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Yeah, this wants to read like "oh hey! Look at all the neat work we did to stop patent trolls!" But in reality it's a lot more like listening to Adrian Veidt a
by cushychicken 7y ago
Yeah, this wants to read like "oh hey! Look at all the neat work we did to stop patent trolls!"
But in reality it's a lot more like listening to Adrian Veidt after he pulled off his scheme in Watchmen. Diabolical, but you can't help but respect them for it.
- mcv 7y agoCloudflare didn't kill a million people, though. But I would definitely want to see them kill a million patents.
- cushychicken 7y agoHah, no, they certainly didn't. That's a bad comparison for me to make. My point is that this is a pretty transparent flex of corporate might. It's hard to escape the subtext of "Fuck with us, and we will grind you into the dirt".
- mcv 7y agoIt's probably not something a smaller company might be able to afford, and that's the entire problem with the patent troll phenomenon: it doesn't matter how valid their patents are, they're counting on it being too expensive for their victims to fight it. If settling is cheaper than fighting and winning, the troll can continue to extort others. We need companies with the means to do so to take the effort to actually defeat and invalidate the patents if we want to stop the trolls. It's all part of US justice being for sale rather than equally distributed. What would be better if there was a legal defense fund that were to support small companies and do this for them. Or better yet: a legal system that doesn't allow this sort of predatory behaviour.
- cushychicken 7y agoI agree with everything you just said, 100%. Still doesn't change the fact that I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of Cloudflare after seeing this.