23 ms·

Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

1212 points by arduinomancer 4y ago

ZephyrBlu 4y ago
Incredible. This is straight out of Silicon Valley.
devteambravo 4y ago
Oh you’re that guy. Yeah it’s funny to see trolls bark up the wrong tree. Someone should do the same to MLM.
youor 4y ago
labrador 4y ago
I always thought Hotz an interesting character. This paragraph adds to that impression: "What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. We will hire an amazing legal team, fight this, and while doing so invalidate his patents so they can’t be used against anyone else. Not because it’s rational, but because it’s the right thing to do. No patent troll will ever get a dollar from comma." I find that relatable.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!
- RajT88 4y ago
  He is definitely not afraid of this clown.
- mkl 4y ago
  His Lex Fridman interview was fascinating. I knew this would be his response just from the headline. Surprised the troll didn't do even a little research.
  - gitfan86 4y ago
    It is amazing how many lawyers are completely incompetent at everything other than billing. I expect that they will write a letter complaining that they are being harassed by Hotz and his associates and are cancelling the lawsuit for their own safety.
- j-bos 4y ago
  Strikes me that a lot of today's ills would be solved (or replaced) by more individual agency. Gold applause to Hotz.
  - powerhour 4y ago
    It seems like something that could attract funding from other possible victims.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    It seems to me that considerably more of today's ills would be solved by more collective action.
    - dymk 4y ago
      You first?
      - thfuran 4y ago
        Take for instance the problem of patent trolls, which could be much more comprehensively solved by regulatory/legal reform than by one guy with a well-funded legal team.
        btilly 4y ago
        The last time Congress took on comprehensive regulatory/legal reform of patents, the result was https://cafc.uscourts.gov/home/the-court/about-the-court/court-jurisdiction/ https://cafc.uscourts.gov/home/the-court/about-the-court/cou.... Most of the problems with software patents trace back, in one way or another, to that court. What makes you think the current broken legislative system has a chance at a reform that makes things better in a way that you'd like?
        thfuran 4y ago
        >What makes you think the current broken legislative system has a chance at a reform that makes things better in a way that you'd like That's a false premise.
- sib 4y ago
  This has been Newegg's strategy forever... https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-when-we-win-you-win/ https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-when-...
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Same for Cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-jengo-redux-cloudflares-prior-art-search-bounty-returns/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-jengo-redux-cloudflares-...
    - sigmoid10 4y ago
      Hotz literally mentions Cloudflare as an inspiration for this.
  - aeyes 4y ago
    Talk from Newegg chief legal officer from 2013 about patent trolls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgXItNZbAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgXItNZbAY
  - runnerup 4y ago
    Old Newegg. That lawyer has moved on along with the rest of the leadership after a change in ownership. Also George Hotz fought and cowed Sony’s legal team when he was a kid in a saga involving ‘marcan42 of Asahi Linux. These patent trolls must be very foolish to try to intimidate him. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_...
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      Ok you can't tease us with a story and not at least link it.
      - caf 4y ago
        Suggested search term: geohot
- sva_ 4y ago
  > It’s run by me, George Hotz. I'm torn between considering it a power move of mentioning yourself and linking to the Wikipedia entry about you, or not. But I appreciate the troll hunt.
  - sodapopcan 4y ago
    When you say you’d lose 1M before paying a trash human 10k and mean it, I’m cool with it.
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    If a little showboating is what it takes to motivate a wealthy guy to chokeslam a patent troll in court…
- Buttons840 4y ago
  Hotz is a Hacker, in every sense of the word, all of us here should relate.
- nimbius 4y ago
  ah yes, George hotz, the baba yaga of startup leadership
  - gruturo 4y ago
    Next thing we know, the officers of the patent troll company die in a horrific car crash involving 4 empty vehicles running comma.ai software, quickly ruled an accident after the ruling judge notices an awful amount of empty self driving vehicles accompanying them anywhere they go. Don't mess with Geohot.
- pxmpxm 4y ago
  There very well may be a second order game theory at play - not only you broadcast far and wide that litigation will be exceedingly costly for anyone that tries, but you add an explicit threat that any attempt will result in invalidation risk to plaintiff patent portfolio. For patent trolls, time spent on legal is mostly opportunity cost, but killing their patent portfolio has a real dollar cost associated to it.
  - _carbyau_ 4y ago
    I agree with this. There is a legal fight. Then there is a legal fight to the corporate death. By turning the former into the latter, it should make people think twice. But then people aren't necessarily rational.
  - cma 4y ago
    Many trolls like I think Myhrvold's have something close to a new shell LLC for each major patent and sometimes it can be hard to link it all together (the recent changes to LLC/corporate ownership privacy should help here). It can be hard to even know their full portfolio.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Good I hope he destroys that patent troll's life and empties his bank account defending against it.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > I find that relatable. Me too - nobody would accuse me of being a rational actor.
greyface- 4y ago
Comma linked a copy of the complaint in their blog post, but here's the docket for anyone interested in following the suit as it progresses: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/64914481/sucxess-llc-v-commaai-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/64914481/sucxess-llc-v-...
TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
Any engineer who has ever filed a software patent soon realizes that the entire patent system in America (at least with respect to software) is a scam. It seems to be designed to enrich lawyers and tax engineers. It's almost like all the kids in school who failed out of CS 101 went to law school and cooked up a scheme to tax their classmates who actually stuck it out and built something. Why the hell do we have a system that gives a 20 year monopoly to assholes for shit they cook up on a cocktail napkin over lunch with their lawyer? This is how we used to brainstorm stuff to patent. It's utter bullshit. I refuse to participate in creating more bullshit patents.
- sbf501 4y ago
  I've filed multiple (hardware) patents in previous companies. Which part, exactly, is a scam? I think the only reasonable criticisms of the patent system is a lack of intelligent lawyers in the areas of discipline that often fail finding similar claims in other filings, and that patents only benefit large companies, not DIY garage makers like the rest of the world thinks. I also think your shitting on lawyers is typical of people that don't really understand legal frameworks. Would you find it reasonable if I said: "software engineers are such a joke, everything they do is so over complicated just so they can get rich like those SanFran dudebros, and for what, so that I can shit in a smart toilet with a web browser and AI? How stupid." ... Oh, shit. Wait a second... :)
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    The poster did specify _software_ patents.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      Most of which are invalid due to Alice any way. The Supreme Court agrees with him.
  - TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
    I happen to have practiced patent law at a large firm for 2 years with clients like Google, Apple, and Facebook.
jacquesm 4y ago
I've been on the receiving end of one of these (for my own invention, no less), helped bust another. Much good luck to George Hotz on this one. I can't stand patent trolls and even as an atheist I secretly hope there is a hell so they will get what's coming to them.
- boringg 4y ago
  I agree they are indeed a scourge.
etaioinshrdlu 4y ago
To play devil's advocate, there is nothing about being a patent troll inherently illegal. Hotz feels the patent is invalid, but it might not be. Our system does not require you to ever build the object patented before extracting fees from it. This is in fact the way the US patent system works. One of the patents is here: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 Method, Apparatus and System for Retrofitting a Vehicle. This does in fact describe what Comma does. Looks like it might be infringing! Now Comma must prove this patent cannot be valid.
- georgehotz 4y ago
  The patent in the complaint doesn't even have anything to do with what we do as a company! It describes a system that calls 911 when it detects a crash (like onstar). Ignore the (very generic) title and read on in the actual patent. https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 We write open source ADAS software, and it doesn't have any functionality like that: https://github.com/commaai/openpilot https://github.com/commaai/openpilot But for the purposes of attempting to extract a settlement, it doesn't matter. It will only matter after a long and expensive trial. (I would like to invalidate the patent entirely, which several of their patents already have been. But even if it is valid, it also has to apply to us)
  - totse 4y ago
  - sebastien_b 4y ago
    Once you’re done crushing this patent troll, go after the USPTO for granting bogus patents in the first place - you shouldn’t have to bear the costs of fixing their fuckups.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    The disclosures in the patent aren't what they are suing you over. Read the claims. Patents like this often have a lot of stuff shoved into the disclosure so that they can keep the patent application alive to write more patents based on the original disclosure. The claims appear to be written to read on devices like yours: My knowledge of your system is a bit dated, but I thought you had a device that you plugged into a port in the car instead of a manufacturer-installed thing. This is why this patent has a 2007 priority date, but a 2018 application date: they essentially wrote a ridiculously broad disclosure, and kept filing patents based on it. Dataspeed did appear to have tried to invalidate this patent in 2019 (see the IPR documents linked there), and succeeded on all but claim 20. If your device does not have a relay which shuts off its electrical connection within the car, you're probably safe. You could try to invalidate it, but you should read the docs from the IPR to see what Dataspeed did and what you might need to do. My gut-check guess is that claim 20 is probably not going to get invalidated unless you can find some weird after-market car part from before 2007 which does a safety shut-off of a car component.
Joel_Mckay 4y ago
The most irritating thing about these suites, is often they know setting the IP lawyers on them costs more than the claims. However, if you have an extra $60k in tax deductions to burn, than enjoy the show with popcorn.
sebastien_b 4y ago
In addition to taking on and crushing patent trolls, someone needs to also go after the USPTO for causing these people/companies financial hardship by granting these bogus patents in the first place.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  I think patents are usually granted if filed in the correct format. The expectation is, challenges are where weak patents are discovered. The patent office hasn't got enough lawyers to examine every application. Also, trolls rarely are the ones creating these patents. They just buy up some basket of idle patents, then spend their morning looking for any company announcing anything that has a couple words in common with something in their 'portfolio'. They send a boilerplate royalty request or whatever. Rinse and repeat.
nelsonson 4y ago
- NullPrefix 4y ago
  And?
- cheeze 4y ago
  This seems like an odd collection of random anecdotes about George that don't have any real relevance to this
  - caf 4y ago
    Kind of like what you'd get if you asked GPT-3 to tell you about George Hotz?
zja 4y ago
Kind of interesting that the patent troll going after them used to be a patent agent ~15 years ago. I wonder how common that is?
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  I assume patent trolls buy old patents at a discount and then try to find companies to attack with them.
  - sometimeshuman 4y ago
    Yep happened to me. The parent company was an e-cigarette business and they use the profits to buy random patents that have nothing to do with their core business. It was like getting a shakedown call from a mobster.
paulgb 4y ago
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170170984 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170170984 If you cut through the lawyer-speak, claim #1 is basically about MITM-ing the vehicle's internal message bus. Hardly novel, even in 2007.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
- Yoofie 4y ago
  Wow. The fact that this patent was even granted tells me we have morons in the patent offices or that there is serious corruption going on.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    We’ve had ex-patent examiners on Hacker News indicate that they’re radically understaffed.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    Patent offices aren’t full of specialist in every single area, and they don’t pretend to be. You need to meet few fairly simple requirements and patent is granted. If patent is invalid the way to prove that is to challenge that in court. That system, that makes filling patents easy, is a whole reason why patent trolls exists. But it’s not a fault of patent offices, that they’re mandated to work that way.
- oldgradstudent 4y ago
  MITM, but in a vehicle. And there's also a relay somewhere. What I would like to see is a deposition of the patent examiner who approved this ridiculous patent.
- barelycompetent 4y ago
  The above link is a published application rather than a granted patent. US20170170984A1 by itself carries no legal rights whatsoever. In this case it was granted with largely similar claims (as US10027505B2). However, claims typically get significantly revised by the time they are granted, and less than half of applications are granted at all. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10027505B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10027505B2/en
linuxhansl 4y ago
In every western country - except the US and England - the loser pays for the cost of the trial (all parties' lawyer fees + the court). Just this reduces frivolous lawsuits. If you have a good case, sure, go ahead. If your case is weak, you run a real risk paying not only for your lawyers but the other side as well. (Note that there are disadvantages to loser-pays as well. Image you legitimately want to sue corporation X because they did something atrocious. Big corporation X can now run up lawyer cost that you have to pay if you lose.) Edit: Sorry I was wrong about England (which leaves the US only). Edit 2: In the US you can file for your lawyer fees to be returned, but that in itself is risk (I have some lawyer friends)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dfraser992 4y ago
  No, in the UK, the loser will pay for court costs, in general. I had a bit of legal trouble a few years ago - the other side was trying to play "solicitor" to use the law as a way of extorting me (aka threatening to make criminal complaints over various (bullshit) things) so I had to hire someone to write a polite 'go fuck yourself' letter eventually. Solicitors are duty-bound to try and get things to settle out of court, so dealing with wanna-be solicitors is always a problem for them. https://www.ashurst.com/en/news-and-insights/legal-updates/quickguide---civil-proceedings-in-the-english-courts/ https://www.ashurst.com/en/news-and-insights/legal-updates/q... What's unique about the UK is that unlike actually civilized countries (incl. the US), there is no legal requirement to negotiate in good faith. It is expected for you to do so, but if the other side figures out that you haven't and tries to take you to court over that, then the English court system will say "tough luck". Manipulating the other side to your advantage should be expected, they said. There have been High Court cases that have established this principle. so doing business with the English is always possibly problematic (e.g. Brexit and all the lies, the mentality behind all that etc). Anecdotally, I have heard from foreigners that doing business with English people is more of a headache than with ones from other countries. And I have lived here long enough to 'understand' the English better than most Americans...
  - 4y ago
fujidust 4y ago
I think Axel should be forced to adopt George’s company slogan recommendation if he loses.
frellus 4y ago
I frankly don't understand why a judge or jury would ever find for a company which has no revenue, other than through litigation settlements. I mean if they're not even selling a license or royalties for their patents, any cases should be dismissed. We can call it the "use it or lose it" rule for patents.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Not every company that has no revenue other than through lawsuits got there by choice. Someone can copy your invention and sell it for less (or give it out for free), and you will be screwed. There are lots of calls for exponentially escalating fees for patents over their life, and I think that is a much better idea than "use it or lose it."
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    Fees for what? I’m not convinced there’s any value in the patent system in the 21st century. Maybe it should be abolished. Who is it now helping? Certainly not the individual inventors it was meant to encourage. Software patents should absolutely be prohibited altogether. They help no one; they’re not useful for small inventors and they’re just a pointless tax paid to patent trolls on innovation for everyone else. (I am a named inventor on many software patents.)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      Patents have maintenance fees that have to be paid periodically, otherwise the invention becomes public domain early. They are only a few thousand dollars, so it is a no-brainer to pay them. If they were exponential, it would be reasonable to see most patents have shorter lives, as patent owners would probably decide that it is not worth it to keep the patent around if they are not using it. Also, most software patents are invalid. See the Alice Supreme Court case.
- 4y ago
totse 4y ago
sometimeshuman 4y ago
I suspect this is more common than one might think especially for smaller companies that have enough cash/revenue to be collectable but too small to afford litigation or to take a principled stance like comma.ai plans to do. Ten years ago my business was a pioneer in smartphone/flip-phone enabled home-automation. We had barely been in business for a few months and doing ~$4k in monthly sales. A troll claimed he owned patent that covered using a phone to send a command to any electronic device/appliance. He eventually stopped calling me and his patent was for landline based cordless phones but I kept wondering if he would resurface years later once I had momentum but he never did. Oddly I am now fighting a trademark dispute with a company that claims "non-metal shelves and storage" in their trademark. What that has to do with my home-automation smartphone app, who knows. This is all a reminder that we live in the most litigious country in the world.
- savrajsingh 4y ago
  Yes. There are zillions of these completely frivolous patents and trademarks out there.
keepquestioning 4y ago
I have a dumb question about patent trolls. How do they figure out whether stuff is truly infringing a patent in the first place? Surely some corporate espionage is required to figure this out?
- happyopossum 4y ago
  They often don’t know, and hope to either settle or find evidence during discovery.
- googlryas 4y ago
  I can't speak generally, but looking at the court filings for this suit, it is relating to techniques for retrofitting stuff onto vehicles, so I imagine merely the installation instructions for comma.ai would be enough to tell them what they need to know. I don't really know though, my eyes glaze over when I read patents and think about patent law.
roastedpeacock 4y ago
In prior history Hotz was targeted by Sony for his independent research into running homebrew applications on the PS3 game-console. Unfortunately Sony objected to this and launched legal action[1] against Hotz and others which sadly ended in Hotz settling to not research Sony products again and did not set a good precedent towards such work. Different situation but hopefully better outcome this time... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...
rajeshp1986 4y ago
what a shitty way to make money.
dqpb 4y ago
Is there a path toward criminal lawsuits against patent trolls?
- omginternets 4y ago
  I believe a lawsuit is always a civil case. Do you mean criminal charges? I think the bar is pretty high for that (like, fraud or conspiracy).
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Filing an invalid intellectual property claim should be considered fraud. Especially invalid patents with existing prior art and automated DMCA claims. Granting invalid patents should also be fraud. If a patent is granted despite the existence of prior art, whoever granted it has clearly caused damage to society.
  - 7373737373 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation
sometimeshuman 4y ago
"comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k." This stance is admirable but comma.ai is partly owned by investors. Isn't he obliged to find the lowest cost solution to this ? Or is George Hotz planning to spend his personal money on the lawsuit ?
- icelancer 4y ago
  Not if the investors agree with Hotz. If you invest in a geohot-owned business, you should probably know who you're bankrolling. This type of behavior by him is hardly surprising.
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  comma was profitable pre-investment, so Geohot has a lot of leeway to do what he wants. Besides, there is no fiduciary requirement to handle situations like this in any particular way. Fiduciary duty is to keep the business operating. Maximizing profit and minimizing costs are generally good practices; but they are not (legally) fiduciary duties.
  - newsclues 4y ago
    Ignoring other aspects, this is likely a financially viable option for recruitment marketing. I’m guessing this stance will be popular among engineers who will hear about the company and apply for jobs.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    comma was profitable. Geohot is open about them not being anymore, so their leeway situation is much different now. They released new HW, that gives them lower margins and volume didn’t pickup as much as they planned.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  It's easy to argue that spending $1M on deterrence once is cheaper than paying each patent troll who asks $10k. It's also likely that this post is part of the defense strategy. If you were the patent troll, what would you do at this point - withdraw the claim and try again with an easier victim, or try to find out whether the "if this continues" part is true?
prescriptivist 4y ago
He's a different kind of troll in his own right but I love geohot and I want only the best for comma.ai. Give them hell.
punkpeye 4y ago
These are infuriating.
exabrial 4y ago
Patent trolls are one of many reasons to have personal and business finances buttoned up with proper LLC and other financial instruments.
cachvico 4y ago
Who was the tech big-wig who also took on the trolls? (other than Cloudflare..)
- fragmede 4y ago
  newegg
ummonk 4y ago
There needs to be an anti-patent-troll membership organization. You pay a fee relative to some metric and the organization acts as insurance against parent trolls by fully defending any patent lawsuits that are obviously unjustified. And to keep costs low, membership in this organization would be public to deter patent trolls from even trying to sue a member in the first place.
- Bellamy 4y ago
  Not a bad idea!
- acdha 4y ago
  Here’s John Walker’s proposal for that in 1993 after getting extorted by the XOR patent troll: https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html I think the problem is that most of the major companies are comfortable writing it off as a cost of doing business and don’t want to give up the possibility of using strategic patent suits themselves.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    > don’t want to give up the possibility of using strategic patent suits themselves This is a highly under-appreciated aspect of the patent world. Companies that buy and own lots of patents do so defensively. Big companies even enter into patent cross-licensing agreements with each other, where they basically say "I know you probably infringe on my patents and I probably infringe on yours, but we'll make a deal and indemnify each other". But they want to maintain those patents to harass upstart companies that would threaten their core business, so when the trolls come along, they just pay to license and move on. One of the few examples of a big company fighting patent trolls is Intuit vs encryption patent trolls, of all things. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/intuit-beats-web-encryption-patent-that-defeated-newegg-at-trial/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/intuit-beats-web...
    - mauvehaus 4y ago
      Having beaten my head against the immovable mass of Quickbooks, I'm shocked to find myself cheering Intuit for anything. I'm not about to switch back, but that earns my grudging respect.
systemvoltage 4y ago
If you're a billionaire and if you're reading this, please start an anti-patent-troll venture and fund it as a philantropic project. No one else will.
frogger8 4y ago
Informed minds know this lawsuit is just a distraction in the simulation.
pabs3 4y ago
I wonder if Geohot will try to get this lawyer disbarred.
- 7373737373 4y ago
  Straight to jail
hedora 4y ago
If I was carefully looking for prior art to invalidate the patent, I'd look at Verizon's patent portfolio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hum_(system) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hum_(system) Their Hum product seems to do exactly what the patent troll claims to own a patent on. It plugs into the OBD2 port and calls emergency services after a collision. Also, Nissan patented something very similar in 2004: US Patent for Vehicle emergency notification system and related method Patent (Patent # 7,323,972) https://patents.justia.com/patent/7323972 https://patents.justia.com/patent/7323972
- gregsadetsky 4y ago
  Really great finds! George posted a comment here but it’s unclear if he’s monitoring the thread. You should reach out by email to the stoppatenttrolls@comma.ai address mentioned in the OP.
- White_Wolf 4y ago
  There's a similar one from 1979 for an Automatic emergency call system for vehicles https://patents.google.com/patent/DE2912547C2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/DE2912547C2/en
savrajsingh 4y ago
To George and the comma.ai team, thank you.
sidcool 4y ago
This is so out of the Silicon Valley episode. I love it. God speed George. Down with patent trolls. I'll buy a comma AI just to support George. Even though I can't even use it. May be I'll gift it to someone.
encryptluks2 4y ago
> They subsist off of the settlements handed to them by companies who are scared and weak. This is just a straight up shake down, and I’m shocked that it’s allowed by the US court system. I'm not shocked. I'm glad it is allowed by the US court system. The companies you are speaking of decided to settle by their own free will. You can have a litigant declared a vexatious litigant and barred from filing certain cases without going through a more stringent process. It is a shame that none of the companies has done that, but acting like the courts should protect businesses from being sued is ludicrous and would be easily abused by big corporations in their favor.
MaxHoppersGhost 4y ago
The OP has a weirdly expansive/detailed Wikipedia page.
- pharrington 4y ago
  geohot is a known powerful hacker.
  - MaxHoppersGhost 4y ago
    Yeah but Idk why a factoid about his SoundCloud profile is on there. Not relevant and reads like he wrote it himself.
mattanimation 4y ago
Get em Geohotz, we are with you.
artursapek 4y ago
I love geohot
elisharobinson 4y ago
I want a play by play dramatic court room drama depp heard style, i want the world to see what it looks like to set a patent troll on fire in real-time
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  I reckon the Prenda Law hearings would have made rivetting daytime viewing (one of the trolls got 14 years). It was copyright trolling, not patent, and the sentence was for various kinds of fraud. What made the story so entertaining was that every time the trolls wriggled, they got slapped again by some court or other. Hansmeier in particular seems to have been a glutton for punishment.
paxys 4y ago
Congratulations. Every founder remembers their first patent troll. It's just a right of passage in tech.
edpichler 4y ago
Is this "patent trolls" issue something that happens only in US?
yakorevivan 4y ago
mirzap 4y ago
I always admired George, his simplicity and vision. But after this I respect him even more: What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. We will hire an amazing legal team, fight this, and while doing so invalidate his patents so they can’t be used against anyone else. Not because it’s rational, but because it’s the right thing to do. This only can come from a strong character. Very rare these days where everybody calculates their angles even in matter of just cause or "right thing to do so" staff. Sometimes you need to get hit for good cause. You'll get stronger, but more importantly society as a whole will get stronger. Every win against patent trolls matters. Who knows how many great companies did they destroyed, which would make big change in our world. How many inventions delayed. Fuck them George.
- FPGAhacker 4y ago
  “Right thing to do”, or, “punch back 10 times harder so the next troll thinks twice.” Both work for me. When people trumpet their altruism, I usually don’t buy it. I don’t really care about geohotz motivation though. Glad to see someone with the means standing up to the trolls.
- martopix 4y ago
  > This only can come from a strong character. You need to be able to afford it.
  - __s 4y ago
    They aren't saying all strong characters would do this, but that those who would do this have strong character Plenty of troll settlements happen where the sued party could've afforded fighting it
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  It's possible that the "lose $1M before I give him $10k" schtick is bluster. If you're facing a fight with someone, then convincing them that you're crazy, and that you're prepared to risk everything to beat them, might make them run away. Incidentally, can you invalidate a patent, so the troll can't use it any more, if the troll declines to defend the patent? Can they just walk away, and then assert it against some other mark?
Linda703 4y ago
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wesleywt 4y ago
If you pay the kidnapper, then kidnappings will become more common.
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gman83 4y ago
Last time he got sued, George released this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg
bborud 4y ago
If there was ever a group of people deserving of getting an internet mob after them, it is patent trolls.
concordDance 4y ago
Patents really do not seem like worthwhile things to enshrine in law these days... Companies like Tesla can release all their latents with no fear because duplicating a production line exactly is basically impossible. And the Chinese basically ignore foreign patents anyway. They should just be abolished as a concept.
Havoc 4y ago
Broken legal system. Weaponising court cases like this should not be allowed
brettermeier 4y ago
Take that MF down, please! :D
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agounaris 4y ago
What I don't understand with patent trolls is how this will even go a trial? How does this work? There is a random lawsuit therefore you'll either have to pay or go to a trial? Who accepted the lawsuit in the first place and based on what legal ground?
- acomjean 4y ago
  Basically they say you are violating their patent. You can license it for $X and then everything is good. If you don't license it we will sue you for patent infringement. The problem is typically defending yourself cost you a lot more money than it would be to just pay the $X. In other countries if you defended yourself and won, the loser would have to pay your cost, but not in the US making it a less risky venture. Often times small companies are quite busy and just pay the license fee to make the trolls go away. Unfortunately that just ends up creating more trolls. There are ways to invalidate a patent, but the US Patent Office that granted the bad patent is immune from any financial liability from the damage their bad patent caused, so the US Patent Office keeps granting them.
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robertlagrant 4y ago
Don't forget: https://patents.stackexchange.com https://patents.stackexchange.com.
russellbeattie 4y ago
The patent system is filled with batshit insane patents that are ridiculously broad. After I left Yahoo!, I was informed my name was put on two patents. Apparently I helped invent US8843560B2 "Social networking for mobile devices" and US10049381B2 "Mobile Monetization". You all owe me money. Well, to Yahoo! actually, but whatever. Pay up.
Roark66 4y ago
Seriously, at which point this starts affecting the choice founders make in which legal jurisdiction to base their startup? Personally, despite many advantages I would avoid doing any new technology startup in US.
BLO716 4y ago
This goes both ways, because patents are important. However, after talking to George many times as I watched his company grow with the SF proof of funzies in autonomous driving and DefCon pokes - the guy will not [quit] when he's squarely on the war path. Get 'em, GH.
- chrisjc 4y ago
  > What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. > We really admire what cloudflare did in dealing with patent trolls. If this continues, we want to work to invalidate not just the patents he is wrongfully claiming against us, but his entire patent portfolio. I hope I can stay up-to-date with story. Nothing more I appreciate more than seeing someone stunting innovation and taking advantage of others hard work getting smacked down. https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-project-jengo-saga-how-cloudflare-stood-up-to-a-patent-troll-and-won/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-project-jengo-saga-how-cloud...
stephc_int13 4y ago
This is the smart thing to do, on many levels, even if this can be risky and distracting, something that VCs would not be willing to back, in the long run he and his company have a lot to gain from this, both in experience and reputation.
t_mann 4y ago
> What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. Purely fyi, the game theory behind this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_game#Reputation_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_game#Reputation_game
_HMCB_ 4y ago
Hell yea.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
It's not enough to win. You have to cost the troll big money. So their 'business model' breaks.
kurupt213 4y ago
> What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me I LOLed hard. I’ve sued an unethical company on principle before and spent more on fees than I got awarded in damages.
Lutger 4y ago
This is only morally outrageous because the very existence of patents is a dubious waste of resources to begin with. The problems they are supposed to solve are much smaller then they bring about and better solved in other ways, anyway.
8note 4y ago
It's kinda weird that using the legal system the way it's supposed to is considered heroic
silexia 4y ago
I was similarly attacked by a patent troll and was able to defeat them. My experience is chronicled here:https://joelx.com/how-to-beat-a-patent-troll-in-east-texas/12013/ https://joelx.com/how-to-beat-a-patent-troll-in-east-texas/1... The fundamental problem here is not patent trolls... It is the patent system itself. We either need a constitutional amendment limiting patent time periods to 3 or 7 years or just simply dissolve the patent system itself. The free market needs to be truly free to actually function... Otherwise it's just a bunch of oligarchs using artificial monopolies to prevent competition and harm consumers.

1212 points by arduinomancer 4y ago

ZephyrBlu 4y ago

Incredible. This is straight out of Silicon Valley.

devteambravo 4y ago

Oh you’re that guy. Yeah it’s funny to see trolls bark up the wrong tree. Someone should do the same to MLM.

youor 4y ago

labrador 4y ago

I always thought Hotz an interesting character. This paragraph adds to that impression: "What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. We will hire an amazing legal team, fight this, and while doing so invalidate his patents so they can’t be used against anyone else. Not because it’s rational, but because it’s the right thing to do. No patent troll will ever get a dollar from comma." I find that relatable.

bitwize 4y ago
Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!
RajT88 4y ago
He is definitely not afraid of this clown.
mkl 4y ago
His Lex Fridman interview was fascinating. I knew this would be his response just from the headline. Surprised the troll didn't do even a little research.
- gitfan86 4y ago
  It is amazing how many lawyers are completely incompetent at everything other than billing. I expect that they will write a letter complaining that they are being harassed by Hotz and his associates and are cancelling the lawsuit for their own safety.
j-bos 4y ago
Strikes me that a lot of today's ills would be solved (or replaced) by more individual agency. Gold applause to Hotz.
- powerhour 4y ago
  It seems like something that could attract funding from other possible victims.
- thfuran 4y ago
  It seems to me that considerably more of today's ills would be solved by more collective action.
  - dymk 4y ago
    You first?
    - thfuran 4y ago
      Take for instance the problem of patent trolls, which could be much more comprehensively solved by regulatory/legal reform than by one guy with a well-funded legal team.
      - btilly 4y ago
        The last time Congress took on comprehensive regulatory/legal reform of patents, the result was https://cafc.uscourts.gov/home/the-court/about-the-court/court-jurisdiction/ https://cafc.uscourts.gov/home/the-court/about-the-court/cou.... Most of the problems with software patents trace back, in one way or another, to that court. What makes you think the current broken legislative system has a chance at a reform that makes things better in a way that you'd like?
        thfuran 4y ago
        >What makes you think the current broken legislative system has a chance at a reform that makes things better in a way that you'd like That's a false premise.
sib 4y ago
This has been Newegg's strategy forever... https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-when-we-win-you-win/ https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-when-...
- judge2020 4y ago
  Same for Cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-jengo-redux-cloudflares-prior-art-search-bounty-returns/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-jengo-redux-cloudflares-...
  - sigmoid10 4y ago
    Hotz literally mentions Cloudflare as an inspiration for this.
- aeyes 4y ago
  Talk from Newegg chief legal officer from 2013 about patent trolls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgXItNZbAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgXItNZbAY
- runnerup 4y ago
  Old Newegg. That lawyer has moved on along with the rest of the leadership after a change in ownership. Also George Hotz fought and cowed Sony’s legal team when he was a kid in a saga involving ‘marcan42 of Asahi Linux. These patent trolls must be very foolish to try to intimidate him. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_...
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Ok you can't tease us with a story and not at least link it.
    - caf 4y ago
      Suggested search term: geohot
sva_ 4y ago
> It’s run by me, George Hotz. I'm torn between considering it a power move of mentioning yourself and linking to the Wikipedia entry about you, or not. But I appreciate the troll hunt.
- sodapopcan 4y ago
  When you say you’d lose 1M before paying a trash human 10k and mean it, I’m cool with it.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  If a little showboating is what it takes to motivate a wealthy guy to chokeslam a patent troll in court…
Buttons840 4y ago
Hotz is a Hacker, in every sense of the word, all of us here should relate.
nimbius 4y ago
ah yes, George hotz, the baba yaga of startup leadership
- gruturo 4y ago
  Next thing we know, the officers of the patent troll company die in a horrific car crash involving 4 empty vehicles running comma.ai software, quickly ruled an accident after the ruling judge notices an awful amount of empty self driving vehicles accompanying them anywhere they go. Don't mess with Geohot.
pxmpxm 4y ago
There very well may be a second order game theory at play - not only you broadcast far and wide that litigation will be exceedingly costly for anyone that tries, but you add an explicit threat that any attempt will result in invalidation risk to plaintiff patent portfolio. For patent trolls, time spent on legal is mostly opportunity cost, but killing their patent portfolio has a real dollar cost associated to it.
- _carbyau_ 4y ago
  I agree with this. There is a legal fight. Then there is a legal fight to the corporate death. By turning the former into the latter, it should make people think twice. But then people aren't necessarily rational.
- cma 4y ago
  Many trolls like I think Myhrvold's have something close to a new shell LLC for each major patent and sometimes it can be hard to link it all together (the recent changes to LLC/corporate ownership privacy should help here). It can be hard to even know their full portfolio.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Good I hope he destroys that patent troll's life and empties his bank account defending against it.
denton-scratch 4y ago
> I find that relatable. Me too - nobody would accuse me of being a rational actor.

greyface- 4y ago

Comma linked a copy of the complaint in their blog post, but here's the docket for anyone interested in following the suit as it progresses: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/64914481/sucxess-llc-v-commaai-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/64914481/sucxess-llc-v-...

TheMagicHorsey 4y ago

Any engineer who has ever filed a software patent soon realizes that the entire patent system in America (at least with respect to software) is a scam. It seems to be designed to enrich lawyers and tax engineers. It's almost like all the kids in school who failed out of CS 101 went to law school and cooked up a scheme to tax their classmates who actually stuck it out and built something. Why the hell do we have a system that gives a 20 year monopoly to assholes for shit they cook up on a cocktail napkin over lunch with their lawyer? This is how we used to brainstorm stuff to patent. It's utter bullshit. I refuse to participate in creating more bullshit patents.

sbf501 4y ago
I've filed multiple (hardware) patents in previous companies. Which part, exactly, is a scam? I think the only reasonable criticisms of the patent system is a lack of intelligent lawyers in the areas of discipline that often fail finding similar claims in other filings, and that patents only benefit large companies, not DIY garage makers like the rest of the world thinks. I also think your shitting on lawyers is typical of people that don't really understand legal frameworks. Would you find it reasonable if I said: "software engineers are such a joke, everything they do is so over complicated just so they can get rich like those SanFran dudebros, and for what, so that I can shit in a smart toilet with a web browser and AI? How stupid." ... Oh, shit. Wait a second... :)
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  The poster did specify _software_ patents.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Most of which are invalid due to Alice any way. The Supreme Court agrees with him.
- TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
  I happen to have practiced patent law at a large firm for 2 years with clients like Google, Apple, and Facebook.

jacquesm 4y ago

I've been on the receiving end of one of these (for my own invention, no less), helped bust another. Much good luck to George Hotz on this one. I can't stand patent trolls and even as an atheist I secretly hope there is a hell so they will get what's coming to them.

boringg 4y ago
I agree they are indeed a scourge.

etaioinshrdlu 4y ago

To play devil's advocate, there is nothing about being a patent troll inherently illegal. Hotz feels the patent is invalid, but it might not be. Our system does not require you to ever build the object patented before extracting fees from it. This is in fact the way the US patent system works. One of the patents is here: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 Method, Apparatus and System for Retrofitting a Vehicle. This does in fact describe what Comma does. Looks like it might be infringing! Now Comma must prove this patent cannot be valid.

georgehotz 4y ago
The patent in the complaint doesn't even have anything to do with what we do as a company! It describes a system that calls 911 when it detects a crash (like onstar). Ignore the (very generic) title and read on in the actual patent. https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/10454707 We write open source ADAS software, and it doesn't have any functionality like that: https://github.com/commaai/openpilot https://github.com/commaai/openpilot But for the purposes of attempting to extract a settlement, it doesn't matter. It will only matter after a long and expensive trial. (I would like to invalidate the patent entirely, which several of their patents already have been. But even if it is valid, it also has to apply to us)
- totse 4y ago
- sebastien_b 4y ago
  Once you’re done crushing this patent troll, go after the USPTO for granting bogus patents in the first place - you shouldn’t have to bear the costs of fixing their fuckups.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  The disclosures in the patent aren't what they are suing you over. Read the claims. Patents like this often have a lot of stuff shoved into the disclosure so that they can keep the patent application alive to write more patents based on the original disclosure. The claims appear to be written to read on devices like yours: My knowledge of your system is a bit dated, but I thought you had a device that you plugged into a port in the car instead of a manufacturer-installed thing. This is why this patent has a 2007 priority date, but a 2018 application date: they essentially wrote a ridiculously broad disclosure, and kept filing patents based on it. Dataspeed did appear to have tried to invalidate this patent in 2019 (see the IPR documents linked there), and succeeded on all but claim 20. If your device does not have a relay which shuts off its electrical connection within the car, you're probably safe. You could try to invalidate it, but you should read the docs from the IPR to see what Dataspeed did and what you might need to do. My gut-check guess is that claim 20 is probably not going to get invalidated unless you can find some weird after-market car part from before 2007 which does a safety shut-off of a car component.

Joel_Mckay 4y ago

The most irritating thing about these suites, is often they know setting the IP lawyers on them costs more than the claims. However, if you have an extra $60k in tax deductions to burn, than enjoy the show with popcorn.

sebastien_b 4y ago

In addition to taking on and crushing patent trolls, someone needs to also go after the USPTO for causing these people/companies financial hardship by granting these bogus patents in the first place.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
I think patents are usually granted if filed in the correct format. The expectation is, challenges are where weak patents are discovered. The patent office hasn't got enough lawyers to examine every application. Also, trolls rarely are the ones creating these patents. They just buy up some basket of idle patents, then spend their morning looking for any company announcing anything that has a couple words in common with something in their 'portfolio'. They send a boilerplate royalty request or whatever. Rinse and repeat.

nelsonson 4y ago

NullPrefix 4y ago
And?
cheeze 4y ago
This seems like an odd collection of random anecdotes about George that don't have any real relevance to this
- caf 4y ago
  Kind of like what you'd get if you asked GPT-3 to tell you about George Hotz?

zja 4y ago

Kind of interesting that the patent troll going after them used to be a patent agent ~15 years ago. I wonder how common that is?

ALittleLight 4y ago
I assume patent trolls buy old patents at a discount and then try to find companies to attack with them.
- sometimeshuman 4y ago
  Yep happened to me. The parent company was an e-cigarette business and they use the profits to buy random patents that have nothing to do with their core business. It was like getting a shakedown call from a mobster.

paulgb 4y ago

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170170984 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170170984 If you cut through the lawyer-speak, claim #1 is basically about MITM-ing the vehicle's internal message bus. Hardly novel, even in 2007.

NotYourLawyer 4y ago
Yoofie 4y ago
Wow. The fact that this patent was even granted tells me we have morons in the patent offices or that there is serious corruption going on.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  We’ve had ex-patent examiners on Hacker News indicate that they’re radically understaffed.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  Patent offices aren’t full of specialist in every single area, and they don’t pretend to be. You need to meet few fairly simple requirements and patent is granted. If patent is invalid the way to prove that is to challenge that in court. That system, that makes filling patents easy, is a whole reason why patent trolls exists. But it’s not a fault of patent offices, that they’re mandated to work that way.
oldgradstudent 4y ago
MITM, but in a vehicle. And there's also a relay somewhere. What I would like to see is a deposition of the patent examiner who approved this ridiculous patent.
barelycompetent 4y ago
The above link is a published application rather than a granted patent. US20170170984A1 by itself carries no legal rights whatsoever. In this case it was granted with largely similar claims (as US10027505B2). However, claims typically get significantly revised by the time they are granted, and less than half of applications are granted at all. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10027505B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10027505B2/en

linuxhansl 4y ago

In every western country - except the US and England - the loser pays for the cost of the trial (all parties' lawyer fees + the court). Just this reduces frivolous lawsuits. If you have a good case, sure, go ahead. If your case is weak, you run a real risk paying not only for your lawyers but the other side as well. (Note that there are disadvantages to loser-pays as well. Image you legitimately want to sue corporation X because they did something atrocious. Big corporation X can now run up lawyer cost that you have to pay if you lose.) Edit: Sorry I was wrong about England (which leaves the US only). Edit 2: In the US you can file for your lawyer fees to be returned, but that in itself is risk (I have some lawyer friends)

deleted 4y ago
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dfraser992 4y ago
No, in the UK, the loser will pay for court costs, in general. I had a bit of legal trouble a few years ago - the other side was trying to play "solicitor" to use the law as a way of extorting me (aka threatening to make criminal complaints over various (bullshit) things) so I had to hire someone to write a polite 'go fuck yourself' letter eventually. Solicitors are duty-bound to try and get things to settle out of court, so dealing with wanna-be solicitors is always a problem for them. https://www.ashurst.com/en/news-and-insights/legal-updates/quickguide---civil-proceedings-in-the-english-courts/ https://www.ashurst.com/en/news-and-insights/legal-updates/q... What's unique about the UK is that unlike actually civilized countries (incl. the US), there is no legal requirement to negotiate in good faith. It is expected for you to do so, but if the other side figures out that you haven't and tries to take you to court over that, then the English court system will say "tough luck". Manipulating the other side to your advantage should be expected, they said. There have been High Court cases that have established this principle. so doing business with the English is always possibly problematic (e.g. Brexit and all the lies, the mentality behind all that etc). Anecdotally, I have heard from foreigners that doing business with English people is more of a headache than with ones from other countries. And I have lived here long enough to 'understand' the English better than most Americans...
- 4y ago

fujidust 4y ago

I think Axel should be forced to adopt George’s company slogan recommendation if he loses.

frellus 4y ago

I frankly don't understand why a judge or jury would ever find for a company which has no revenue, other than through litigation settlements. I mean if they're not even selling a license or royalties for their patents, any cases should be dismissed. We can call it the "use it or lose it" rule for patents.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Not every company that has no revenue other than through lawsuits got there by choice. Someone can copy your invention and sell it for less (or give it out for free), and you will be screwed. There are lots of calls for exponentially escalating fees for patents over their life, and I think that is a much better idea than "use it or lose it."
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  Fees for what? I’m not convinced there’s any value in the patent system in the 21st century. Maybe it should be abolished. Who is it now helping? Certainly not the individual inventors it was meant to encourage. Software patents should absolutely be prohibited altogether. They help no one; they’re not useful for small inventors and they’re just a pointless tax paid to patent trolls on innovation for everyone else. (I am a named inventor on many software patents.)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Patents have maintenance fees that have to be paid periodically, otherwise the invention becomes public domain early. They are only a few thousand dollars, so it is a no-brainer to pay them. If they were exponential, it would be reasonable to see most patents have shorter lives, as patent owners would probably decide that it is not worth it to keep the patent around if they are not using it. Also, most software patents are invalid. See the Alice Supreme Court case.
4y ago

totse 4y ago

sometimeshuman 4y ago

I suspect this is more common than one might think especially for smaller companies that have enough cash/revenue to be collectable but too small to afford litigation or to take a principled stance like comma.ai plans to do. Ten years ago my business was a pioneer in smartphone/flip-phone enabled home-automation. We had barely been in business for a few months and doing ~$4k in monthly sales. A troll claimed he owned patent that covered using a phone to send a command to any electronic device/appliance. He eventually stopped calling me and his patent was for landline based cordless phones but I kept wondering if he would resurface years later once I had momentum but he never did. Oddly I am now fighting a trademark dispute with a company that claims "non-metal shelves and storage" in their trademark. What that has to do with my home-automation smartphone app, who knows. This is all a reminder that we live in the most litigious country in the world.

savrajsingh 4y ago
Yes. There are zillions of these completely frivolous patents and trademarks out there.

keepquestioning 4y ago

I have a dumb question about patent trolls. How do they figure out whether stuff is truly infringing a patent in the first place? Surely some corporate espionage is required to figure this out?

happyopossum 4y ago
They often don’t know, and hope to either settle or find evidence during discovery.
googlryas 4y ago
I can't speak generally, but looking at the court filings for this suit, it is relating to techniques for retrofitting stuff onto vehicles, so I imagine merely the installation instructions for comma.ai would be enough to tell them what they need to know. I don't really know though, my eyes glaze over when I read patents and think about patent law.

roastedpeacock 4y ago

In prior history Hotz was targeted by Sony for his independent research into running homebrew applications on the PS3 game-console. Unfortunately Sony objected to this and launched legal action[1] against Hotz and others which sadly ended in Hotz settling to not research Sony products again and did not set a good precedent towards such work. Different situation but hopefully better outcome this time... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...

rajeshp1986 4y ago

what a shitty way to make money.

dqpb 4y ago

Is there a path toward criminal lawsuits against patent trolls?

omginternets 4y ago
I believe a lawsuit is always a civil case. Do you mean criminal charges? I think the bar is pretty high for that (like, fraud or conspiracy).
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Filing an invalid intellectual property claim should be considered fraud. Especially invalid patents with existing prior art and automated DMCA claims. Granting invalid patents should also be fraud. If a patent is granted despite the existence of prior art, whoever granted it has clearly caused damage to society.
- 7373737373 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation

sometimeshuman 4y ago

"comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k." This stance is admirable but comma.ai is partly owned by investors. Isn't he obliged to find the lowest cost solution to this ? Or is George Hotz planning to spend his personal money on the lawsuit ?

icelancer 4y ago
Not if the investors agree with Hotz. If you invest in a geohot-owned business, you should probably know who you're bankrolling. This type of behavior by him is hardly surprising.
MacsHeadroom 4y ago
comma was profitable pre-investment, so Geohot has a lot of leeway to do what he wants. Besides, there is no fiduciary requirement to handle situations like this in any particular way. Fiduciary duty is to keep the business operating. Maximizing profit and minimizing costs are generally good practices; but they are not (legally) fiduciary duties.
- newsclues 4y ago
  Ignoring other aspects, this is likely a financially viable option for recruitment marketing. I’m guessing this stance will be popular among engineers who will hear about the company and apply for jobs.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  comma was profitable. Geohot is open about them not being anymore, so their leeway situation is much different now. They released new HW, that gives them lower margins and volume didn’t pickup as much as they planned.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
It's easy to argue that spending $1M on deterrence once is cheaper than paying each patent troll who asks $10k. It's also likely that this post is part of the defense strategy. If you were the patent troll, what would you do at this point - withdraw the claim and try again with an easier victim, or try to find out whether the "if this continues" part is true?

prescriptivist 4y ago

He's a different kind of troll in his own right but I love geohot and I want only the best for comma.ai. Give them hell.

punkpeye 4y ago

These are infuriating.

exabrial 4y ago

Patent trolls are one of many reasons to have personal and business finances buttoned up with proper LLC and other financial instruments.

cachvico 4y ago

Who was the tech big-wig who also took on the trolls? (other than Cloudflare..)

fragmede 4y ago
newegg

ummonk 4y ago

There needs to be an anti-patent-troll membership organization. You pay a fee relative to some metric and the organization acts as insurance against parent trolls by fully defending any patent lawsuits that are obviously unjustified. And to keep costs low, membership in this organization would be public to deter patent trolls from even trying to sue a member in the first place.

Bellamy 4y ago
Not a bad idea!
acdha 4y ago
Here’s John Walker’s proposal for that in 1993 after getting extorted by the XOR patent troll: https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_105.html I think the problem is that most of the major companies are comfortable writing it off as a cost of doing business and don’t want to give up the possibility of using strategic patent suits themselves.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  > don’t want to give up the possibility of using strategic patent suits themselves This is a highly under-appreciated aspect of the patent world. Companies that buy and own lots of patents do so defensively. Big companies even enter into patent cross-licensing agreements with each other, where they basically say "I know you probably infringe on my patents and I probably infringe on yours, but we'll make a deal and indemnify each other". But they want to maintain those patents to harass upstart companies that would threaten their core business, so when the trolls come along, they just pay to license and move on. One of the few examples of a big company fighting patent trolls is Intuit vs encryption patent trolls, of all things. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/intuit-beats-web-encryption-patent-that-defeated-newegg-at-trial/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/intuit-beats-web...
  - mauvehaus 4y ago
    Having beaten my head against the immovable mass of Quickbooks, I'm shocked to find myself cheering Intuit for anything. I'm not about to switch back, but that earns my grudging respect.

systemvoltage 4y ago

If you're a billionaire and if you're reading this, please start an anti-patent-troll venture and fund it as a philantropic project. No one else will.

frogger8 4y ago

Informed minds know this lawsuit is just a distraction in the simulation.

pabs3 4y ago

I wonder if Geohot will try to get this lawyer disbarred.

7373737373 4y ago
Straight to jail

hedora 4y ago

If I was carefully looking for prior art to invalidate the patent, I'd look at Verizon's patent portfolio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hum_(system) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hum_(system) Their Hum product seems to do exactly what the patent troll claims to own a patent on. It plugs into the OBD2 port and calls emergency services after a collision. Also, Nissan patented something very similar in 2004: US Patent for Vehicle emergency notification system and related method Patent (Patent # 7,323,972) https://patents.justia.com/patent/7323972 https://patents.justia.com/patent/7323972

gregsadetsky 4y ago
Really great finds! George posted a comment here but it’s unclear if he’s monitoring the thread. You should reach out by email to the stoppatenttrolls@comma.ai address mentioned in the OP.
White_Wolf 4y ago
There's a similar one from 1979 for an Automatic emergency call system for vehicles https://patents.google.com/patent/DE2912547C2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/DE2912547C2/en

savrajsingh 4y ago

To George and the comma.ai team, thank you.

sidcool 4y ago

This is so out of the Silicon Valley episode. I love it. God speed George. Down with patent trolls. I'll buy a comma AI just to support George. Even though I can't even use it. May be I'll gift it to someone.

encryptluks2 4y ago

> They subsist off of the settlements handed to them by companies who are scared and weak. This is just a straight up shake down, and I’m shocked that it’s allowed by the US court system. I'm not shocked. I'm glad it is allowed by the US court system. The companies you are speaking of decided to settle by their own free will. You can have a litigant declared a vexatious litigant and barred from filing certain cases without going through a more stringent process. It is a shame that none of the companies has done that, but acting like the courts should protect businesses from being sued is ludicrous and would be easily abused by big corporations in their favor.

MaxHoppersGhost 4y ago

The OP has a weirdly expansive/detailed Wikipedia page.

pharrington 4y ago
geohot is a known powerful hacker.
- MaxHoppersGhost 4y ago
  Yeah but Idk why a factoid about his SoundCloud profile is on there. Not relevant and reads like he wrote it himself.

mattanimation 4y ago

Get em Geohotz, we are with you.

artursapek 4y ago

I love geohot

elisharobinson 4y ago

I want a play by play dramatic court room drama depp heard style, i want the world to see what it looks like to set a patent troll on fire in real-time

denton-scratch 4y ago
I reckon the Prenda Law hearings would have made rivetting daytime viewing (one of the trolls got 14 years). It was copyright trolling, not patent, and the sentence was for various kinds of fraud. What made the story so entertaining was that every time the trolls wriggled, they got slapped again by some court or other. Hansmeier in particular seems to have been a glutton for punishment.

paxys 4y ago

Congratulations. Every founder remembers their first patent troll. It's just a right of passage in tech.

edpichler 4y ago

Is this "patent trolls" issue something that happens only in US?

yakorevivan 4y ago

mirzap 4y ago

I always admired George, his simplicity and vision. But after this I respect him even more: What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. We will hire an amazing legal team, fight this, and while doing so invalidate his patents so they can’t be used against anyone else. Not because it’s rational, but because it’s the right thing to do. This only can come from a strong character. Very rare these days where everybody calculates their angles even in matter of just cause or "right thing to do so" staff. Sometimes you need to get hit for good cause. You'll get stronger, but more importantly society as a whole will get stronger. Every win against patent trolls matters. Who knows how many great companies did they destroyed, which would make big change in our world. How many inventions delayed. Fuck them George.

FPGAhacker 4y ago
“Right thing to do”, or, “punch back 10 times harder so the next troll thinks twice.” Both work for me. When people trumpet their altruism, I usually don’t buy it. I don’t really care about geohotz motivation though. Glad to see someone with the means standing up to the trolls.
martopix 4y ago
> This only can come from a strong character. You need to be able to afford it.
- __s 4y ago
  They aren't saying all strong characters would do this, but that those who would do this have strong character Plenty of troll settlements happen where the sued party could've afforded fighting it
denton-scratch 4y ago
It's possible that the "lose $1M before I give him $10k" schtick is bluster. If you're facing a fight with someone, then convincing them that you're crazy, and that you're prepared to risk everything to beat them, might make them run away. Incidentally, can you invalidate a patent, so the troll can't use it any more, if the troll declines to defend the patent? Can they just walk away, and then assert it against some other mark?

Linda703 4y ago

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wesleywt 4y ago

If you pay the kidnapper, then kidnappings will become more common.

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gman83 4y ago

Last time he got sued, George released this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg

bborud 4y ago

If there was ever a group of people deserving of getting an internet mob after them, it is patent trolls.

concordDance 4y ago

Patents really do not seem like worthwhile things to enshrine in law these days... Companies like Tesla can release all their latents with no fear because duplicating a production line exactly is basically impossible. And the Chinese basically ignore foreign patents anyway. They should just be abolished as a concept.

Havoc 4y ago

Broken legal system. Weaponising court cases like this should not be allowed

brettermeier 4y ago

Take that MF down, please! :D

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agounaris 4y ago

What I don't understand with patent trolls is how this will even go a trial? How does this work? There is a random lawsuit therefore you'll either have to pay or go to a trial? Who accepted the lawsuit in the first place and based on what legal ground?

acomjean 4y ago
Basically they say you are violating their patent. You can license it for $X and then everything is good. If you don't license it we will sue you for patent infringement. The problem is typically defending yourself cost you a lot more money than it would be to just pay the $X. In other countries if you defended yourself and won, the loser would have to pay your cost, but not in the US making it a less risky venture. Often times small companies are quite busy and just pay the license fee to make the trolls go away. Unfortunately that just ends up creating more trolls. There are ways to invalidate a patent, but the US Patent Office that granted the bad patent is immune from any financial liability from the damage their bad patent caused, so the US Patent Office keeps granting them.

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robertlagrant 4y ago

Don't forget: https://patents.stackexchange.com https://patents.stackexchange.com.

russellbeattie 4y ago

The patent system is filled with batshit insane patents that are ridiculously broad. After I left Yahoo!, I was informed my name was put on two patents. Apparently I helped invent US8843560B2 "Social networking for mobile devices" and US10049381B2 "Mobile Monetization". You all owe me money. Well, to Yahoo! actually, but whatever. Pay up.

Roark66 4y ago

Seriously, at which point this starts affecting the choice founders make in which legal jurisdiction to base their startup? Personally, despite many advantages I would avoid doing any new technology startup in US.

BLO716 4y ago

This goes both ways, because patents are important. However, after talking to George many times as I watched his company grow with the SF proof of funzies in autonomous driving and DefCon pokes - the guy will not [quit] when he's squarely on the war path. Get 'em, GH.

chrisjc 4y ago
> What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. > We really admire what cloudflare did in dealing with patent trolls. If this continues, we want to work to invalidate not just the patents he is wrongfully claiming against us, but his entire patent portfolio. I hope I can stay up-to-date with story. Nothing more I appreciate more than seeing someone stunting innovation and taking advantage of others hard work getting smacked down. https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-project-jengo-saga-how-cloudflare-stood-up-to-a-patent-troll-and-won/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-project-jengo-saga-how-cloud...

stephc_int13 4y ago

This is the smart thing to do, on many levels, even if this can be risky and distracting, something that VCs would not be willing to back, in the long run he and his company have a lot to gain from this, both in experience and reputation.

t_mann 4y ago

> What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. Purely fyi, the game theory behind this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_game#Reputation_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_game#Reputation_game

_HMCB_ 4y ago

Hell yea.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

It's not enough to win. You have to cost the troll big money. So their 'business model' breaks.

kurupt213 4y ago

> What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me I LOLed hard. I’ve sued an unethical company on principle before and spent more on fees than I got awarded in damages.

Lutger 4y ago

This is only morally outrageous because the very existence of patents is a dubious waste of resources to begin with. The problems they are supposed to solve are much smaller then they bring about and better solved in other ways, anyway.

8note 4y ago

It's kinda weird that using the legal system the way it's supposed to is considered heroic

silexia 4y ago

I was similarly attacked by a patent troll and was able to defeat them. My experience is chronicled here:https://joelx.com/how-to-beat-a-patent-troll-in-east-texas/12013/ https://joelx.com/how-to-beat-a-patent-troll-in-east-texas/1... The fundamental problem here is not patent trolls... It is the patent system itself. We either need a constitutional amendment limiting patent time periods to 3 or 7 years or just simply dissolve the patent system itself. The free market needs to be truly free to actually function... Otherwise it's just a bunch of oligarchs using artificial monopolies to prevent competition and harm consumers.