Kickstarter being sued for patent infringment.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/241160/kickstarter_faces_patent_suit_over_funding_idea.html

by Unregistered • 15 years ago

83 43 15 years ago

pcworld.com

lhnn• 15 years ago

What a damned foolish patent.

"Methods and apparatuses for financing and marketing a creative work"

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=MNgFAQAAEBAJ

Some hipster artist ("hipster" being an appropriate word here) sues a successful implementation of an offshoot of an idea he had 8 years ago, and then says,

"As an artist myself, I feel that KickStarter may be hurting artist by focusing on 'donating money' rather than celebrating the artist for what they do. Their model does not build fan relationships but just continually asks for handouts."

What a jerk. It's been said here before, but it's worth hitting again: "Ideas are a dime a dozen."

jonathanjaeger2• 15 years ago

Patent complaining aside, that quote is off too. The point of Kickstarter is not to ask for handouts, but to offer incentives/rewards/pre-orders based on the amount you donate. If you don't like what you get for what you pay or donate, then choose a different tier or don't give any money.

enjalot• 15 years ago

Or you want to see something happen but you only want to donate if everyone else does. They hack the tragedy of the commons, and it's been enough for me to support a couple projects.

iamdave3• 15 years ago

I'm sure this is going to be a very unpopular stance, because it's been unpopular almost every time I've asked it:

Why do artists assume that every instance of something that doesn't involve the typical exchange of work for money is somehow harming their industry? The most vocal of these people are those 'No-Spec' who thinks sites like 99designs are invariably killing everything they stand for. It reeks of that same mentality and resistance to new revenue models that's turning so many people off to the music and movie industries.

Passion for the rhyme can be cheapened by feedback, and I think that's exactly what's happening with these 'artists'. They're looking at what other people are doing, seeing that it doesn't line up with how they think the industry should work, and then pull these statements out of their arses that it's killing their livelihood.

ralphsaunders2• 15 years ago

Design and art aren't really viewed by most designers and artists as a commodity, which is what sites similar to 99 designs try to put accross.

99 designs and similar are at the very low end of the market and the argument is that it becomes harder for skilled designers/artists to find high-paying work as more companies opt for the cheap route. There are more reasons to hate it from a designer's/artist's point of view, but that's the core of it.

That said, kickstarter certainly doesn't fit in that category, if anything it brings more paying work to designers/artists.

nickpinkston4• 15 years ago

Hear hear! It's funny how some artists are so conservative about their own industry...

farlington• 15 years ago

I don't know if I can answer your question, but I could maybe clarify what I think are a few misconceptions.

The first misconception is that artists are generally opposed to new revenue models. Artists, designers, craftspeople have absolutely embraced new revenue models, and the number of artists, graphic designers, fashion designers, video artists, industrial designers, et al. using sites like kickstarter and etsy, or selling digital work like templates or themes, is staggering. And many of these don't involve the 'typical exchange of work for money,' but are on one level or another creatively or professionally fulfilling.

The second is about the 'no spec' argument. There are huge differences between new revenue models—they're not all equal, and they're not all fair. Design professionals find spec work exploitative because they're exchanging their services to a client without any guarantee of payment. Most people in most industries find this unfair. Programmers are no exception. Nobody likes to do a lot of work for someone else to only earn a chance of getting paid.

Working for spec is fundamentally different from working for free for yourself—to design and manufacture a product, for example.

And as a sidenote, while few designers are comfortable with the proliferation of spec-driven websites, most designers I know don't feel particularly threatened by them anymore. At their best, they provide an outlet for students, unemployed, and self-taught designers to build their portfolios. But the work that comes out of them isn't generally great, and the clients that use them are generally the kind of clients nobody wants: fussy, demanding, unimaginative and cheap. Clients who probably wouldn't be paying for design services otherwise. It still costs money to get good work. That's what it's really about: protecting the value of the work you do professionally.

ScottBurson• 15 years ago

if you file a patent, and someone else invents the same thing before the patent is issued, seems to me that should be prima facie evidence that the idea was obvious -- since at least in the U. S., patent applications are not published.

Utopian dreaming aside, I've studied the patent a little, and it looks like Kickstarter has a problem.

mcantelon• 15 years ago

Given that the legal system's unlikely to change, as long as IP lobbyists pay off politicians, I'd like to see Anonymous take on the project of compiling the personal details of these parasites.

sixtofour3• 15 years ago

Personal details lead to personal relationships, which then can lead to innocents being hurt. Not cool.

dynamichype3• 15 years ago

Innocents will only be hurt during the transitional period before they learn that they should avoid relationships with patent trolls for the same collateral risk reasons they avoid befriending gang members, child-molesters, and other anti-socials.

fredBuddemeyer• 15 years ago

hmmm how bout we patent the act of patent trolling and then sue the trolls for infringement.

astrodust• 15 years ago

Sorry, you now owe IBM a patent royalty because they have already patented this: http://www.conceivablytech.com/4823/business/the-ultimate-pa...

meow• 15 years ago

But can the people building projects on kickstarter even be called artists ? They got to be called engineers or entrepreneurs... An awesome site and resource for funding being roughed up for protection money.

rkalla3• 15 years ago

I am going to take an unpopular stance here... I think.

When patents are enforced by big legal entities, we all scream foul, "Patents are meant to protect the little guy, not make lawyers rich!"

Now we have a musician (a "little guy") suing a much loved successful startup... and we are still screaming, but instead of "Stop the lawyers!" we are yelling "Stop the hipster artists!" (at least lhnn was).

If this musician was suing Real Player or Rhapsody or some entity we didn't all love, I wonder how different the response (here in the comments) would have been?

  if(!entity.isUnderdog())
    complain();
  else
    support();

I may be missing a case in there... :)

phillmv2• 15 years ago

I think you may have misunderstood the average complaint.

The complaint isn't about little guy vs big companies, it's about bullshit patents. A big company using a bullshit patent to squeeze out a little guy is just the most egregious example of bullshit.

In this case, it's less so that it's a "hipster artist", but it's more that he's a "douchebag artist" with a bullshit patent. Bullshit patents cost all of us money by distracting people from doing awesome stuff.

rkalla3• 15 years ago

  > In this case, it's less so that it's a "hipster artist", 
  but it's more that he's a "douchebag artist" with a 
  bullshit patent. Bullshit patents cost all of us money by 
  distracting people from doing awesome stuff.

All you did was validate my point (as annoyed is that is going to make you)... this sentence is dripping with preconceptions about both the person trying to assert their patent and the patent itself, neither of which I assume you are intimately familiar with.

If I took the identical scenario and replaced "douchebag artist" with Sergey Brin or Steve Jobs and left all other facts the same (the same patent, the same timeline, the same lawsuit) this discussion looks A LOT different.

Now you have people asserting the patent validity and how it overlaps with X and infringes on Y, but with some easily dismissable artist at the helm, most people have the same response you do -- shove him into a socially defined box and throw it all out the window as bullshit antics of some random douchebag wearing a hemp necklace.

All of these discussions are bullshit - they produce nothing except strife and accomplish nothing.

Symmetry• 15 years ago

Wait, you're accusing Hacker News of only caring about bad patents when the victim is an underdog, but you're using as your example a case where the person doing the suing is in fact much smaller than the entity being sued?

If you're going to accuse people being driven by unconsidered emotions, perhaps you could come up with an example that suits your case?

rkalla3• 15 years ago

Underdog was probably the wrong choice for the code snippet, surely you understood my point was popular-vs-unpopular.

forgottenpaswrd• 15 years ago

"When patents are enforced by big legal entities, we ALL scream foul, "Patents are meant to protect the little guy, not make lawyers rich!""

Please, don't use "ALL" because that is not true, I don't cream this, so your statement is a fallacy easily to demonstrate. It is only you who has problems with big entities by default.

Patents are about successful implementation of inventions. Business patents should never be granted in a free market economy because it destroys it and create a "privilege and monopoly buying" society." in witch people in power could buy privileges witch gives them power and the possibility to buy more privileges.

The moment you need to ask permission to the state to operate in your business you are not in a free market anymore, you are in a centralized economy in witch everything is decided by the people in top.

US of America is becoming a totalitarian state, step by step.

rickmb• 15 years ago

I sincerely hope you enjoy playing with your straw man.

P.s.: Most patent trolls are "little guys", and they are usually suing where the money is.

drzaiusapelord• 15 years ago

>"Patents are meant to protect the little guy, not make lawyers rich!"

No. I'm against patents because ideas shouldn't be owned, especially obvious ideas. Patents have never, ever served the little guy. That's pro-IP propaganda and at best a 17th century idea that never panned out.

spolsky• 15 years ago

Kickstarter is lucky that the America Invents Act that Congress just rammed through includes a porkbarrel clause that Sen. Chuck Schumer stuck in for the banks, making it much much easier to challenge business method patents in the finance industry. (Source: http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=b967fda5...) "For purposes of this section, the term ‘‘covered business method patent’’ means a patent that claims a method or corresponding apparatus for performing data processing or other operations used in the practice, administration, or management of a financial product or service"

nickpinkston4• 15 years ago

This should remind everyone to pressure the White House to respond to the very successful: "Petition to End Software Patents".

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/#!/petition/direct-pat...

dangrossman2• 15 years ago

Not very applicable since this isn't a software patent.

nickpinkston4• 15 years ago

Not sure technically, but software patents are a subset of methods patents (which I'm guessing this is), but at least very similar to the point where I think it's very applicable to this. The discussion needs to keep going - that petition was a great success, but I'm doubtful that the administration dares to talk about it in anything other than platitudes.

jschuur• 15 years ago

'a former musician'. That tells you pretty much all you need to know about this guy and his motives.

mahcode• 15 years ago

When will the USPTO put a stop on such BS patents, seriously! One day we will run out of colors, layouts and "business models" to patent... and then what?

Patents are meant to encourage entrepreneurship... not fund court rooms and judges' salaries.

nickolai• 15 years ago

>One day we will run out of colors, layouts and "business models" to patent... and then what?

Then a countdown to the expiration of the last patent will start.

And then we will enter an era of freedom of innovation. You will be free to take any design you like and improve on it without fear of being sued into oblivion if your design sees any kind of success.

Kickstarter being sued for patent infringment.

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