facially ridiculous that it is thrown out. [0]: https://www.gnome.org/support-gnome/donate/ https://www.gnome.org/support-gnome/donate/
- rdc12 7y agoNot a GNOME user so I have no idea what the GNOME foundation gets up too, what sort of controversial things have they funded in the past?
- flukus 7y agoLook at the staff list https://www.gnome.org/foundation/staff/ https://www.gnome.org/foundation/staff/ . It's top heavy with useless people running "diversity initiatives" and "anti-harassment teams" and only one Gtk dev. If they had 10 developers then maybe there'd be a place for these people, but at the moment I don't agree with their priorities. I'd happily donate to a legal fund to fight this lawsuit though.
- the_why_of_y 7y agoThe role of a typical FLOSS foundation is to enable development by providing neutral infrastructure and organizational efforts, for example organizing conferences & hackfests with travel reimbursements, boring accounting & paperwork, maintaining trademarks, avoiding legal risks; the actual development will be done by interested companies and individuals.
- microcolonel 7y agoI think part of what flukus was getting at is not supported by that staff page. GNOME has outreach and sponsorship programs, but they all seem to be gender discriminatory, and focused more on external social causes than on the quality of GNOME software. GNOME Foundation could probably just use GitLab.com, it wouldn't take a full time staff if their focus was infrastructure. It seems like the GNOME Foundation is predisposed with gaining institutional power over the symbols of GNOME, to egoistically control the community.
- djsumdog 7y ago> GoFundMe oh, that American health insurance website.
- pkaye 7y agoI mean didn't the people of Belgium recently did the equivalent of gofundme to raise money for treatment for a toddler for the drug Zolgensma?
- PTcartelsLOL 7y agoBelgium, I dunno. But it happened in Portugal. Governmeant ended up paying for the medicine. The parents kept the €2.5m...
- pkaye 7y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49739845 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49739845
- tudelo 7y agoYeah, that's exactly what it is...
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoDitto. Patent trolls need to be destroyed. Put me down for $20 if it comes up.
- soperj 7y agoI'm in for $20 too.
- levinb 7y agoSame here. Documenting and open-sourcing the legal effort around this could be good experience for people that help in other similar situations.
- dhimes 7y agoI'm in.
- aquabeagle 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Foundation Revenue (2014) - $667,370
- imglorp 7y agoIs this the first time a troll has gone after an open source project? Is there a precedent? Are they after the usual troll thing, a quick settlement less than lawyer fees to fight it? Does nonprofit status of the victim become relevant?
- ldng 7y agoIf you really want to know, it's not hidden : https://www.gnome.org/foundation/reports/ https://www.gnome.org/foundation/reports/ Donations are not necessarily consistent over years. You'll also have expanses.
- pera 7y agoThey could start some sort of anti-patent troll foundation / joint effort with Cloudflare, Newegg, the EFF, etc. I would personally donate hundreds each year if such organization existed, patent trolls are my worst software nightmare.
- asah 7y agoGnome accepts direct donations a number of online payment methods including paypal and bitcoin. They are 501(3)c tax deductible. (I just donated $50 - good luck guys)
- patentatt 7y agoI’m a patent litigator. I’ll do the work for free. I’d do it myself but I don’t want to also front the ~$20k for an IPR filing fee.
- yummypaint 7y agoThis is a good potential pro bono case, there are some big firms that might be willing to pick it up since theyre unlikely to be conflicted out
- jchw 7y agoAside fighting the patent, I hope this egregious act does not come without consequences. It may be meaningless, but I'm tempted to mail a letter to this company regarding my disapproval for the gesture they are sending to the open source community.
- chc 7y agoPatent trolls don't care what you think of them. They don't have customers to worry about offending. They're just corporate highwaymen.
- jchw 7y agoI mean sure, a single letter would not stop a company that is a known patent troll. On the other hand, a lot of letters may at least be felt, at least by employees handling the mail. Or maybe not, maybe they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. But you know, it’s not like it would take so much time or effort that it would be much of a shame if it did nothing at all.
- edoceo 7y agoYou will waste more of your time than theirs.
- magduf 7y agoThese people are purely evil; they don't care what you think of them, and will just laugh at your letter before they toss it in the trash. You'll just be wasting your time.
- munk-a 7y agoI would applaud you sending a letter, but honestly this company might not even receive mail at their box or just outright discard items coming from unknown parties. I feel like you'd be putting some effort into this and they wouldn't even notice or read your letter. These sorts of trolls tend to operate with a minimal amount of staffing since they're usually subsidiary spin off companies (so nothing but bare bones is allocated in terms of payroll) and since patent trolling is such a gamble (if you're trolling 200 patents with the expectation of getting one or two hits then you should try and minimize costs)
- VonGuard 7y agoSeems like this https://phys.org/news/2005-09-world-built-in-wi-fi-enabled-digital.html#targetText=The%20Coolpix%20P1%20and%20P2,cameras%20to%20hit%20the%20marketplace https://phys.org/news/2005-09-world-built-in-wi-fi-enabled-d.... invalidates the patent. Nikonn CoolPix had wifi support in 2005. I'd imagine if you could select specific pictures to upload wherever from the device, that's the whole patent claim invalidated by 4 years. Hell, this article even references a device that Nikon offered to wirelessly transmit images as early as 2003. Find one of these, bring it to the law firm defending Gnome and that should invalidate the patent.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoKodak had consumer wifi support then too. They had military cameras with satellite upload capability even earlier.
- bstrong 7y agoI built a service around 2005 that did realtime photo sync and sharing from mobile devices. Here's a demo video from 2007 (the most relevant part is around 6:45): https://connectedsocialmedia.com/1163/sharpcast-demo-brings-simple-way-to-manage-photos/ https://connectedsocialmedia.com/1163/sharpcast-demo-brings-...
- mrandish 7y agoUnfortunately, the Nikon CoolPix would not serve as prior art because it does not appear to have these two elements of the patent. filtering the plurality of photographic images using a transfer criteria wherein the transfer criteria is a subject identification of a respective photographic image within the plurality of photographic images, wherein the subject identification is based on a topic, theme or individual shown in the respective photographic image;
- t-writescode 7y agoHow on earth can an obvious business practice be patented? “yes, I would like to patent the sale of a spade when you buy a rake”
- fireattack 7y ago>a Newegg approach Any more info about this? Never heard of it admittedly.
- sdenton4 7y agoHere's a summary: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/newegg-fought-its-way-through-two-appeals-to-win-fees-from-this-patent-holder/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/newegg-fought-it...
- thaumaturgy 7y agoNewegg's legal counsel, Lee Cheng, successfully convinced his bosses that they might save money by fighting patent extortionists instead of paying them. They had an early high profile case, and won, and then won several more. (Also lost a couple, if I remember right.) Lee furthermore pursued a strategy of trying to win by invalidating the patent. Newegg got enough of a reputation for this that patent trolls would mass-file a lawsuit, realize that they had included Newegg in the lawsuit, and withdraw the suit. So then Newegg started a strategy of chasing down any patent troll dumb enough to file a suit against Newegg, and aggressively sue them in retaliation -- again, seeking to invalidate the patent (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/newegg-sues-patent-troll-that-dropped-its-case/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/newegg-sues-pate...). Cheng and Newegg eventually went their separate ways, and I haven't heard much from either one since. But, for a while, Newegg was in the tech news every few months for doing real damage to another patent extortion outfit, and it was glorious.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tripzilch 7y agoAnd thus, having been gloriously saved by a commercial company instead of better laws or regulations, we never heard from patent trolls again.
- AtlasBarfed 7y ago
- wyqydsyq 7y agoI'd like to point out that the patent isn't even relevant and this lawsuit will probably get thrown out straight away, copied from the article comments, the patent specifies: > An image-capturing mobile device, comprising Shotwell is not an image-capturing device.