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Reading stories like this literally makes my blood boil. I know it's been discussed at length, but still. This is pure economic leakage -- it's an unintended
by nlh 14y ago
Reading stories like this literally makes my blood boil. I know it's been discussed at length, but still. This is pure economic leakage -- it's an unintended consequence of well-intentioned legislation and it's absolute BS that companies have to put up with the trolls.
Good on the guys for putting up a fight, as expensive as it is.
I feel particularly frustrated about this whole mess because I don't see an end in sight. I'm not convinced the new patent reform legislation is going to help (Or is it?) and it feels like an uphill battle for small businesses.
What to do?
- roc 14y agoOne avenue would be a non-profit organization that takes membership fees from software firms and uses the pooled money to fight these legal battles, or make collective licensing agreements. The shakedown side of the troll business model relies on their being able to absorb more in legal fees than their targets. If their targets could actually force them to follow-through on their legal threats, the profitability of this method might drop to a level where they don't bother. It would, unfortunately, do nothing about the cases where trolls are confident enough to take their shots at Google, Apple, Microsoft, et al.
- d2vid 14y agoHow about an IP lawfirm offering insurance against patent trolls? Your company pays an annual fee. Once you get a shakedown notice, the law firm responds, letting the patent troll know that you have $0 marginal cost to making a stand. If the law firm had enough clients, their incentive would be to go to court to invalidate bad patents so they don't have to keep responding to the same shakedown notices.
- paulrademacher 14y agoUgh, that's still protection money. It just went to a different lawyer.
- roc 14y agoTrue, but money you can plan for as a cost of doing business. Unlike shakedowns, which hit at unpredictable times for unpredictable amounts. It wouldn't be the solution, but it could be an improvement for small and medium-sized software vendors.
- JoshTriplett 14y ago> unintended consequence of well-intentioned legislation I'd question both of your adjectives there. This seems like an intended consequence of heavily lobbied legislation, as evidenced by the reactions to any attempts to change this system.
- lowboy 14y agoI think parent was referring to the inception of the patent system, which was well-intentioned. This is different from the trolls lobbying to keep the status quo, which is definitely not well-intentioned.
- marcosdumay 14y agoI still disagree. Since inception patent law is heavily lobbied (except that in some cases lobby didn't have a name yet), and legislators refuse to fix its very visible flaws. About the same patter repeated on every country.
- rayiner 14y agoThe current structure of patent law isn't the result of heavy lobbying, or at least as we understand it in the modern form. See: http://www.ladas.com/Patents/USPatentHistory.html http://www.ladas.com/Patents/USPatentHistory.html The basic structure of the current law dates to 1952, and indeed even that update wasn't a big change from the 1836 Act. Maybe the 1995 amendment regarding biotechnology inventions is a lobbying-influenced giveaway, but most of the changes have narrowed the patent law, not expanded it.
- finnw 14y ago> this literally makes my blood boil Unlikely unless you're the Human Torch.
- lancefisher 14y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=define+literally https://www.google.com/search?q=define+literally "2. Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling."
- tomrod 14y agoBah. I refuse to allow language to advance beyond that which I learned in the sixth grade!
- mistercow 14y agoI think we should stand our ground on this one. We've let every word that can convey the correct definition of "literally" slide down the hyperbole treadmill. I realize that languages live and evolve, but the loss of all unambiguous indicators of actual literalness has made our language objectively worse. You might argue that we can always tell the intent from context, but the whole point of "literally" is for when the context suggests that the expression in question may be figurative. If I say "I literally ate all of the soup in my house last night", you don't know if I'm actually out of soup now, or if I just ate a bunch of soup.
- krichman 14y agoI like it because "literally" is being used hyperbolically, therefore in those cases it is describing the opposite of itself.
- lancefisher 14y agoPeople use literally to emphasize things all the time. I was surprised to find this definition in a dictionary though. I just find it hilarious that literally can literally mean not literally.
- 14y ago