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It seems to me that the legal system in the US is largely broken, and that just about anyone can be sued if only you find the right grounds. Being sued and defe

• jamra 12y ago
  The law firms that back up patent trolls are very large and very powerful. The largest and most powerful in the nation.
  • mixmax 12y ago
    This is why extortion works - if your enemy is more powerful than you chances are you will subdue. The mafia figured this out centuries ago. If you don't stand up to a bully, even if he is Goliath, he will keep on bullying.
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• cag_ii 12y ago
  > Being sued and defending yourself is enormously expensive... I think you answered your own question there.
  • mixmax 12y ago
    That's where the crowdsourcing comes in :-) I'm sure there are young lawyers that would like to give some of these cases a try. Surely there must be someone with a conscience in that line of business. I could also imagine that companies and individuals might want to donate.
    • the_watcher 12y ago
      Adam Carolla is spearheading a group of the top podcasts in the world doing exactly this. I've donated, I know Carolla can rub people the wrong way, but he's the guy you want running something like this, since he'll spend a ton of his own money to prove his point. http://fundanything.com/patenttroll?locale=en http://fundanything.com/patenttroll?locale=en
      • icpmacdo 12y ago
        Carolla's opines are based in logic I have always found. I can not donate to his cause because I find it impossible to justify another countries broken legal system has to accept bribes to stop from destroying innovation.
        • the_watcher 12y ago
          What's your solution then? Complaining gets nothing done in the US unless it's backed with money.
• bsder 12y ago
  And the troll companies are always shell companies with nothing but the patents. So, even if you win, the shell company will declare bankruptcy. This is what changed the game. Before, two big companies generally had enough patents that they would simply agree to cross license because they both infringed one another's patents. So, for the company being sued, it's a no win situation.
  • hyp0 12y ago
    I think the idea is to increase the marginal cost of doing business, so it isn't economic any more. That is, assuming it takes enough some time and effort to declare bankruptcy, set up a new corporation etc. But you're right, it wouldn't be a win for a specific defendant, it's more a long-term strategy to change the ecosystem by the community - crowdsourced, as the GP suggests. Another option is a consortium of well-heeled companies to methodically troll trolls. Unfortunately, funding trolling of competitors is probably something some hidden department of those very companies do, while other departments sincerely complain about it.
    • sounds 12y ago
      Excluding billed time for the process, it is amazingly easy to set up a corporation and transfer patents to it. Fixed costs for creating a shell corp are around ~$100. Newegg's approach (Never settle. If you sue us expect to pay our legal fees.) is maybe the best way to eliminate the economic incentives, given the uncertainty of the US legal system. There's a comment downthread by jacquesm detailing one way he exploited shell companies _against_ the trolls and they backed off...
  • mixmax 12y ago
    be a bit more creative. It's known who the parent company is, so sue them. Since you're basically just suing for whatever you can get away with you should of course go for the mother ship.
    • glesica 12y ago
      But there isn't always (or even usually) a "mothership" from what we've seen lately. Look at the Prenda Law saga (Ars Technica has some great write-ups). They can't even figure out who officially owns the company, it is almost entirely opaque. I think the problem is that corporate personhood has run completely amok. It is far too easy to invent a new corporate person with little or no visible or even provable connection to any natural person.
• dalek2point3 12y ago
  kind of like the mayone.us of patent trolls. brilliant idea.
• jon2512chua 12y ago
  Some may refuse to do this as a matter of principle - not sinking to the level of those you despise.
• gamerDude 12y ago
  If you could put plenty of arguments and the right team together, perhaps you could raise money from a host of technology companies to pursue this. If you can grind them to a halt or even perhaps drive them to bankruptcy and potentially buy up their patents to open to the public, this could be fundable.
• arxpoetica 12y ago
  Before I even got to the end of your post, my mind was already thinking about crowdsourcing the system. THIS. NEEDS. TO. HAPPEN.
  • arxpoetica 12y ago
    Why was this downvoted? It's a completely positive comment. Are patent trolls downvoting on ynews? :)
• gcb0 12y ago
  yep. it is broken. even in this win, they wasted time and money, that a bankrupt shell company cant pay back. meanwhile, amazon paid a small settlement fee (which makes the troll case even better) and wasted those same resources hiring engineers to build a tablet or whatever.
• ksec 12y ago
  Well from people outside of US, it is not only the legal system. It seems to me US itself is largely broken.
• shawnreilly 12y ago
  At the last Startup Weekend Honolulu 2014, I introduced my approach towards solving this problem; The Open Patent Foundation (Non-Profit). Similar to concepts such as Creative Commons, and Open Source Software Licenses, the idea is to create Open Patent License(s) that standardize a method to share intellectual property with the Community. While this does not directly solve the problem, I think it is a necessary first step towards realizing that we (as a Community) can leverage the existing broken Patent System in a way that favors us (the Community). Not only does this have the potential to accelerate innovation, it will also prevent Patent Trolls from claiming ownership of innovations, and that's a big deal. These Trolls currently use a Licensing approach to extort people (pay our Licensing Fee or else we will sue). I think it would be ironic (and awesome) to use the same approach to effectively null Patent Trolls. Considering how ineffective Legal Reform is, this might be our best bet; To come together collectively as a Community and decide that we want to take a stand and start using the System in a new and different way. It would be a double win, accelerate innovation and null Patent Trolling. If this sounds interesting, the website is http://www.openpatentfoundation.com http://www.openpatentfoundation.com and I recently moved to Mountain View, so I'm looking to spend more time on this and see if we can get some Community Support.
  • gioele 12y ago
    How is that different from OIN [1]? [1] http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ «The Open Invention Network is a shared defensive patent pool with the mission to protect Linux. Launched in 2005, OIN has strong industry support with backing from Google, IBM, NEC, Philips, Red Hat, Sony and SUSE (a business unit of Novell). Any company, project or developer that is working on Linux, GNU, Android or any other Linux-related software is welcome to join OIN, free of charge or royalties.»
    • shawnreilly 12y ago
      The underlying concepts and the approach are very similar. The idea of a non-assertion pledge (or defensive patent pool) is a refreshing example of forward thinking Businesses and Organizations that recognize the adverse effects that Patent Trolling has on innovation. Google is a great example [1]. The Open Patent Foundation takes this concept, and applies it with a different approach. Instead of choosing a specific focus or scope, we want to allow the Community (as a whole) to drive the creation of Open Patent License(s). The end result would be a set of Licenses that any Person or Organization could use and apply towards any Intellectual Property or Patents they may own. So some of them may end up being specific to Software. others may end up being specific to Utility Patents. And yet others might end up being non-specific in terms of application, but specific to a Time Period, or perhaps Distribution Guidelines. It would be up to the Community to decide what we want to use, and that is what (IMO) makes the entire concept so powerful. It is not implied to be a better approach, just a new one. In the end, all of these types of movements are positive. The end goal is to accelerate innovation and stop Patent Trolling. http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/ http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/
• pizza234 12y ago
  The biggest factor in the problem is the US administration complicity, plain and simple. It's not a technical problem, it's a social one; the are simple ways to largely reduce the problem, which are not applied, because it would hurt corporate interests.
• happy_slappy 12y ago
  Why not name and shame all of the scum bags that are involved with these patent trolls? Post up the lawyer names, the company owner names etc. Harass them, DDOS their websites, hack their email, ruin their online presence, attack their family, etc. Make it a job that is incompatible with a normal place in society
• taude 12y ago
  It's weird that 40-45% of Congress is attorneys.
  • gorner 12y ago
    Well, their (nominal) job _is_ to make laws. Members of Congress should be able to read and understand them before voting on them. But a more representative sample of occupations would be great too.
  • randallsquared 12y ago
    On the face of it, it doesn't seem any more odd than that judges are usually attorneys. Also, you'd expect people who are more involved with arguing the law to gravitate toward trying to get the job that involves creating or amending the law.
  • protomyth 12y ago
    Some of that is what's become a standard career path for A.G.'s and prosecutors.
  • ngoede 12y ago
    I understand where you are coming from but it does seem straightforward that people who study the law would end up in careers where they write the law.
  • afarrell 12y ago
    Its equally weird that a large chunk of people employed to write software went to college and majored in things that require understanding and writing software.
  • mikeash 12y ago
    It's no weirder than a large percentage of programmers holding degrees in computer science or computer engineering.
  • rayiner 12y ago
    It's about 26%: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/first-thing-we-do-lets-elect-all-the-lawyers http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/first-thing-we-.... Banking and business is catching up, though, at about 20%.
• afternooner 12y ago
  The system is working perfectly, if you subscribe to the belief that you can own an idea. If an idea can be property, and you can control how your property is used and distributed just like any other property you own. I can not make a product, but simply licence it's use. A middle man is after all the bulk of capitalism. The patent trolls are a solid business model, and the system isn't broken. Again, this is only if you subscribe to the notion that an idea can be owned. I don't think you can own an idea, actually I know you can't. But we create an artificial and abstract environment in order to put real world constraints on things that simply cannot be contained. It's why we get all these stupid laws, and why they don't work. They are trying to do the impossible. A corporation is not a person, an idea is not property. But it will take a revolution to change that, and I'm too lazy to start it.
  • dreamdu5t 12y ago
    The cognitive dissonance is somewhat disturbing to witness. People decry patent trolls while simultaneously supporting patents. Everyone agrees that excluding others from building a fire because you "own" the process of building a fire would be ridiculous - yet will turn around and apply that same logic to defend patents and copyright.