4 ms·
I think perhaps repositories of prior art might be a bit of a red herring here. Prior art doesn't matter to trolls. Patents don't matter to trolls. There's so m
by noonespecial 14y ago
I think perhaps repositories of prior art might be a bit of a red herring here. Prior art doesn't matter to trolls. Patents don't matter to trolls. There's so much worthless paper at the patent office now that everything you might ever do with a computer is covered a thousand times over by useless 'data on a server!' "patents".
The patents are pretense. The troll picks a company that looks like the kind he's used to suing, checks their financials, then looks through his pile of bathroom tissue for some vague scrap of language to paste into the lawsuit template.
The problem is that the legal system allows asymmetric attack where there is no downside for the attacker and guaranteed losses for the defender. Until this gets fixed it doesn't matter at all what happens at the patent office or what prior art gets posted where. By the time prior art enters the picture, who will win the case is irrelevant. The defendant has already lost.
- mhb 14y agoSo what they should be advocating is a change to loser pays for patent cases.
- hkmurakami 14y agoI've definitely seen a HN'er suggest that a losing patent troll should have to at least cover the defendant's legal fees. That's probably enough to put them out of business isn't it? The guy who's patent trolling Hipmunk is a one man shop, so getting hit with a 7 figure legal fee upon losing will force him to liquidate all his assets (read: Patents!). Though I'm not sure what would happen if various patents and assets were partitioned off into separate C corporations that would effectively protect the guy himself :(
- Kliment 14y agoThe latter is what the assholes at IV are doing. It seems to work pretty well for them.
- krichman 14y agoWe need a way to pierce the corporate veil in very frivolous lawsuits. Like, "did prior art exist that didn't require extensive search to find? $1 million damages to the defendant from you, personally, Myrvolds."