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This is great. I do worry that a future more sinister malicious patent troll could read all the wonderful strategy Cloudflare used and work around them. Hopeful
by textlapse 2y ago
This is great. I do worry that a future more sinister malicious patent troll could read all the wonderful strategy Cloudflare used and work around them. Hopefully Cloudflare legal team got stronger!
Kudos to the likes of Cloudflare and (yesteryears’) Newegg that fought these trolls.
I shudder at the thought of how many of the existing legacy industries outside the computer space are still riddled with these patent portfolio companies :(
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y agoHopefully the powers that be will look at it from a national security perspective, in that other countries do not respect US copyright law and may be pulling ahead
- AlbertCory 2y agocopyrights are different from patents.
- zeroCalories 2y agoCopyright, patents, it doesn't matter. It's all IP and our enemies do not respect it. We need to move forward with that reality.
- lionkor 2y agoAren't most of those "enemies" enemies by choice?
- chgs 2y agoTrademarks help the user. If I buy a can of brown sludge I want to know it’s sold by the Coca Cola company. If anyone could sell their stuff as “coca cola” that would harm me, the consumer, as it takes information away from me.
- macintux 2y agoPatents are explicitly open for anyone to see. I don't know that we need more help there: you can get a product banned from import if someone uses your patent without recompense.
- namibj 2y agoAs someone in a place without pure software patents (algorithms can't be patented, but software/hardware combination systems can be), I'm willing to let US users use an overseas hosted instance instead of locally running it. Though keeping US entities from importing copies against US patents isn't really something I could stop.
- hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago*laughs in amazon*
- datadrivenangel 2y agoThe US used to ignore IP laws when we were an underdog.
- andrewjl 2y agoOne colorful anecdote from that period. > In the United Kingdom, he was called "Slater the Traitor" and "Sam the Slate" because he brought British textile technology to the United States, modifying it for American use. He memorized the textile factory machinery designs as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British industry before migrating to the U.S. at the age of 21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater
- josephg 2y agoDo you think China is still an underdog compared to the US? I suspect the only thing that would ever convince China to take IP seriously is if China's own companies would profit more from stronger IP protection.
- wraptile 2y agoChina takes IP very seriously domestically when big corporations need protection. A bit of topic but I always found that the only "communist" country is the biggest infringer of copyleft licenses and has neglible open source culture. Shouldn't code be "for the people".
- immibis 2y agoTotalitarian dictatorships are not communism.
- AlbertCory 2y agoPoint us to a "real" communist country, either existing or in the past.
- 2y ago
- marssaxman 2y agoWhy should they respect it? Software patents are and have always been a bad idea, blatant parasitism. They should never have been established, must never be taken seriously, and ought to be abolished.
- 12_throw_away 2y ago> I do worry that a future more sinister malicious patent troll could read all the wonderful strategy The "good" news is that patent trolling is, more or less by definition, a get-rich-quick scheme - they want to make a lot of money by sending a few dozen letters every year. It does not attract people who are interested in anything approaching due diligence. But also, the whole point of all of this is to get the trolls to leave Cloudflare alone, right? This is a very deliberate strategy; this announcement says "don't try that stuff here ... but feel free to try Cisco or Juniper instead."
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y agoI don't agree its always a get-rich-quick scheme, it can also be seen as a passive income stream. Its just another example of parasitic rent-seeking on which our economy is based.
- Sakos 2y agoI don't see how it's a get rich quick scheme when looking at companies like Immersion, who've been shaking down companies successfully for years. https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/meta-settles-lawsuit-over-haptic-feedback-tech-in-quest-headsets/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/meta-settles-lawsuit-over-... They basically have a stranglehold on patents for haptic feedback in gaming for some unfathomable reason and they will have it for the foreseeable future.
- scotty79 2y agoI was wondering if Cisco or Juniper payed them anything to back off or just threaten them the same thing that Cloudflare actually did to them. The fact that they thought they had a winnable case again Cloudflare makes me think that others actually paid up ... or that the troll was just getting desperate to finally earn anything.
- jdhzzz 2y agoOr they saw rolling the dice with a jury as low risk potentially high reward.
- 2y ago
- andrewjl 2y agoHow would they get around crowd sourced prior art?
- dawidpotocki 2y agoSupply prior art to Cloudflare themselves and win money from Project Jengo.
- andrewjl 2y agoI guess they could. Is that a worse outcome than the on net additional expense of dealing with patent litigation?