5 ms·
Poll: Do you pay a patent troll?
Does your company pay license fees to a patent troll such as Intellectual Ventures? Please only answer if you are in a position to know and your company is at risk of being targeted.
- rexreed 15y agoYou should also ask if you are being threatened by a patent troll. Paying the license fee is the last resort, really.
- gcb 15y agoPatents cover implementations right? EFF should put up a random obfuscated legalese letter generator that says basically "all the code claimed, but not acknowledged, to be offending the patent mentioned has been removed. If you sign this obfuscated, random, draconian non-compete non-disclosure agreement, we will allow you to visit our offices and inspect the code for any real patent offense" that should take care of most of the small trolls that affect companies just starting up. didn't vote as i never went trhu this.
- gcb 15y agoops, just voted now with a misclick on NO
- akeefer 15y agoSoftware patents effectively cover features rather than implementations, so a patent troll (or a judge or jury) doesn't need to look at your source code to determine if you violated their patent: they really just need to be able to use the application enough to determine what it does. Of course, the issue of if you violated the patent or not, or if you removed any offending source code, is pretty much immaterial to the patent lawsuit issue; they can sue you either way, and if they want to take it to court, you'll have to pay a truckload of money to defend yourself, unless you want a summary judgment issued against you.
- cperciva 15y agoSoftware patents effectively cover features rather than implementations No, software patents cover ways to implement features. Amazon does not have a patent on "buying something with one click"; the patent deals with one specific way to let people buy something with one click (I'm guessing cookies and stored shipping preferences? I've never read the patent in question). if they want to take it to court, you'll have to pay a truckload of money to defend yourself Sure, but this is independent of the subject matter of the claim. In the US you can sue anyone for anything and it will cost a lot of money for them to defend themselves; witness the "90 year old without a computer illegally downloaded porn movies" copyright suits, for instance.
- ohyes 15y agoIdeally yes, but I believe (and note that I am not a patent lawyer), that you can also have patents for 'methods of doing business'. Methods of doing business are closer to 'buying something with one click,' as they aren't tied to a physical machine or a specific implementation of a process as in code, they are patenting the process of purchasing with one click through a web form itself. The 'invention' is the supposedly 'innovative' way of allowing customers to purchase something using a single button.
- akeefer 15y agoNote that I said they "effectively" cover features rather than implementations. Technically they should cover implementations, but the reality is that they actually cover features, because the patents are so broad that they effectively cover solving a given problem using a computer. That wasn't the intention of the patent system, but that's the effect. Also, I believe you're incorrect about Amazon's patent: it basically does cover any method whereby the user only has to use one click to buy something, regardless of the implementation. It was challenged and then amended to narrow it down to requiring a shopping cart, it appears, but the patent has nothing to do with cookies or databases or anything like that: anyone who implements the same feature in their application could run afoul of the patent, regardless of how they implement it under the hood.
- cperciva 15y ago
- delinka 15y agoI'm not sure I understand your initial question. A feature of an app can infringe a patent (e.g. In-app Purchase), therefore removing the feature removes the infringement. The code implementing the feature is irrelevant to the patent owner. Let's suppose you've implemented in-app purchase in a way that infringes a patent. If this feature is simply hidden in the app and not accessible by a user, but the code is still compiled into the app, then the app is no longer infringing. In other words, just because my app links against a library (Apple's?) that implements your patented thingy, my app is not in a de facto infringing state.
- ryanlchan 15y agoBit of a chicken and egg question, isn't it? IP trolls only really come after you once you have enough success to be worth suing. The value that IV gets is from a license or a settlement, both of which require money. And to have money, you have to have... success. Why didn't Android get sued before being bought by Google? Because no one cared. The time to start thinking about licensing from a troll is the minute you think you have enough to defend yourself against one.
- SwellJoe 15y agoI have never worked on a project that did not include numerous patented technologies, and neither has anyone else here with more than a couple years of experience. It is only by luck that I have never been sued or extorted into paying licensing fees; and that's true of anyone working in software. It is simply impossible to write software of any size and complexity that doesn't include ideas that have been patented, often being covered by several patents. As companies like IV grow, and prove that the patent troll model is legalized extortion for companies with enough money to buy patent portfolios, the number of people who can answer "no" to this question will dwindle to nothing. Patent trolling, as Myhrvold claims, is new. There aren't a lot of companies doing it yet...but, all that money is an awful big lure, and even people who don't seem evil (like Myhrvold probably seemed to people who knew him in the past, and as I would have assumed before IV was founded) can fall prey to the desire to legally practice extortion.
- adrianwaj 15y agoJust as some people setup companies in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes (Tax Havens).. are there Patent Haven countries? Also, if you patent 1 feature, can someone else troll you on a subsection of it? eg troll comes after you on a rotating car door handle, what happens if you prior or subsequently patent on a total car ergonomic system? What happens if you patent a rotating door handle in another country?
- jcromartie 15y agoThere is this rather patent-troll-friendly court in Texas: http://www.txed.uscourts.gov/ http://www.txed.uscourts.gov/ It is incredibly overrepresented in patent litigation. Companies set up PO boxes and shell companies there just for this purpose.
- makaio 15y agoWhat gives courts in East Texas the jurisdiction to hear these cases, anyway? If it were possible to prevent users in these districts from accessing your online service (either using geolocation of some sort or through an EULA), would that make any difference?
- mahmud 15y agotrolls open empty offices there
- enjalot 15y agosomeone should DDoS the court with other types of civil litigation.
- enjalot 15y agoI don't think it would work to have a Patent Haven, because the patents would block usage in the U.S. I suppose if everything was hosted in that other country, but what about payments?
- rexreed 15y agoNot if you want to do business in the United States. Even if your home jurisdiction is patent-friendly (or lax), doing business in the US means complying with, and therefore being liable to, any patent enforcement. A US company can't sue a non-US company if there isn't any US-based infringement, but if you do business in the US, then they can sue you for infringement in the US, no matter where you are based.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rjd 15y agoNope I live in the real world where software patents don't exist ;) I won't vote however as it will skew your results. I deal with web, mostly glorified CRUD, on an MS stack. I seriously doubt Im infringing on anything from my own work, I might be good... but I'm not that good :P Where I have in the stack I'll use MS as a buffer, its amongst the reasons why I choose to go with them. Support, community, my own history amongst others.