6 ms·

Patent Troll Forced To Settle Frivolous Lawsuit Against One-Man Business

176 points by ghshephard 13y ago

adolph 13y ago
Lodsys is part of Intellectual Ventures, really? It makes sense, but I guess I'll have to listen to the podcast to find the citation.
- sp332 13y ago
  Lodsys used to have a page denying it http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-what-is-dan-abelows-involvement-is-intellectual-ventures-behind-lodsys-or-controlling-lodsys-in-some-way.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys.... but the URL is dead now.
- gruseom 13y ago
  I listened to it and don't recall Lodsys coming up. The shell company in the story was called Oasis. In court filings they were forced to disclose that Intellectual Ventures was getting 90% of their proceeds (which were considerable—hundreds of millions) from troll lawsuits. A plainer way of putting this is that IV outsources its dirty work for a 10% cut while retaining plausible deniability. They would have gotten away with it in the Oasis case, except that a couple of brave victims fought back and (as the broadcast told it) were saved by a fluke: a document from 20 years ago that contradicted the patent filing. The patent wasn't invalidated because it was laughable, but because the "inventor" lied about it being all his idea. Since IV has a similar murky connection to Lodsys' patents as to Oasis', and since they have put out the same non-denial-denial verbiage about both entities, and since we now know that they were taking 90% of Oasis' winnings all along, it's reasonable to suspect that they have an analogous deal with Lodsys. But this hasn't been demonstrated. The OP is arguably being a bit of a troll by titling his piece as if it has, then adding the word "allegedly" in later.
- NelsonMinar 13y ago
  It's widely believed that Lodsys is somehow affiliated with Intellectual Ventures, but US corporate law makes it hard to really know who owns or benefits from Lodsys' lawsuits. Intellectual Ventures is known to participate in a lot of shell corporations and intellectual property trades. EFF notes that Intellectual Ventures used to own some of the patents Lodsys is prosecuting: https://www.eff.org/issues/faqs-lodsys-targets https://www.eff.org/issues/faqs-lodsys-targets Edit: here is a story about the Guardian trying to get Intellectual Ventures go on the record about its relationship to Lodsys. (Spoiler: they couldn't.) http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/27/intellectual-ventures-myrhvold-patent-lodsys http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/27/intellectu... . And here is Myhrvold saying that Intellectual Ventures sold the patent to Lodsys, although he carefully avoids saying anything about ongoing business terms between his company and Lodsys. http://features.slashdot.org/story/13/04/02/1926255/nathan-myhrvold-answers-your-questions-live-qa-today-at-12-pm-pacific http://features.slashdot.org/story/13/04/02/1926255/nathan-m...
  - dia80 13y ago
    > US corporate law makes it hard to really know who owns or benefits from Lodsys' lawsuits As the director of a UK company every time I here this I am simply flabbergasted. In the UK all limited companies/partnerships accounts are a matter of public record.
    - oijaf888 13y ago
      Even if they are through various UK dependencies like Jersey and the Cayman Islands?
  - zeckalpha 13y ago
    Isn't there enough evidence for collusion?
tenpoundhammer 13y ago
This is also a great indictment against our elected representatives who represent the wealthy and powerful, not the people. If our reps truly were out to serve the American people this would have been solved years and years ago.
chasing 13y ago
Thank you. This is a good clarification. I believe attaching the names of people like Nathan Myhrvold to this is key. Being associated with him and Intellectual Ventures needs to be seen as an embarrassment. (Think of how people react to Zynga.) Myhrvold's clearly interested in being some sort of public icon of brilliance, given his cooking books, appearance on the Colbert Report, and Intellectual Ventures inclusion in the (not so good) SuperFreakonomics book. Take that away from him. Or, at least, make the patent trolling stuff such a giant part of his public persona that the other stuff won't override it. So every article prints his name as "Nathan Myhrvold, noted patent troll..." This isn't a total solution, but we've got to run people's names through the mud who do this. Especially to make the bar higher for scumbags who are considering getting into this line of work. Really make them think about what they're giving up.
- gknoy 13y ago
  I noticed that his wikipedia page's FIRST citation references exactly that.
- npsimons 13y ago
  Exactly; I was seriously considering buying his cooking books (they are pretty cool), but after careful consideration, I've decided he's too much of an asshat to support financially. This is the same FUDster who trollishly responded to Stephenson's analogy of the Hole Hawg in "In the Beginning was the Commandline" by claiming that people only flocked to UNIX because it was "retro" and only used Linux because it was "cheap".
- NelsonMinar 13y ago
  There's a whole lot of names to attach to Intellectual Ventures; Myhrvold is only the most visible. Their list of Senior Inventors may be particularly interesting to Hacker News members. I don't think there's any "run through the mud" here, I imagine these folks are all proud of their work at Intellectual Ventures. Here's what's on IV's site today at http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/inventor-network/senior-inventors http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/inventor-netwo... Bran Ferren: Co-Chairman, Applied Minds, Inc. • Daniel Hillis: Co-Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, Applied Minds, Inc. • Leroy Hood: Co-Founder and Director, Institute for Systems Biology • Muriel Ishikawa: Senior Scientist and Inventor • Robert Langer: Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology • John Latham: Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester, U.K. • Eric Leuthardt: Neurosurgeon & Biomedical Engineer • Roy Levien: Co-Founder and Consulting Inventor, Rax • Mark Malamud: Co-Founder & Consulting Inventor, Rax • John Pendry: Professor, Imperial College London • John Rinaldo: User Interface Architect • David Smith: Augustine Scholar & Professor, Duke University • Thomas Weaver: Senior Interviewer, Fannie and John Hertz Foundation • Chuck Whitmer: Software Architect • Richard Zare: Blake Wilbur Professor, Stanford University
VengefulCynic 13y ago
In a world where journalists had unlimited research budgets and the time to run facts to ground, this sort of campaign to link Myhrvold's "good" name to his patent-trolling deeds would be unnecessary. But since we don't live in that world, I suppose the next best thing is to make sure to SEO Myhrvold's name so that it always turns up "scum", "patent troll", and "extortionist". Who knew you could do so much for journalism by priming the Google pump for future journalists?
aet 13y ago
How many hours is $200k of defense? (roughly)
- uxp 13y ago
  Based on this survey of attorney fees between 2010 and 2011, it could be anywhere between 510 hours (roughly, in California), to 900 hours (roughly, in the "West"), depending on years of practice and specialty. http://www.nclc.org/images/pdf/litigation/fee-survey-report-2010-2011.pdf http://www.nclc.org/images/pdf/litigation/fee-survey-report-... edit: that's strictly hourly rates. Some (most?) attorneys will charge you for gas/transportation to and from the courthouse and their office, paper/toner costs from xerox machines, etc, which can add up fairly quickly, especially on a large case like one against Lodsys. also, IANAL.
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    s/some/all/ Plus associates, of course.
- lnsignificant 13y ago
  A case like this would be about 4 months (570 hours) or so of billable work by a good lawyer @ $350/hr or so.
  - w3pm 13y ago
    Good lawyers cost quite a bit more than $350 an hour. Many of the "top" law firms charge north of $1000 an hour these days, below that $500-600/hour for a good quality lawyer is about what I'd expect. Fairly insane but it's one of those things where if losing is more painful than that price, you have no choice.
- jfb 13y ago
  It's in the linked article: "I’ve spent about 200 hours on the matter and Sabrina about another 80. My comparable market hourly rate (partner at a top NYC patent firm) would be $750 and a comparable rate for Sabrina (senior associate at a top patent firm) would be about $500."
it_learnses 13y ago
Here's the wikipedia article on Intellectual Ventures. Make sure it continues to say they're patent trolls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures
thinkcomp 13y ago
What is the exact nature of Lodsys's relationship to IV? I have done a lot of research on trolls and IV and I am not aware of any connection at all. Basic assignments aren't enough to claim IV's involvement.
- throwawaykf02 13y ago
  Agreed. I suspect there's no significant relationship at all. As another comment mentions, Lodsys used to have this page on their website, now only found on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-what-is-dan-abelows-involvement-is-intellectual-ventures-behind-lodsys-or-controlling-lodsys-in-some-way.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys.... As an aside, the FTC is considering a special investigation "piercing the corporate veil" to ferret out the real entities behind trolling operations. If they do, I look forward to seeing their findings. My hunch is that they won't find the usual suspects behind them, if they find any at all.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    A couple questions (I have no knowledge on this): 1. Wouldn't your hunch have been equally applicable to Oasis? Yet we now know that IV was behind them. 2. If your hunch were correct, wouldn't it be in both Lodsys' and IV's interests to unequivocally establish the facts?
    - throwawaykf02 13y ago
      Sorry for the late response, very infrequent logger-in: 1. No, we really don't know IV was behind Oasis. I am guessing you assume this because NPR reported IV gets 90% of profits. But note how they did not prove or even outright state there was any controlling interest; they just throw the 90% number out there and imply it, Glen Beck-style. The original inventor also made millions off Oasis, but can you say he was "behind" Oasis too? Unless there's a clear indication of control (which shell companies make very hard to prove) it is just as likely a "share-cropping" operation as a shell company. Something like the FTC probe is needed to prove anything either way. 2. IV has publicly stated at an FTC panel that (paraphrasing) they do not sue under any name than their own. Now, that's not under oath, mind you, but making such statements in front of a government panel holds some weight. However, I do find it a bit odd that Lodsys put that denial on their website and then removed it.
jonahx 13y ago
Can someone explain to me why the former CTO of Microsoft, a person I assume was quite wealthy already, would become an infamous patent troll? Is he just trading his reputation and karma for.... an even bigger pile of money? Maybe I'm naive, but that seems bizarre.
- wmf 13y ago
  Here's a totally speculative hypothesis: He started IV as a sort of Xerox PARC that would also make money; the idea was to hire really smart researchers, advance the state of the art, and license the results to other companies to productize. This didn't work (perhaps the research was low-value because it was disconnected from the needs of the market, or perhaps technology transfer is really hard) and rather than admit defeat they pivoted into patent trolling.
  - jonahx 13y ago
    Thanks, this seems plausible. Is it possible that they've actually convinced themselves they are doing something justifiable with their own IP? I'd find that hard to believe, but who knows?
    - wmf 13y ago
      I've noticed that there are definitely people who think ideas — even unimplemented ones — are valuable IP and patents are a reasonable way to monetize ideas. It's sometimes expressed as a business model for those who can't afford to execute their ideas. I guess the line between that philosophy and patent trolling is when the inventor starts going after companies that independently reinvented their idea.
gojomo 13y ago
I find it amazing that at this moment, there are zero Google hits for the exact phrase ["Intellectually Dishonest Ventures"] or the variant ["Intellectual[ly Dishonest] Ventures"]. So at least there will be now.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
chenster 13y ago
The patent troll should be executed.
pi-rat 13y ago
Myhvold causes me serious confusion, love him and hate him at the same time. You shouldn't be able to do so much cool stuff and also be a complete asshat.

176 points by ghshephard 13y ago

Lodsys is part of Intellectual Ventures, really? It makes sense, but I guess I'll have to listen to the podcast to find the citation.

sp332 13y ago
Lodsys used to have a page denying it http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-what-is-dan-abelows-involvement-is-intellectual-ventures-behind-lodsys-or-controlling-lodsys-in-some-way.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys.... but the URL is dead now.
gruseom 13y ago
I listened to it and don't recall Lodsys coming up. The shell company in the story was called Oasis. In court filings they were forced to disclose that Intellectual Ventures was getting 90% of their proceeds (which were considerable—hundreds of millions) from troll lawsuits. A plainer way of putting this is that IV outsources its dirty work for a 10% cut while retaining plausible deniability. They would have gotten away with it in the Oasis case, except that a couple of brave victims fought back and (as the broadcast told it) were saved by a fluke: a document from 20 years ago that contradicted the patent filing. The patent wasn't invalidated because it was laughable, but because the "inventor" lied about it being all his idea. Since IV has a similar murky connection to Lodsys' patents as to Oasis', and since they have put out the same non-denial-denial verbiage about both entities, and since we now know that they were taking 90% of Oasis' winnings all along, it's reasonable to suspect that they have an analogous deal with Lodsys. But this hasn't been demonstrated. The OP is arguably being a bit of a troll by titling his piece as if it has, then adding the word "allegedly" in later.
NelsonMinar 13y ago
It's widely believed that Lodsys is somehow affiliated with Intellectual Ventures, but US corporate law makes it hard to really know who owns or benefits from Lodsys' lawsuits. Intellectual Ventures is known to participate in a lot of shell corporations and intellectual property trades. EFF notes that Intellectual Ventures used to own some of the patents Lodsys is prosecuting: https://www.eff.org/issues/faqs-lodsys-targets https://www.eff.org/issues/faqs-lodsys-targets Edit: here is a story about the Guardian trying to get Intellectual Ventures go on the record about its relationship to Lodsys. (Spoiler: they couldn't.) http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/27/intellectual-ventures-myrhvold-patent-lodsys http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/27/intellectu... . And here is Myhrvold saying that Intellectual Ventures sold the patent to Lodsys, although he carefully avoids saying anything about ongoing business terms between his company and Lodsys. http://features.slashdot.org/story/13/04/02/1926255/nathan-myhrvold-answers-your-questions-live-qa-today-at-12-pm-pacific http://features.slashdot.org/story/13/04/02/1926255/nathan-m...
- dia80 13y ago
  > US corporate law makes it hard to really know who owns or benefits from Lodsys' lawsuits As the director of a UK company every time I here this I am simply flabbergasted. In the UK all limited companies/partnerships accounts are a matter of public record.
  - oijaf888 13y ago
    Even if they are through various UK dependencies like Jersey and the Cayman Islands?
- zeckalpha 13y ago
  Isn't there enough evidence for collusion?

tenpoundhammer 13y ago

This is also a great indictment against our elected representatives who represent the wealthy and powerful, not the people. If our reps truly were out to serve the American people this would have been solved years and years ago.

chasing 13y ago

Thank you. This is a good clarification. I believe attaching the names of people like Nathan Myhrvold to this is key. Being associated with him and Intellectual Ventures needs to be seen as an embarrassment. (Think of how people react to Zynga.) Myhrvold's clearly interested in being some sort of public icon of brilliance, given his cooking books, appearance on the Colbert Report, and Intellectual Ventures inclusion in the (not so good) SuperFreakonomics book. Take that away from him. Or, at least, make the patent trolling stuff such a giant part of his public persona that the other stuff won't override it. So every article prints his name as "Nathan Myhrvold, noted patent troll..." This isn't a total solution, but we've got to run people's names through the mud who do this. Especially to make the bar higher for scumbags who are considering getting into this line of work. Really make them think about what they're giving up.

gknoy 13y ago
I noticed that his wikipedia page's FIRST citation references exactly that.
npsimons 13y ago
Exactly; I was seriously considering buying his cooking books (they are pretty cool), but after careful consideration, I've decided he's too much of an asshat to support financially. This is the same FUDster who trollishly responded to Stephenson's analogy of the Hole Hawg in "In the Beginning was the Commandline" by claiming that people only flocked to UNIX because it was "retro" and only used Linux because it was "cheap".
NelsonMinar 13y ago
There's a whole lot of names to attach to Intellectual Ventures; Myhrvold is only the most visible. Their list of Senior Inventors may be particularly interesting to Hacker News members. I don't think there's any "run through the mud" here, I imagine these folks are all proud of their work at Intellectual Ventures. Here's what's on IV's site today at http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/inventor-network/senior-inventors http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/inventor-netwo... Bran Ferren: Co-Chairman, Applied Minds, Inc. • Daniel Hillis: Co-Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, Applied Minds, Inc. • Leroy Hood: Co-Founder and Director, Institute for Systems Biology • Muriel Ishikawa: Senior Scientist and Inventor • Robert Langer: Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology • John Latham: Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester, U.K. • Eric Leuthardt: Neurosurgeon & Biomedical Engineer • Roy Levien: Co-Founder and Consulting Inventor, Rax • Mark Malamud: Co-Founder & Consulting Inventor, Rax • John Pendry: Professor, Imperial College London • John Rinaldo: User Interface Architect • David Smith: Augustine Scholar & Professor, Duke University • Thomas Weaver: Senior Interviewer, Fannie and John Hertz Foundation • Chuck Whitmer: Software Architect • Richard Zare: Blake Wilbur Professor, Stanford University

VengefulCynic 13y ago

In a world where journalists had unlimited research budgets and the time to run facts to ground, this sort of campaign to link Myhrvold's "good" name to his patent-trolling deeds would be unnecessary. But since we don't live in that world, I suppose the next best thing is to make sure to SEO Myhrvold's name so that it always turns up "scum", "patent troll", and "extortionist". Who knew you could do so much for journalism by priming the Google pump for future journalists?

aet 13y ago

How many hours is $200k of defense? (roughly)

uxp 13y ago
Based on this survey of attorney fees between 2010 and 2011, it could be anywhere between 510 hours (roughly, in California), to 900 hours (roughly, in the "West"), depending on years of practice and specialty. http://www.nclc.org/images/pdf/litigation/fee-survey-report-2010-2011.pdf http://www.nclc.org/images/pdf/litigation/fee-survey-report-... edit: that's strictly hourly rates. Some (most?) attorneys will charge you for gas/transportation to and from the courthouse and their office, paper/toner costs from xerox machines, etc, which can add up fairly quickly, especially on a large case like one against Lodsys. also, IANAL.
- DannyBee 13y ago
  s/some/all/ Plus associates, of course.
lnsignificant 13y ago
A case like this would be about 4 months (570 hours) or so of billable work by a good lawyer @ $350/hr or so.
- w3pm 13y ago
  Good lawyers cost quite a bit more than $350 an hour. Many of the "top" law firms charge north of $1000 an hour these days, below that $500-600/hour for a good quality lawyer is about what I'd expect. Fairly insane but it's one of those things where if losing is more painful than that price, you have no choice.
jfb 13y ago
It's in the linked article: "I’ve spent about 200 hours on the matter and Sabrina about another 80. My comparable market hourly rate (partner at a top NYC patent firm) would be $750 and a comparable rate for Sabrina (senior associate at a top patent firm) would be about $500."

it_learnses 13y ago

Here's the wikipedia article on Intellectual Ventures. Make sure it continues to say they're patent trolls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures

thinkcomp 13y ago

What is the exact nature of Lodsys's relationship to IV? I have done a lot of research on trolls and IV and I am not aware of any connection at all. Basic assignments aren't enough to claim IV's involvement.

throwawaykf02 13y ago
Agreed. I suspect there's no significant relationship at all. As another comment mentions, Lodsys used to have this page on their website, now only found on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-what-is-dan-abelows-involvement-is-intellectual-ventures-behind-lodsys-or-controlling-lodsys-in-some-way.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys.... As an aside, the FTC is considering a special investigation "piercing the corporate veil" to ferret out the real entities behind trolling operations. If they do, I look forward to seeing their findings. My hunch is that they won't find the usual suspects behind them, if they find any at all.
- gruseom 13y ago
  A couple questions (I have no knowledge on this): 1. Wouldn't your hunch have been equally applicable to Oasis? Yet we now know that IV was behind them. 2. If your hunch were correct, wouldn't it be in both Lodsys' and IV's interests to unequivocally establish the facts?
  - throwawaykf02 13y ago
    Sorry for the late response, very infrequent logger-in: 1. No, we really don't know IV was behind Oasis. I am guessing you assume this because NPR reported IV gets 90% of profits. But note how they did not prove or even outright state there was any controlling interest; they just throw the 90% number out there and imply it, Glen Beck-style. The original inventor also made millions off Oasis, but can you say he was "behind" Oasis too? Unless there's a clear indication of control (which shell companies make very hard to prove) it is just as likely a "share-cropping" operation as a shell company. Something like the FTC probe is needed to prove anything either way. 2. IV has publicly stated at an FTC panel that (paraphrasing) they do not sue under any name than their own. Now, that's not under oath, mind you, but making such statements in front of a government panel holds some weight. However, I do find it a bit odd that Lodsys put that denial on their website and then removed it.

jonahx 13y ago

Can someone explain to me why the former CTO of Microsoft, a person I assume was quite wealthy already, would become an infamous patent troll? Is he just trading his reputation and karma for.... an even bigger pile of money? Maybe I'm naive, but that seems bizarre.

wmf 13y ago
Here's a totally speculative hypothesis: He started IV as a sort of Xerox PARC that would also make money; the idea was to hire really smart researchers, advance the state of the art, and license the results to other companies to productize. This didn't work (perhaps the research was low-value because it was disconnected from the needs of the market, or perhaps technology transfer is really hard) and rather than admit defeat they pivoted into patent trolling.
- jonahx 13y ago
  Thanks, this seems plausible. Is it possible that they've actually convinced themselves they are doing something justifiable with their own IP? I'd find that hard to believe, but who knows?
  - wmf 13y ago
    I've noticed that there are definitely people who think ideas — even unimplemented ones — are valuable IP and patents are a reasonable way to monetize ideas. It's sometimes expressed as a business model for those who can't afford to execute their ideas. I guess the line between that philosophy and patent trolling is when the inventor starts going after companies that independently reinvented their idea.

gojomo 13y ago

I find it amazing that at this moment, there are zero Google hits for the exact phrase ["Intellectually Dishonest Ventures"] or the variant ["Intellectual[ly Dishonest] Ventures"]. So at least there will be now.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

chenster 13y ago

The patent troll should be executed.

pi-rat 13y ago

Myhvold causes me serious confusion, love him and hate him at the same time. You shouldn't be able to do so much cool stuff and also be a complete asshat.