7 ms·

Patent trolls put brakes on S.F. transit app

81 points by coloneltcb 13y ago

kintamanimatt 13y ago
In many ways the US patent system gives non-US software companies a leg up. It seems as though foreign software companies are rarely (if ever) sued by these "non-practicing entities". Patent trolls are the #1 reason why I have no intention of opening up shop in the US, at least until the software patent boogeyman goes away.
- Grovara123 13y ago
  You can be sued anywhere for anything - you are just saying 'words' without giving any facts. People are sued in many countries for intellectual property issues. USA is not alone. The #1 reason you have no intention of opening up shop in the US is probably something else - ie. you are not a US citizen or you wouldn't even know how to incorporate if you tried - come on.
  - kintamanimatt 13y ago
    I'm very well aware of how to incorporate a company in multiple jurisdictions; it's not hard and rarely expensive. Being a US-citizen isn't necessarily a barrier to opening a company in the US either; there are are whole battery of appropriate visa categories for entrepreneurs. Indeed you can be sued anywhere for anything, but the matter of jurisdiction arises quite quickly in many cases. Also, American patent trolls don't seem to attempt to sue foreign companies that don't have a presence in the US.
    - Grovara123 13y ago
      Again - words - not facts. "American patent trolls don't seem..." where did you pull that out of... sounds pretty but you got nothing to back up that statement.
      - kintamanimatt 13y ago
        You're asking me to prove a negative. I can't find any instances of a US-based patent troll suing, say, a British or Irish or German software company that has no offices, etc in the US, and this is what I'm basing my non-absolute statements on. Anyway, you appear to be a troll of the internet variety, so I'll leave you in peace because you're in no way trying to debate, but antagonize.
        Grovara123 13y ago
        I'm a troll because I disagree? Have you searched the US Court Databases? As an attorney - I have. Check out lexisnexis for case law. There are hundreds of cases of US owners of patents suing and litigating against international infringers... literally hundreds. Also, you are totally discrediting the monopolies that run the world and how they have prevented other companies from entering their markets via other aggressive methods or patent purchasing...
        victorf 13y ago
        Hundreds of cases vs. how many domestic? If domestic cases run even into the thousands you just proved the idea that it is less likely to be sued as a foreign company.
        kintamanimatt 13y ago
        Those monopolies you're talking of (IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, etc) are subject to US laws and courts because they are US corporations. Other large companies likely also have a presence in the US, which again subjects them to US laws and courts. Why don't you cite a handful of recent cases (<5 years) in which a British or German software company has been successfully sued in the US for infringing upon a US-registered software patent by a US patent troll? I'm not saying you're wrong, and of course just because I haven't found anything doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but the odds of being successfully sued by a patent troll as a foreign business are vastly less than being sued as a US company. Even if a patent troll were successful in securing judgment (perhaps by default), enforcing a judgment against a foreign company is vastly harder than a domestic one; patent trolls like easy wins. Nobody in Europe is complaining about US patent trolls suing them because to the best of my knowledge, it doesn't happen. If it does, it's so infrequent that it's a non-issue. I assume you're a troll because of your comment history. I mean, c'mon, you pretended to be able to read my mind and asserted that my lack of desire to open up an office or business in the US was not because of the risk and costs of a patent troll's attempt at a shake-down, but rather because I don't know how to form a company, or that I'm not a US citizen! If you're really a lawyer I doubt you'd be making such claims.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    Patent trolls seldom go after foreign businesses, or do anything else that even remotely looks like actual work.
    - Grovara123 13y ago
      again - words... not facts... Buying and litigating patents is A LOT of work. I am not supporting them - but you can't discredit their work just because you don't believe in what they legally are entitled to do. I don't support big oil or old-school-energy monopolies - but that doesn't mean I discredit what they do.
      - ganeumann 13y ago
        Buying and litigating patents is A LOT of work. That's not an argument. Make-work is not valuable. you can't discredit their work just because you don't believe in what they legally are entitled to do Well, sure you can. Just because it's legal does not mean it's ethical. You're a lawyer, you should understand that.
- jbjohns 13y ago
  Careful, you don't want to give them an ideas!
zmmmmm 13y ago
Such a depressing situation. I shudder to think of such a letter arriving to my small (tiny) business. And yet I know it could happen any time. There's simply no way for me to avoid it - I can't possibly anticipate what bogus patent might be thrown at me, it may even be nothing to do with my business. It would probably be game over, shut down, years of hard work down the drain. And even then, I worry that they would sue for damages from past sales, so I may still be screwed. How do others deal with this risk? Just ignore it and hope for the best? Is it still statistically low enough chance that that is a reasonable thing to do? Incorporate and protect assets so if you are sued you can at least back out without personal financial devastation?
- kintamanimatt 13y ago
  You should be incorporating anyway. It's a very cheap form of personal liability insurance.
- genwin 13y ago
  Beware, IANAL. Yes, incorporate. Then, if the business isn't worth much and it's just you, ignore any patent trolls. In the unlikely event any take you to court, don't show up or otherwise waste your money on the suit, and if they win then continue to ignore them. In the worst case you go out of business and start another business with the same technology.
  - kintamanimatt 13y ago
    Ignoring a properly filed lawsuit is pretty much the dumbest thing you can do. If they win by default (which is what happens if you ignore it) they can still successfully come after assets.
    - genwin 13y ago
      It's not the dumbest thing you can do when acting on it costs more. They cannot come after your personal assets in the case I described, and the business is not worth much. They are smart enough to not spend more money than they can seize in assets, so it's unlikely to happen.
Grovara123 13y ago
The reality is this is the Patent Law of our Country - if we did NOT have it - everyone here would be saying the exact opposite. It is 100% necessary - and though there might be casualties such as what is going on here - if we did not have Intellectual Property Rights - we would be at a disadvantage. My suggestion is anyone being sued connect with the individual suing them and work out terms - everything is negotiable. Why not cut the owners of the patents in on a % of revenues?
- impendia 13y ago
  > My suggestion is anyone being sued connect with the individual suing them and work out terms - everything is negotiable. You are condoning extortion. Perhaps, indeed, the individual should negotiate terms -- but for the same reason that if the Mafia showed up to your doorstep, packing heat, then it would be wise to take their demands seriously.
  - Grovara123 13y ago
    Extortion? No. Please. We have a legal process. It was created and it is constantly being developed and reformed. I am supporting our legal process which is not perfect but it is the best we have at the moment. Love it or not - it is the rules of the game. Someone came up with the idea before you and they registered that idea before you. Vague or not - they had the foresight - and they are indeed entitled to being proprietary. If you do not like it - challenge it. If you can not afford to challenge it - negotiate for 'fair-use'. If you think otherwise - you are an amateur.
    - gergles 13y ago
      > Love it or not - it is the rules of the game. Someone came up with the idea before you and they registered that idea before you. Vague or not - they had the foresight - and they are indeed entitled to being proprietary. No, they aren't. Upthread you claimed to be an attorney -- you should know better than to suggest that patents cover ideas. They don't. They cover implementations. Having an idea and going "ME FIRST" does nothing to get you protection. Software patents are patents on ideas. They are a perversion of the patent system and are a plague. Using them to try to get licensing deals is blatantly extortion, and patent trolls know this; setting their settlement costs just shy of what it would cost to mount a competent defense. There is nothing good about this and it isn't even consistent with the rules of 'the game' you love so much.
gavinpc 13y ago
I thought BART trip planning was a solved problem, anyway: http://worrydream.com/bartwidget/ http://worrydream.com/bartwidget/
- ebiester 13y ago
  If I understood correctly, this included the whole MUNI bus system.
ScottBurson 13y ago
A patent is a deal the public makes with an inventor: publish your invention and we'll grant you a time-limited monopoly on it. In order for this to be a good trade, the invention has to make a real intellectual contribution to the art. The problem we have is that no one is unambiguously empowered to ensure that it does so. The PTO does some of this, but has neither the bandwidth to do a good job nor a clear mandate to be hard-ass about it. And then once a patent is granted, the courts tend to defer to the PTO on its validity. I haven't read the patents in question here, but I nonetheless feel safe in saying that "technologies for tracking vehicles and providing users with electronic updates" cannot possibly make a contribution to the art significant enough to counterbalance the societal cost of the monopoly the patent holder has been granted. I'm sure there are thousands of engineers here on HN that could design and build such a system using well-known techniques. In some domains, the determination of how much of an intellectual contribution an invention makes is fairly straightforward. If a novel molecule is synthesized -- the chemical and pharmaceutical industries keep a record, I gather, of all molecules whose structures have been worked out, so it's possible to know when a new one appears -- and then proves useful for some medical purpose, it's pretty clear that a contribution has been made, and what that contribution consists of. In software, it's much harder. The field is massive and sprawling, and no one can keep up with all of it. That's why I'm convinced the only solution is to amend the patent laws to require objective evidence of nonobviousness -- objective evidence that the invention makes a real intellectual contribution -- in order for a patent holder to successfully sue for infringement. Such evidence could come, for example, in the form of publication in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceedings. Absent such evidence, the law should direct the court to invalidate the patent. An advantage of this approach is that it requires no special-case rule for software patents, which run into the difficulty of defining the term "software patent" precisely. Rather, in domains other than software, the required evidence is generally not hard to come by. So the rule is domain-independent in definition -- and defensible as such, I believe -- but would have by far the greatest impact in the software domain.
- Grovara123 13y ago
  Everything you have here is debatable... obviously. But interesting perspective.
kenster07 13y ago
The complexity of software patents has grown beyond the capacity of the patent system to properly evaluate them. As such, it this subsection of the patent system is susceptible to rampant abuse, and can no longer effectively serve the purpose for which it is originally intended. If this were an engineering problem, the solution would be obvious. Unfortunately, it is political, and therefore a well-dressed circus.
x0054 13y ago
How about a crowd sourcing website for patent invalidation. Make it proactive. You get sued or threatened. You go online and post the patent. Maybe other people in the same situation, including once who have yet to be sued, can pitch in. There is one thing that most patent trolls are terrified of, and it's a well researched and filed invalidation claim. My other suggestion, if you think you might get sued for a particular aspect of your app, try to isolate it as much as possible. For instance, if you have an app that makes money through ads. Form one company that makes the app and another that pays a nominal fee to display ads in that app. One Company makes the money, the other "infringes." Finally, get any lawyer, any one that will agree to represent you and file a declarative action in your jurisdiction to invalidate your claim. Just my 2 cents. Maybe some real patent lawyers can chime in.
- zuppy 13y ago
  Stack Overflow has a site for that: http://askpatents.com/ http://askpatents.com/ They had their first (major) success: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html
blackcat 13y ago
Does anyone have practical advice for convincing business people not to pursue software patents? Stating it will give you no real protection and is a waste of money is not enough, even when coming from the attorneys.
- Kliment 13y ago
  Here is a good resource: http://www.tinaja.com/patnt01.shtml http://www.tinaja.com/patnt01.shtml
gotosleep 13y ago
Intellectual property should be taxed. If a company is sitting on a patent waiting for someone to violate it so they can sue for $X amount, the company should be taxed for $X amount of property. It would make owning tons of patents and doing nothing with them practically infeasible.

81 points by coloneltcb 13y ago

In many ways the US patent system gives non-US software companies a leg up. It seems as though foreign software companies are rarely (if ever) sued by these "non-practicing entities". Patent trolls are the #1 reason why I have no intention of opening up shop in the US, at least until the software patent boogeyman goes away.

Grovara123 13y ago
You can be sued anywhere for anything - you are just saying 'words' without giving any facts. People are sued in many countries for intellectual property issues. USA is not alone. The #1 reason you have no intention of opening up shop in the US is probably something else - ie. you are not a US citizen or you wouldn't even know how to incorporate if you tried - come on.
- kintamanimatt 13y ago
  I'm very well aware of how to incorporate a company in multiple jurisdictions; it's not hard and rarely expensive. Being a US-citizen isn't necessarily a barrier to opening a company in the US either; there are are whole battery of appropriate visa categories for entrepreneurs. Indeed you can be sued anywhere for anything, but the matter of jurisdiction arises quite quickly in many cases. Also, American patent trolls don't seem to attempt to sue foreign companies that don't have a presence in the US.
  - Grovara123 13y ago
    Again - words - not facts. "American patent trolls don't seem..." where did you pull that out of... sounds pretty but you got nothing to back up that statement.
    - kintamanimatt 13y ago
      You're asking me to prove a negative. I can't find any instances of a US-based patent troll suing, say, a British or Irish or German software company that has no offices, etc in the US, and this is what I'm basing my non-absolute statements on. Anyway, you appear to be a troll of the internet variety, so I'll leave you in peace because you're in no way trying to debate, but antagonize.
      - Grovara123 13y ago
        I'm a troll because I disagree? Have you searched the US Court Databases? As an attorney - I have. Check out lexisnexis for case law. There are hundreds of cases of US owners of patents suing and litigating against international infringers... literally hundreds. Also, you are totally discrediting the monopolies that run the world and how they have prevented other companies from entering their markets via other aggressive methods or patent purchasing...
        victorf 13y ago
        Hundreds of cases vs. how many domestic? If domestic cases run even into the thousands you just proved the idea that it is less likely to be sued as a foreign company.
        kintamanimatt 13y ago
        Those monopolies you're talking of (IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, etc) are subject to US laws and courts because they are US corporations. Other large companies likely also have a presence in the US, which again subjects them to US laws and courts. Why don't you cite a handful of recent cases (<5 years) in which a British or German software company has been successfully sued in the US for infringing upon a US-registered software patent by a US patent troll? I'm not saying you're wrong, and of course just because I haven't found anything doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but the odds of being successfully sued by a patent troll as a foreign business are vastly less than being sued as a US company. Even if a patent troll were successful in securing judgment (perhaps by default), enforcing a judgment against a foreign company is vastly harder than a domestic one; patent trolls like easy wins. Nobody in Europe is complaining about US patent trolls suing them because to the best of my knowledge, it doesn't happen. If it does, it's so infrequent that it's a non-issue. I assume you're a troll because of your comment history. I mean, c'mon, you pretended to be able to read my mind and asserted that my lack of desire to open up an office or business in the US was not because of the risk and costs of a patent troll's attempt at a shake-down, but rather because I don't know how to form a company, or that I'm not a US citizen! If you're really a lawyer I doubt you'd be making such claims.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Patent trolls seldom go after foreign businesses, or do anything else that even remotely looks like actual work.
  - Grovara123 13y ago
    again - words... not facts... Buying and litigating patents is A LOT of work. I am not supporting them - but you can't discredit their work just because you don't believe in what they legally are entitled to do. I don't support big oil or old-school-energy monopolies - but that doesn't mean I discredit what they do.
    - ganeumann 13y ago
      Buying and litigating patents is A LOT of work. That's not an argument. Make-work is not valuable. you can't discredit their work just because you don't believe in what they legally are entitled to do Well, sure you can. Just because it's legal does not mean it's ethical. You're a lawyer, you should understand that.
jbjohns 13y ago
Careful, you don't want to give them an ideas!

zmmmmm 13y ago

Such a depressing situation. I shudder to think of such a letter arriving to my small (tiny) business. And yet I know it could happen any time. There's simply no way for me to avoid it - I can't possibly anticipate what bogus patent might be thrown at me, it may even be nothing to do with my business. It would probably be game over, shut down, years of hard work down the drain. And even then, I worry that they would sue for damages from past sales, so I may still be screwed. How do others deal with this risk? Just ignore it and hope for the best? Is it still statistically low enough chance that that is a reasonable thing to do? Incorporate and protect assets so if you are sued you can at least back out without personal financial devastation?

kintamanimatt 13y ago
You should be incorporating anyway. It's a very cheap form of personal liability insurance.
genwin 13y ago
Beware, IANAL. Yes, incorporate. Then, if the business isn't worth much and it's just you, ignore any patent trolls. In the unlikely event any take you to court, don't show up or otherwise waste your money on the suit, and if they win then continue to ignore them. In the worst case you go out of business and start another business with the same technology.
- kintamanimatt 13y ago
  Ignoring a properly filed lawsuit is pretty much the dumbest thing you can do. If they win by default (which is what happens if you ignore it) they can still successfully come after assets.
  - genwin 13y ago
    It's not the dumbest thing you can do when acting on it costs more. They cannot come after your personal assets in the case I described, and the business is not worth much. They are smart enough to not spend more money than they can seize in assets, so it's unlikely to happen.

Grovara123 13y ago

The reality is this is the Patent Law of our Country - if we did NOT have it - everyone here would be saying the exact opposite. It is 100% necessary - and though there might be casualties such as what is going on here - if we did not have Intellectual Property Rights - we would be at a disadvantage. My suggestion is anyone being sued connect with the individual suing them and work out terms - everything is negotiable. Why not cut the owners of the patents in on a % of revenues?

impendia 13y ago
> My suggestion is anyone being sued connect with the individual suing them and work out terms - everything is negotiable. You are condoning extortion. Perhaps, indeed, the individual should negotiate terms -- but for the same reason that if the Mafia showed up to your doorstep, packing heat, then it would be wise to take their demands seriously.
- Grovara123 13y ago
  Extortion? No. Please. We have a legal process. It was created and it is constantly being developed and reformed. I am supporting our legal process which is not perfect but it is the best we have at the moment. Love it or not - it is the rules of the game. Someone came up with the idea before you and they registered that idea before you. Vague or not - they had the foresight - and they are indeed entitled to being proprietary. If you do not like it - challenge it. If you can not afford to challenge it - negotiate for 'fair-use'. If you think otherwise - you are an amateur.
  - gergles 13y ago
    > Love it or not - it is the rules of the game. Someone came up with the idea before you and they registered that idea before you. Vague or not - they had the foresight - and they are indeed entitled to being proprietary. No, they aren't. Upthread you claimed to be an attorney -- you should know better than to suggest that patents cover ideas. They don't. They cover implementations. Having an idea and going "ME FIRST" does nothing to get you protection. Software patents are patents on ideas. They are a perversion of the patent system and are a plague. Using them to try to get licensing deals is blatantly extortion, and patent trolls know this; setting their settlement costs just shy of what it would cost to mount a competent defense. There is nothing good about this and it isn't even consistent with the rules of 'the game' you love so much.

gavinpc 13y ago

I thought BART trip planning was a solved problem, anyway: http://worrydream.com/bartwidget/ http://worrydream.com/bartwidget/

ebiester 13y ago
If I understood correctly, this included the whole MUNI bus system.

ScottBurson 13y ago

A patent is a deal the public makes with an inventor: publish your invention and we'll grant you a time-limited monopoly on it. In order for this to be a good trade, the invention has to make a real intellectual contribution to the art. The problem we have is that no one is unambiguously empowered to ensure that it does so. The PTO does some of this, but has neither the bandwidth to do a good job nor a clear mandate to be hard-ass about it. And then once a patent is granted, the courts tend to defer to the PTO on its validity. I haven't read the patents in question here, but I nonetheless feel safe in saying that "technologies for tracking vehicles and providing users with electronic updates" cannot possibly make a contribution to the art significant enough to counterbalance the societal cost of the monopoly the patent holder has been granted. I'm sure there are thousands of engineers here on HN that could design and build such a system using well-known techniques. In some domains, the determination of how much of an intellectual contribution an invention makes is fairly straightforward. If a novel molecule is synthesized -- the chemical and pharmaceutical industries keep a record, I gather, of all molecules whose structures have been worked out, so it's possible to know when a new one appears -- and then proves useful for some medical purpose, it's pretty clear that a contribution has been made, and what that contribution consists of. In software, it's much harder. The field is massive and sprawling, and no one can keep up with all of it. That's why I'm convinced the only solution is to amend the patent laws to require objective evidence of nonobviousness -- objective evidence that the invention makes a real intellectual contribution -- in order for a patent holder to successfully sue for infringement. Such evidence could come, for example, in the form of publication in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceedings. Absent such evidence, the law should direct the court to invalidate the patent. An advantage of this approach is that it requires no special-case rule for software patents, which run into the difficulty of defining the term "software patent" precisely. Rather, in domains other than software, the required evidence is generally not hard to come by. So the rule is domain-independent in definition -- and defensible as such, I believe -- but would have by far the greatest impact in the software domain.

Grovara123 13y ago
Everything you have here is debatable... obviously. But interesting perspective.

kenster07 13y ago

The complexity of software patents has grown beyond the capacity of the patent system to properly evaluate them. As such, it this subsection of the patent system is susceptible to rampant abuse, and can no longer effectively serve the purpose for which it is originally intended. If this were an engineering problem, the solution would be obvious. Unfortunately, it is political, and therefore a well-dressed circus.

x0054 13y ago

How about a crowd sourcing website for patent invalidation. Make it proactive. You get sued or threatened. You go online and post the patent. Maybe other people in the same situation, including once who have yet to be sued, can pitch in. There is one thing that most patent trolls are terrified of, and it's a well researched and filed invalidation claim. My other suggestion, if you think you might get sued for a particular aspect of your app, try to isolate it as much as possible. For instance, if you have an app that makes money through ads. Form one company that makes the app and another that pays a nominal fee to display ads in that app. One Company makes the money, the other "infringes." Finally, get any lawyer, any one that will agree to represent you and file a declarative action in your jurisdiction to invalidate your claim. Just my 2 cents. Maybe some real patent lawyers can chime in.

zuppy 13y ago
Stack Overflow has a site for that: http://askpatents.com/ http://askpatents.com/ They had their first (major) success: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html

blackcat 13y ago

Does anyone have practical advice for convincing business people not to pursue software patents? Stating it will give you no real protection and is a waste of money is not enough, even when coming from the attorneys.

Kliment 13y ago
Here is a good resource: http://www.tinaja.com/patnt01.shtml http://www.tinaja.com/patnt01.shtml

gotosleep 13y ago

Intellectual property should be taxed. If a company is sitting on a patent waiting for someone to violate it so they can sue for $X amount, the company should be taxed for $X amount of property. It would make owning tons of patents and doing nothing with them practically infeasible.