Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public

https://blog.cloudflare.com/patent-troll-sable-pays-up/

by jgrahamc • 2 years ago

1524 416 2 years ago

blog.cloudflare.com

runamuck• 2 years ago

I consider this a victory for creativity, freedom and technological progress. Let the entrepreneurs innovate and execute without fear of legal suffocation!

ta988• 2 years ago

It is really sad to see kost companies refused to fight. Congrats on that one Cloudflare, may that serve as an example to destroy those grifters.

yashap2• 2 years ago

You can see why, though. Even in this case where they thoroughly won, and got damages, the damages were just $225K, and they probably spent millions on legal fees, employee/founder time, etc.

Ultimately, the American legal system is pretty broken. If someone brings a frivolous lawsuit against you, and you defend yourself in court, nearly 100% of the time you’ll be losing money, often a lot of money. This is the core reason why patent trolls exist, why companies normally settle out of court - it’s cheaper to do so.

jgrahamc2• 2 years ago

But if we'd given in to one of these trolls, others would have targetted us.

whatshisface2• 2 years ago

A few states have passed laws to ban abusers from the legal system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation#United_St...

AlbertCory14• 2 years ago

At Google I did a piece of research, along with a statistician, of whether it's better to settle or fight.

"Better" would mean you don't get sued as much in the future, because you're a hard target and not easy money.

They haven't released this study, AFAIK.

singlow• 2 years ago

I couldn't tell from the article but it seems the $225k was a settlement, and the release of all patents was additionally part of the settlement - I doubt the court could have awarded that directly. So they took $225k + the release of the patents, and I assume that the trolls would only have agreed to that if they felt the court awarded cash value would have been significantly higher.

aduffy• 2 years ago

These patent trolls are greedy, extractive, and contribute nothing to society while wasting vast public and private legal resources.

Fuck. Them. Excellent work to the entire litigation team at Cloudflare.

schlipity• 2 years ago

Are these patent trolls doing anything that normal companies with patents that try to monetize them don't do?

s1artibartfast• 2 years ago

No, but the argument would be that normal companies are doing something that patent trolls are: selling a product besides patents

lfmunoz4• 2 years ago

You would hope companies have patents based on something actually innovative. For software this is never the case. I think all software patents are bs.

harrison_clarke3• 2 years ago

it's what they don't do. a troll doesn't play any role in developing the tech they hold patents for, they just extract rent when someone stumbles into a similar solution

if a company doesn't develop products, but they actively license their patents to those that do, that's still patents working as intended, and not trolling. they're still helping to get the tech developed, rather than stifling it

(i think there are a lot of problems with software patents even when used as intended by real companies. mainly, they last too long)

ajkjk• 2 years ago

yes

hansvm2• 2 years ago

The two normal arguments are:

1. Patent trolls don't actually produce anything. They just extract rent from other companies.

2. The patents they choose tend to be extremely bad -- overly broad, should never have been granted, had prior art, the tech never existed, .... They use the fact that they're able to sue cheaply to bully people into settling on bogus claims.

Point (1) doesn't seem bad to me. It's kind of like how truck driving is separate from truck insurance. Having specialists capable of monetizing patents allows, in theory, inventors to invent and immediately sell for estimated lifetime patent value, minus a discount associated with the troll's costs and desired profits. Without trolls, in theory, you'd have fewer inventors because they'd also need to be/hire experts in marketing, litigation, ....

Point (2) is the one that bothers me the most, and my impression is that it's a very common problem.

Oh, and to your question, most companies use patents for mutually assured destruction and as a form of signalling that important people should want to work there, not to directly monetize. Monetizing patents is less common.

hadlock• 2 years ago

Are these patent trolls doing anything that normal companies with patents that try to monetize them don't do?

The important distinction here, in my opinion, is that investors bought a dead company along with it's IP for the explicit purpose of suing companies as that was their profit motive.

Had there been an existing company that was actively building/selling routers, then yes they would have been using the patents as intended - to protect their business. In this case the company who owns the patents, was using them in a weaponized fashion.

pfisherman4• 2 years ago

Heard an interesting counterpoint to this from a patent attorney. In the IP ecosystem patent trolls serve as a sort of check on the big companies - the apex predators - to stop them from willfully infringing on your patents and then bankrupting you in litigation.

While you as a startup may not have the resources to go after them in court; your IP assets in the hands of a competent and aggressive patent troll could be a very big problem for Big Co.

So in that sense they are also kind of like a parasite that infects the apex predators who eat tainted meat.

stefan_• 2 years ago

Nice idea, except no one you mentioned spends their time doing patents. It's just big companies who are told by consultants to beef up their patent portfolio, and when they fail like Caspian, the remains are snatched up by bottom feeders who go around harassing others, preferably of course startups and others with no real resources.

noodle2• 2 years ago

Don't think I've ever worked for a startup that had any patents whatsoever. I think I consulted with one IIRC, and they folded largely due to their hyperfocus on tech to the detriment of building something people actually wanted to pay for. Filing a patent was probably a symptom of that problem.

Its more like smaller public companies trying to keep bigger public companies in check.

nfriedly3• 2 years ago

That kind of reminds me of people that short stock. Nearly everyone hates them, but they do provide a check on companies that are doing something bad.

remram2• 2 years ago

How would that work? How do I get a patent troll to protect my patent, when a big company starts infringing it?

Sayrus• 2 years ago

Aren't patent trolls called trolls because they litigate on broad patents, for which prior art exists in many case? If so, they can't protect a startup in any way unless you create broad and invalid patents.

Your IP assets can be used to litigate by companies that aren't patent trolls.

ninepoints• 2 years ago

from a patent attorney

This isn't an interesting counterpoint. This is the de facto narrative regarding patent lawyers and patent trolls masquerading as firms that act as though they somehow contribute.

stickfigure• 2 years ago

I really wish this settlement included disclosing what the other trolled parties ("including Cisco, Fortinet, Check Point, SonicWall, and Juniper Networks") paid.

rnd0• 2 years ago

What does "to the public" mean in this instance? Are they going to an open source patent pool or something?

jgrahamc2• 2 years ago

From TFA: "Sable has agreed to dedicate its entire patent portfolio to the public. This means that Sable will tell the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that it gives up all of its legal rights to its patent portfolio. Sable can never again use these patents to sue for infringement; they can never again use these patents to try to make a quick buck."

petee• 2 years ago

I'm confused that CF says they also were granted royalty free rights to the patents...how can they cloudflare have specific rights yet all the patents are public?

pwg3• 2 years ago

Are they going to an open source patent pool or something?

All patents are "open for public access" [1]. And once they age past their "expiration date" (currently twenty years from earliest date of filing) they become "public property".

What Sable is doing is giving up the ability to restrict others based on the patents content's before those patents would normally have expired anyway. So in effect they are having the patents "expire early" -- which makes the contents of each become "public property".

[1] https://www.uspto.gov/patents/search

textlapse• 2 years ago

This is great. I do worry that a future more sinister malicious patent troll could read all the wonderful strategy Cloudflare used and work around them. Hopefully Cloudflare legal team got stronger!

Kudos to the likes of Cloudflare and (yesteryears’) Newegg that fought these trolls.

I shudder at the thought of how many of the existing legacy industries outside the computer space are still riddled with these patent portfolio companies :(

ikekkdcjkfke• 2 years ago

Hopefully the powers that be will look at it from a national security perspective, in that other countries do not respect US copyright law and may be pulling ahead

AlbertCory14• 2 years ago

copyrights are different from patents.

12_throw_away• 2 years ago

I do worry that a future more sinister malicious patent troll could read all the wonderful strategy

The "good" news is that patent trolling is, more or less by definition, a get-rich-quick scheme - they want to make a lot of money by sending a few dozen letters every year. It does not attract people who are interested in anything approaching due diligence.

But also, the whole point of all of this is to get the trolls to leave Cloudflare alone, right? This is a very deliberate strategy; this announcement says "don't try that stuff here ... but feel free to try Cisco or Juniper instead."

scotty793• 2 years ago

I was wondering if Cisco or Juniper payed them anything to back off or just threaten them the same thing that Cloudflare actually did to them.

The fact that they thought they had a winnable case again Cloudflare makes me think that others actually paid up ... or that the troll was just getting desperate to finally earn anything.

Eddy_Viscosity2• 2 years ago

I don't agree its always a get-rich-quick scheme, it can also be seen as a passive income stream. Its just another example of parasitic rent-seeking on which our economy is based.

Sakos• 2 years ago

I don't see how it's a get rich quick scheme when looking at companies like Immersion, who've been shaking down companies successfully for years.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/meta-settles-lawsuit-over-...

They basically have a stranglehold on patents for haptic feedback in gaming for some unfathomable reason and they will have it for the foreseeable future.

andrewjl3• 2 years ago

How would they get around crowd sourced prior art?

dawidpotocki• 2 years ago

Supply prior art to Cloudflare themselves and win money from Project Jengo.

Xeoncross2• 2 years ago

So Cisco, Fortinet, Check Point, SonicWall, and Juniper Networks paid millions to Sable. Sable paid $225k to Cloudflare, and won't use them again against anyone.

Sounds like they don't need to. Well played Sable. Enjoy your money.

I really wish we could publicly shame the people behind these abuses or provide some other incentive to correct bad behavior other than speeding-ticket sized fines.

In other news, as an investor, this tells me Cloudflare is technologically ahead of the other older companies who apparently were not sure they could defend against the claims.

ivanbakel• 2 years ago

In other news, as an investor, this tells me Cloudflare is technologically ahead of the other older companies who apparently were not sure they could defend against the claims.

That feels like a highly specious takeaway from this court case. Companies settle against trolls because litigation isn't free to fight. It can make very good financial sense (and even be encouraged by investors who don't want to see a company in the courts for years, as Cloudflare was.)

I would be highly interested to see the breakdown of what it cost in manhours, fees, prizes to Project Jengo, etc. versus the payout from Sable to fight this particular case for Cloudflare, and whether they even came close to breaking even just on this case alone. Likely their decision somewhat hinged on an estimate of what it might cost to settle all other patent disputes in the future, and the belief that fighting this case is actually saving them much more money down the line (but how much?).

swiftcoder• 2 years ago

On the flip side, there's some napkin math to be done about the costs saved by any future patent trolls who are averted by going all scorched earth this time around...

cryptonym2• 2 years ago

While fighting trolls is morally the good thing to do, there is also an image/marketing benefit,. That can help balance risks.

AlbertCory14• 2 years ago

I really wish we could publicly shame the people behind these abuses or provide some other incentive to correct bad behavior other than speeding-ticket sized fines.

They are beyond shame, believe me. There have already been TV news segments about how their "place of business" in West Texas is just a PO Box.

pavel_lishin• 2 years ago

I really wish we could publicly shame the people behind these abuses or provide some other incentive to correct bad behavior other than speeding-ticket sized fines.

Right? This seems like out-and-out fraud to me.

Sohcahtoa822• 2 years ago

Sable probably spent a lot of money on fighting Cloudflare. It seems to me like they nearly bankrupted themselves doing it, and $225K was all they had left to pay Cloudflare's legal fees.

epolanski6• 2 years ago

The money from other settlements likely ended up in shareholders pockets, not into sable's reserves.

Thus, a company like that is likely limited to have just budget for legal and little less.

This is also done in order so if they lose a trial and have to pay damages they can't.

Xeoncross2• 2 years ago

That's my point: It's a net win for the actual people behind Sable.

throw161803393• 2 years ago

In other news, as an investor, this tells me Cloudflare is technologically ahead of the other older companies who apparently were not sure they could defend against the claims.

This is the wrong takeaway. Litigation is expensive and uncertain, especially in the Western District of Texas. It's a troll friendly district with a troll friendly judge. These other companies paid up because it's a rational choice to do so. Cloudflare chose to fight, but it probably would have been cheaper to settle.

ric2b3• 2 years ago

But isn't the burden of proof, and thus most of the litigation costs, on the patent troll?

The court can't just assume that you're violating their patent because they say so, they have to prove it to a reasonable level, right?

AlbertCory14• 2 years ago

Cloudflare's redeemed themselves, bigtime.

A lot of patent trolls have no assets, and don't own anything except the patents they're currently milking. Then they go out of business, and there's nothing to sue. Sable apparently made the mistake of building up a portfolio and living on.

Proving invalidity to a jury is hard. The burden on the defendant is high: Cloudflare needed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that claim 25 is invalid. And, proving it by describing how the claim is obvious in light of the prior art is complicated.

You're not kidding.

Sable’s damages expert, Stephen Dell, told the jury that Sable was owed somewhere between $25 million and $94.2 million in damages.

"damages experts" == nice work if you can get it. The damage expert in the Apple v. Samsung trial that I went to was paid $2 million. "How much are you getting paid?" is always one of the first things they get asked on cross-examination.

Sable has agreed to dedicate its entire patent portfolio to the public. This means that Sable will tell the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that it gives up all of its legal rights to its patent portfolio

Left unsaid is whether this includes anything other than the patents that they already lost on.

Anyhow: great work, Cloudflare.

vladde• 2 years ago

Could someone explain to me why it was decided that Sable will release the patents to the public?

ISL3• 2 years ago

With the verdict in-hand, Sable was probably voluntold by Cloudflare.

If Cloudflare thought they had a shot at recovering costs, $225k and a patent-portfolio could be substantially less than whatever Cloudflare (or their insurance) had paid in defense-costs.

lccerina2• 2 years ago

They had those patents only to sue other companies and get money, now some of those patents were invalidated by prior art and to Sable are essentially toilet paper. The action is unlikely to be goodwill, more likely admitting defeat and closing the patent troll company.

usrusr2• 2 years ago

Could a part of the motivation perhaps be quick, clean liquidation, before any of the companies who settled before cloudflare chose resistance might try to claw back some of the settlement?

pclmulqdq5• 2 years ago

As I read this, all but one of Sable's patent claims got invalidated in an IPR (a patent proceeding), and the last one got invalidated by a jury at trial. When your patents have no claims left, you aren't doing anything by releasing the patents to the public. It's been defanged anyway.

psunavy03• 2 years ago

So they can't use them to sue anyone else ever again. Basically they're hosed.

thrtythreeforty• 2 years ago

Cloudflare has negotiating power. They would prefer to give up some of the legal cost recoup in exchange for the public crucifixion of the trolling firm. It's intentionally painting a very scary picture of what happens when you sue Cloudflare, as a deterrent.

pclmulqdq5• 2 years ago

This has nothing to do with that. It's an optics win for cloudflare, but those patents are now worthless enough that Sable doesn't need them any more.

epolanski6• 2 years ago

Deterrence.

Cloud flare wanted to send a message to other potential patent trolls that they would not go for money damage but into invalidating their patents too.

ISL3• 2 years ago

Has Cloudflare stated anywhere how much their defense cost them (or their insurance)?

epolanski6• 2 years ago

Why would they do so?

So next time another law firm knows how much to ask and raise?

ISL3• 2 years ago

To point out to the public how much this sort of defense costs.

NikolaNovak• 2 years ago

I've read the article but I'm not sure I understand :

1. Why / how did sable give up its patent portfolio? It's handwaved as "lots of post trial stuff" but what's the nutshell of it? Is it because they're marked invalid? Is it punitive ruling? Something else?

2. There were 4 patents brought up against cloud flare, but sable gave up "its entire portfolio". Does that mean these 4 were their entire portfolio? Or did they have to give up patents outside of suit itself? If so, how and why? Did sable hang up the hat as a business?

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

Sable's patents are from a company that stopped operations in 2006, so most patents are probably from well before then, and likely either expired or will very soon.

sbarre• 2 years ago

Could it be that the Cloudflare victory would basically give anyone in the future a very strong case to fight Sable with?

And so this portfolio of patents has lost most of its value because of that?

Maybe Cloudflare agreed to reduced damages in exchange for this?

I agree it's unclear.

sowbug• 2 years ago

Take a look at the legal doctrine of collateral estoppel. Once a party gets its day in court on a specific issue of fact, it can't keep relitigating that issue in later legal actions. It's possible that Cloudflare was the first to take Sable's claims all the way to a verdict (versus settling early), so Sable might have finally gotten its day in court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_estoppel

Lukas_Skywalker• 2 years ago

There's a picture of the "Dedication to the Public and Royalty Free License Agreement between Sable and Cloudflare" at the end of the article. [1]

Not a lawyer, but it seems to be part of the court ruling. Maybe CF didn't see a chance to get their costs back and made a deal so Sable needed to only pay a part, but also release the patents?

[1] https://cf-assets.www.cloudflare.com/slt3lc6tev37/4rpPZkNJBZ...

bityard2• 2 years ago

Reading between the lines, my uneducated guess is that Sable knew they were going out of business either way and had to chose between paying ALL of Cloudflare's legal fees (possibly in the millions) or paying a token amount and giving up their (now or soon-to-be worthless) patents. The latter results in fewer financial loses for Sable and makes for excellent Cloudflare PR.

Edit: Also, it's entirely likely that Sable still made a tidy profit overall when it settled with the other big networking companies and decided to quit while they were ahead.

LtdJorge• 2 years ago

That's what I thought, too

phire• 2 years ago

More importantly, this deal allows them to avoid bankruptcy proceedings.

In the worst case, a bankruptcy could end up clawing back any "tidy profits" that were previously paid out to company owners.

dave78• 2 years ago

Did Sable give up ALL its patents, or only the patents involved in the Cloudflare case? The picture of the document refers to the "Sable Patents", which I would suspect are defined in the context of the court case and therefore are only the ones relevant to that case?

lobsterthief• 2 years ago

I read it as “giving up the patents in the portfolio that they acquired from that other company in 2006”.

Still not very clear to me either. Probably intentional, since CF seems to want to send the message that “mess with us and in the end you’ll give up all your patents somehow”

glenstein• 2 years ago

1. Why / how did sable give up its patent portfolio? It's handwaved as "lots of post trial stuff" but what's the nutshell of it? Is it because they're marked invalid? Is it punitive ruling? Something else?

Great Q and I don't know the answer. My best guess from the article is that Sable effectively agreed to settle rather than continue with post-trial legal procedures (whatever those are) that would have been necessary:

A jury verdict is not the end of the road in a patent case ... there are post-trial motions, appeals, and other procedural hurdles to jump through before a case is truly over. Tired from the fight, and smarting from its loss, Sable decided it wanted to throw in the towel and end the fight once and for all.

HelloNurse• 2 years ago

Are there useful patents (i.e. worth using) in the Sable portfolio, or is it all trivial bullshit and obsolete hardware?

ajsnigrutin• 2 years ago

Patents should have a triviality clause in them, so if you can prove that they're trivial to create and implement and be thus invalid if they are.

On one hand, you have patents where someone needed to do thousands of experiments, often costly, years of research to invent some kind of procedure to do X and thus should have some protections from others just taking the implementation and doing it cheaper, because they don't have the development costs. On the other, you can patent "Page down button on the keyboard moves the screen down one full page (A4) instead of one screen size"

pwg3• 2 years ago

Patents should have a triviality clause in them, so if you can prove that they're trivial to create and implement and be thus invalid if they are.

That's already there (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/103)

A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains.

The problem is that unless the USPTO can find the requisite publications to prove the "obvious" part above from the statute, that then knocking down the resulting issued patent in a court case can be a very expensive effort.

On the other, you can patent "Page down button on the keyboard moves the screen down one full page (A4) instead of one screen size"

Applicant's get patents because the USPTO can't find the publications necessary to prove they do not deserve to get the patent (there's also lack of time problems that I'm ignoring at the moment).

For your premise, often the reason why "Page Down moves by 'printed page'" might get patented is the lack of any findable publication of anything stating such. The USPTO examiner's don't have the ability to just say "but this is the way it works....", they have to find some publication, somewhere, that said "this is the way it works...".

For things like "how much movement 'PageDown' means", finding publications that state "how much" is extremely difficult.

pjc502• 2 years ago

For things like "how much movement 'PageDown' means", finding publications that state "how much" is extremely difficult.

Yes .. because it's too trivial to write down.

lccerina2• 2 years ago

In a sane law system, the existence of a company as a mere "box of patents" without any real product currently or previously on the market would be illegal, and these patent trolls won't exist...

bityard2• 2 years ago

I don't think they should be illegal... companies that don't "produce" anything are useful for lots of different legitimate reasons. But the bar for suing for damages should be a lot higher than just, "we happen to own the patents."

burmanm• 2 years ago

Where would you draw a line for "any real product" ? ARM for example doesn't actually produce any "real" (physical) product, but they certainly do research and produce technology for other companies to build products on.

There's a lot of "on paper" companies around the world who actually do produce novel technologies even if they don't themselves create the end product, but instead sell their inventions to other parties.

wildrhythms• 2 years ago

This problem is already solved by a Patent License Agreement. I don't know why people think this is a difficult problem. It's not.

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

So, no researcher can own a company.

Why did everybody just accept the idea that what makes a troll is them having no product when the problem is clear the high costs of litigation and low quality of the patents (and the patents selection)?

IBM is the largest and most destructive patent troll around. And all of that is just propaganda designed to make it and other companies like it rich.

MrDrMcCoy5• 2 years ago

The problem with patents boils down to abuse of monopoly power. The solution is to take the monopoly away.

dpratt• 2 years ago

Well, it's nice to know that Sable's entire portfolio is going into the public domain, it's a shame that the likely 50-100 other shell companies owned by this troll still have an arsenal of useless, but incredibly complicated, patents to use to extort money.

A just world would involve piercing the corporate veil and imposing personal consequences on the owner of this company.

20after47• 2 years ago

I guess it's safe to assume that the public domain gained roughly zero (or perhaps negative) value from this portfolio of garbage.

qalmakka• 2 years ago

Why are patent trolls allowed to exist? A company that only holds patents and does no productive job with them (research, production, ...) should not be allowed to exist. It stifles development and innovation for the short-lived monetary gain of a few people.

pas• 2 years ago

The naive explanation is that it helps inventors, because speculative investors (the trolls!) buy up patents.

One analogy is pharma research. Rights for a promising candidate molecule are purchased by "big pharma" and they will do the grunt work to validate it and extract the big money from its therapeutic value.

Substitute "FDA market authorization after successful clinical trials" with "that infamous East Texas court district and picking the right targets" (picking a too big target might backfire, picking a too small doesn't really worth the costs, etc.)

Of course the questions are: does this really help inventors? do inventors need help? is it good for society that inventors get help? is the cost of helping inventors this way not unreasonable to the economy? and even if the cost is "low", how fucking fair is it that a lot of businesses are using a given invention but only a lucky few get dragged to court? can we do better? what kind of people patent trolls are? what do they do with the money?

returningfory2• 2 years ago

Yeah, I think pharma is the really tricky case.

I worked at a small biotech company whose business model was (in part) to do early stage drug discovery research and then sell promising leads to bigger companies, who would take the leads through the FDA approval process. Actually taking a drug through to approval is a $1 billion+ endeavor (with a high probability that it just won't work; e.g. stage 3 trials just fail). Small companies cannot do this.

So a naive solution like "don't allow patents to be sold" actually restricts a bunch of reasonable businesses.

teucris• 2 years ago

It’s an unfortunate byproduct of allowing patents to be bought and sold. Let’s say you had a patent: you worked hard on your invention and you deserve to reap the financial benefits of it. But you do not have the legal resources to protect your right as the inventor. It feels fair and reasonable to me that you can sell your patent to a third party to license and protect as they see fit, so you can reap some financial reward.

Now, how do you make sure that these companies buying patents don’t become trolls? I don’t think it’s fair to require them to use the patent, because that limits who the inventor can sell to. Personally I think the way IP lawsuits are filed and considered needs significant reform.

graemep• 2 years ago

We could require someone to use it - get rid of submarine patents.

MrDrMcCoy5• 2 years ago

Now, how do you make sure that these companies buying patents don’t become trolls?

The problem with patents is that they prevent use by 3rd-parties, either by the license being too expensive or by the patentee refusing to grant one. The patentee actually using their patent has no bearing on this. The real solution to this mess is to make patent licensing compulsory. The patent office could decide that in lieu of a contract staying otherwise, a patentee is guaranteed 10% of profits or 5% of production costs, whichever is greater. Patents used to provide ongoing services could be 1% of profits. Non-commercial users should be exempt.

hosh• 2 years ago

The patent laws does not require such thing. If it were, there may be some unforseen consequences.

For example, during the late 1800s, a number of companies bandied together to pool their patents together for a commercially viable sewing machine. No single company had been able to develop and file patents that resulted in a working sewing machine. As such, they pooled the patents and negotiated a portion of royalties for everyone who contributed. That would probably have been set up as its own legal entity. With a requirement to be an operating company, such a legal vehicle would not have worked.

You could argue that such an entity is considered “productive”, but then you would have to define what that means and write it into the law. Any lawsuit involving patents would require demonstrating that.

Another example is trademarks. In order to have a registered trademark, you must show that it is in active use, and it is distinct. That means that in order to keep a registered trademark, you must sue anyone who is infringing upon it.

There is an indie author who came up on a litrpg genre concept combining it with a post-apocalypse setting. His book exploded upon the niche, progressive fantasy scene. People loved the idea and other authors wrote books for it. The original author tried to brand it and protect it with a registered trademark. Because the term had rapidly genericized, that author started sending cease & desist letters to other authors, because he was required to in order to keep the registered trademark.

I don’t know if he knew he had do that when he registered it, but doing so drained the goodwill he had in the community. Progressive fantasy is a small indie community, and the authors who can, gather at Dragoncon to talk, exchange ideas. This is similar to sending cease and desist to your neighbors. You will quickly find yourself locked out of the community.

I am thinking of the inventor of the bear suit. Making something to protect yourself from a grizzly bear seems like it has low value for society. It is also this off the wall perspective that allowed him to invent a gel that can absorb heat (probably a non-Newtonian fluid). If we’re trying to protect the livelihood of an indie inventor like that, would a requirement to demonstrate productivity help the Bear Suit inventor? Or would it have a chilling effect?

MrDrMcCoy5• 2 years ago

I'm convinced that most of the problems inherent in patents can be resolved by replacing the monopoly they grant with compulsory licensing. It's important for patent holders to get paid of course, but the monopoly aspect stifles the very innovation that patents are supposed to protect. The monopoly is also bad for consumers because competition will be scarce, disincentivizing reasonable pricing.

grishka• 2 years ago

IMO patents should not be transferable. And maybe they shouldn't be assignable to corporate entities, only to people. Multiple people at once if they all contributed to the invention.

jessriedel• 2 years ago

This would massively disenfranchise small inventors, and force all inventive work into large companies. There is no reason that the person who does the inventing should also be the person developing and selling a product.

It is weird and unfortunate that the longstanding deficiencies with patent law (chiefly: issuing patents for things that are too obvious or numerous) are being blamed on transferability of property rights. It’s the same broken intuition as over regulating housing construction and then blaming high housing costs on ownership by Chinese nationals.

_nalply• 2 years ago

In a perfect world this is arbitrage. Arbitrage helps making markets more efficient. However we don't live in a perfect world. Judgment is too expensive and risky. If it were quick, cheap and safe then patent trolls won't have the chance to do extortion. They would be limited to ... um... arbitrage!

acomjean• 2 years ago

Its a pure failure of the Patent office issuing dubious patents.

The patent office is financially encouraged to keep issuing patents no matter the quality because it keeps the patent fees and those are payed by the applicants. The patent office seems to be protected financially from issuing bad patents as well (I can't find any record of them being sued by companies that have licensed patents that have been invalidated).

Its gotten a little better with the Alice ruling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...

btrettel28• 2 years ago

As a former patent examiner, I was struck by how low the payout for Project Jengo was. $125,000 for all people submitting prior art? (There were hundreds of submissions, so it's split among many people.) I would like to help out with such things and I think I have the experience to do it well, but even being a GS-7 patent examiner making $75,000 per year is a better deal! That's especially true given that Cloudflare's not only expecting people to find prior art, but to also write the legal arguments about why it reads on Sable's claims.

If they're serious about their prior art bounty program, they're going to need to increase the bounties. Actual patent search firms charge a lot more money, and even lowly paid bureaucrats make a lot more.

tomhallett• 2 years ago

While I don’t disagree with any of your points, it seems like they are using a “platform/UGC/crowd” model to change the economics of the business model.

In the same way that TV networks find/vet/pay for the supply of shows and take on the risk per-show, YouTube (at its core) doesn’t do any of that and all of the content creators do those things with the hope it will take off and a share of the ad revenue, while YouTube’s risks are related to the opex cost of the incoming supply/demand.

Instead of cloudflare paying per examiner, they give a non-guaranteed slice to a bigger group of people.

toomuchtodo2• 2 years ago

Strangely, this sounds like a great use case for LLMs? To just grind through entire datasets attempting to surface prior art.

Edit: Found this with a search, so it can be done: https://xlscout.ai/novelty-checker-llm/

(also, thanks Cloudflare! Keep on grinding patent trolls!)

btrettel28• 2 years ago

Gene Quinn (in 2015) estimated that patent search with the attorney's opinion on patentability for software costs around $2500 to $3000 [1]. Obviously the cost is going to be higher now. Compare that alone against the $1000 ("at least") per winner that Cloudflare's offering.

But Cloudflare isn't asking for an opinion on a particular invention. A patent searcher could come back and say there is no prior art that reads on the invention in that case and still be paid. Instead, Cloudflare's asking for invalidating prior art, which I think sets the bar even higher and should increase the payout to account for the fact that much of the time there won't be invalidating prior art and thus won't be a payout.

If the platform is not taking on as much risk, the payouts should be higher.

[1] https://ipwatchdog.com/2015/04/04/the-cost-of-obtaining-a-pa...

jimmydddd3• 2 years ago

But is there any potential disproportionate upside for any of the group of people who are searching? The sued company avoids paying $100 million in damages, and my upside as a searcher is $1000? Correct? Like, I don't have a potential super high upside like a YouTube content creator.

javajosh• 2 years ago

Cloudflare is shrewdly calculating that there is a lot of latent, unexpressed hate toward patent trolls but that most people don't want to make a career out of it, but might very well make a little hobby out of it, and so they get to take advantage of people who are motivated by something other than money.

More deeply, the very idea of a "patent examiner" has never made sense to me. It requires being expert in all things, which is impossible. It makes more sense to take someone who is an expert in a field, and put a "patent examiner" hat on them for a little while. Ideally the patent system is not so complex that it itself requires as much or more study to be expert in than the actual subjects of the patents -- this would be a very bad sign.

saratogacx• 2 years ago

Patent Examiners do specialize in their fields. It isn't something that is just a common pool subject to any patent that comes into the pipe.

From the USPTO[1]

What kind of degree do I need to apply, and which vacancy do I need to apply to? The minimum degree required to be a utility patent examiner is a bachelor’s degree. There are dozens of STEM-related bachelor’s degree types that qualify, even if they are not the exact discipline listed in the title of the job vacancy.

For example, professionals with bachelor’s degrees ranging from engineering, mathematics, astronomy, space science, geophysics, oceanography, or hydrology could all apply to the "Patent Examiner (Physics)" vacancy when it is open. To see more details about which degrees best fit with which patent examiner vacancies, view this chart[1]. You can also attend one of our upcoming webinars or office hours to chat with a current patent examiner, or email us at JoinUSPTO@uspto.gov with your specific question.

[1] https://www.uspto.gov/jobs/become-patent-examiner [2] https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/patent-e...

svieira• 2 years ago

Ideally the patent system is not so complex that it itself requires as much or more study to be expert in than the actual subjects of the patents

Unfortunately, "patent law" is a complex body of laws, legal decisions, and specialized procedures large enough to be its own distinct specialization for lawyers. While it's not impossible to become an expert in it without years of study, it is definitely not possible to be excellent at it.

Just to put it in perspective, the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure alone weighs in at over 4K pages of text.

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/index.html

btrettel28• 2 years ago

Cloudflare is shrewdly calculating that there is a lot of latent, unexpressed hate toward patent trolls but that most people don't want to make a career out of it, but might very well make a little hobby out of it, and so they get to take advantage of people who are motivated by something other than money.

I don't think this is a good strategy. These folks tend to have a poor understanding of patent law in my experience, and you need to understand the basics to do this right. (You fortunately don't need to know too much law to handle 90% of cases.) And these folks probably aren't very effective at patent searching even if they understand the legal parts. I think most people overestimate their own search abilities. I certainly did. Examining patents didn't level me up as much as humble me in that regard.

More deeply, the very idea of a "patent examiner" has never made sense to me. It require being expert in all things, which is impossible. [...]

As saratogacx pointed out, at the USPTO, the vast majority of examiners have a specific technology they are assigned to. While the matching of examiners to their "art unit" is often pretty bad (I could go on a rant...), the situation is not as bad as you described. There are some generalist examiners, but as I understand it, they are in (basically) QA roles and don't need to know the technologies as much. Unfortunately, USPTO upper management seems to want to make examiners into generalists, which I doubt will work out as they want.

I agree that periodic rotations of industry folks into patent examiner positions is a great idea. It would help the patent system and give the industry folks some appreciation for what examiners do.

If you're worried about lack of expertise, you should be more worried about the courts. Judges and juries almost never have a background in the technology of the case they are working on.

eastdakota14• 2 years ago

Having talked with several of them, most of the people who submit the prior art as part of Project Jengo would do so even if there were no payout. Several winners have actually asked that the payout be donated back to other organizations fighting patent trolls. This isn't intended to be anyone's full time job. It is intended to reward technical people with industry knowledge who may be able to help surface prior art and are as sick of patent trolls as we are.

mdhb2• 2 years ago

That’s cool and all but don’t lowball people. This was the first thing Cloudflare has done in years that I didn’t associate with something shitty until I saw this.

Just for once do the right thing rather than what you think you can get away with because overall this is a genuinely something to be celebrated.

btrettel28• 2 years ago

Thanks for your comment.

Personally, I value my own time well above my job's hourly rate, so I would expect to be paid more, not less, in the situation you describe. I suspect the same is true for many others as well.

most of the people who submit the prior art as part of Project Jengo would do so even if there were no payout

I'd say this is due to selection bias. People who wanted a bigger payout didn't participate.

You all's program is basically over now, but I think anyone considering a prior art bounty program in the future should check best practices for bug bounty programs. The two seem similar to me. Paying more will get more and better submissions, and it doesn't seem to be particularly expensive to me.

pg_bot• 2 years ago

It seems like it worked out quite well for Cloudflare. You typically only increase bounties if you aren't seeing the results you want.

dsjoerg• 2 years ago

There is an aspect of collective contribution to a collective good here. Patent trolls impose costs on everyone, not just Cloudflare. Making life difficult, expensive and unprofitable for patent trolls benefits everyone, not just Cloudflare. I expect that many of these people didn't see themselves as helping Cloudflare, but the community of everyone who might be targeted by patent trolls.

eastdakota14• 2 years ago

The fascinating thing for me about this comment, and why I find myself weirdly obsessing over it, is how wrong it is about human nature and why we do things. There’s a small set of things we get paid for. There are a lot of other things we do, and even derive value from, that we don’t get paid anything for. Does that mean they have no value? Absolutely not. Every job I’ve taken is not the one that, on paper, I’d make the most from. Every term sheet I’ve accepted didn’t have the highest implied market cap. Am I an idiot? Perhaps. But it’s worked out. Lots of reasons people do things. Sometimes it’s about money. But those tend to be the most boring. Certainly in the short/medium term. I used to think missions were bullshit. Now I can’t imagine how you could ever possibly run a company without one.

PS - we killed a patent troll. A bunch of you helped. How cool is that??! Thank you.

btrettel28• 2 years ago

I think you're extrapolating a lot from my comment that wasn't intended.

You should try searching for prior art some time to get an idea about why I'm not happy about the payment being low. Patent examining's a real grind, and by far the hardest job I've ever done. It's boring and extremely time consuming. I doubt many people do it for pleasure or a higher calling.

If some people want to volunteer to find invalidating prior art, more power to them. I won't be joining them, though.

costco• 2 years ago

This comment is an example of why people are hesitant to publicly do good things. If a company donates to open source and writes a blog post about it, but it's not "enough," then they get a bunch of hate. If they never donated to open source in the first place, then there'd be no hate. Likewise, I've never heard of a company paying random people on the Internet to help fight patent trolls, yet Cloudflare did, won, neutralized the patents, and it's still not enough.

cryptonym2• 2 years ago

The capitalistic view is that a company low-balled folks with knowledge to win a case.

Both views are valid. It mostly depends on the intent of the company and you can't know that for sure. As their interest in that program is quite obvious, it's understandable that some people interpret this in two ways.

Now it's not like they forced people into that program. You are free to not participate.

btrettel28• 2 years ago

Thanks. I upvoted your comment because it's a valid point that I had not considered that was stated without aggression. Many of the other comments here strike me as particularly aggressive or making false assumptions about what I believe and who I am.

goric• 2 years ago

There's an interesting blog post[0] that calls this concept The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics.

[0] (the original no longer loads for me, so here's an archive) https://web.archive.org/web/20230105070226/https://blog.jaib...

scotty793• 2 years ago

"I could contribute to open source project that benefits millions, but I'm better off writing Java for a one mid sized company. I'm struck how corporate funded bounties for OS contributions are."

Valid stance to take but not exactly unique. That's just the world we are living in.

mikaeluman• 2 years ago

Given the result, it seems 125k was a bit too high since they got so many submissions so easily.

The market sets the price, regardless of what we personally think is "fair".

benreesman• 2 years ago

I have this stubborn cognitive bias that CloudFlare is a good thing, I think it’s because OG hackers from HN started it: jgrahamc and that lot are the real deal.

Time and time again it’s like: “CloydFlare discovers way to be evil that even Google didn’t figure out! News at 10.”

Dear Jesus, all I want for Hanukah is that fly.io doesn’t end up like that.

neelm• 2 years ago

The payments could increase in the future as this approach becomes more successful and the ROI is better understood. Before this most companies would give into the trolls. Now there may be an increasing incentive to fight back. Few companies have the time, capital and governance freedom to do so.

TheRealPomax• 2 years ago

Note that this is the kind of reasoning that would also stop resources like wikipedia from existing. Why do for free what could be done for (good) pay instead? So it feels like you're telling people to not participate because a good payday is more important than doing good.

That reasoning might work for your dayjob (why put in effort that your employer doesn't reward?), but this is not an employment situation, that line of reasoning simply does not apply to volunteer work: these folks did not put in the work to draw a check, they put in the work to combat patent trolling. And it worked: everyone who helped won.

But then some folks even won an extra prize without any expectation of a reward beyond the one they did it for. How nice is that?

RevEng• 2 years ago

If it was about paying an examiner to dig up prior art, they could just do that privately. Crowdsourcing like this is typically much cheaper, but putting money aside, many people would be happy to help simply out of principal. There are lots of people who want to see patent trolls eliminated and they would spend their own time to do it without expecting to be paid for it.

If you would only consider doing this as a form of employment, so be it, but many others are happy to do this just to try and make the world a better place for us all.

mmmlinux• 2 years ago

Just a big company pretending to be the little guy being picked on so they play up the little guy with no resources except crowd sourcing aspect. Some people that don't value their time but want to help the little guy that's "protecting the web".

People here have an interesting duality of wanting the big 200k+ faang job, but also expect you to work for free on opensource projects.

red_admiral• 2 years ago

Someone messed with the wrong guy.

If you don't mind the language, the first minute of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLt9bnRdlE comes to mind for how to deal with incompetent trolls. Comedy gold.

abetancort2• 2 years ago

Hum... Doesn't clouldfare have patents of their own? Don't they enforce them? Did they turn them to the public domain? You have to love hypocrites.

pjc502• 2 years ago

I don't know, do they?

There's an important difference between patenting something that you've invented and built, and a patent troll which has done neither.

abetancort2• 2 years ago

The patent troll buys patents from inventors and then spend money enforcing it. Not much different from Cloudfare paying salaries to the inventors to become the patent holders and then enforcing it against third-parties.

Tech patents exist because companies like Clouldflare want to because they make money with them (suing people). If companies like Cloudfare did want all tech patents to be gone, they would be gone and no patent troll would be able to do anything about.

And they try lure you with $5.000 to do the work to get them off the hook? They are cheap and bunch hypocrites.

sophacles2• 2 years ago

Doesn't clouldfare have patents of their own?

Looks like it. Not all patents are the same - sometimes a patent is erroneously granted for something that is not a novel invention. The judge and jury ruled that the patents involved in this case were in that category... and therefore invalid patents.

There is no hypocrisy in holding patents (presumably ones you believe are valid) while pointing out that some other patents are invalid. I don't understand how this could equate to hypocrisy in any scenario short of the patent holder declaring all patents except theirs must be invalid on the principle that all patents are bad.

Don't they enforce them?

Feel free to prove me wrong, but I've never seen anything about Cloudflare going after people for patent violations. I believe they subscribe to the modern tech patent strategy of having a big patent portfolio that only really gets used as part of a counter-suit if someone sues them for patent infringement.

Additionally, I presume Cloudflare's patents are related to the tech they develop and sell, which is categorically and qualitatively different than a law firm that does literally nothing of value buying up old patents and suing everyone who has ever used a word that also is present in the patent.

Given that the usage, purpose, and means of obtaining a patent are different between cloudflare and the troll - I don't understand how a hypocrisy claim can be leveled here... it defies all reason and logic to do so.

bithavoc• 2 years ago

Thank you Cloudflare (there, I said it for you)

dangoodmanUT• 2 years ago

patent trolls have a special place in hell, next to the boiler room

mnemotronic3• 2 years ago

inside the boiler

ChrisMarshallNY2• 2 years ago

Good on ya!

the Western District of Texas against patent trolls

That means they had really good lawyers.

I had a friend that lived in that area, many moons ago.

He showed me a few of their local newspapers. They were filled with stories about "plucky innovators," fighting against "corporate vested interests."

It seems they have a fairly well-prepped jury pool, thereabouts.

AlbertCory14• 2 years ago

It used to be the Eastern District of Texas, with Justice Rodney Gilstrap. I never went to Marshall or Tyler, but I knew a lot of people who did. They're small towns.

I don't know when it shifted to the Western District. Waco is not nearly as rural as East Texas; it's halfway between Dallas and Austin.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 2 years ago

I’m not that familiar with the area. I know that he said the nearest large town was Dallas.

Those papers were a hoot, though…

robterrell• 2 years ago

It's thanks to Judge Albright: https://www2.law.temple.edu/10q/how-the-west-became-the-east...

Plaintiffs file in Waco to get Albright -- if they filed in Austin, they wouldn't get him. Then they make a motion to move it to Austin, which he grants if he can based on schedules, and if it can move there, he still presides over it.

bilater2• 2 years ago

Good news! There should be a rule that you have to use a patent in X years (much less than the lifetime) so its harder to do this behavior of hoarding a patent.

pclmulqdq5• 2 years ago

There is a rule that you have to build the thing that you patent. Most of the time this sort of trolling happens, a company that built the thing went bankrupt, possibly due to the infringement (but not in this case).

xp84• 2 years ago

Can you explain/cite? I wasn't aware of this requirement.

gwbas1c• 2 years ago

Sable agreed to pay Cloudflare $225,000, ... and to dedicate its patents to the public, ensuring that Sable can never again assert them against another company.

Makes me wonder if Cloudflare could have sued to "life the corporate veil" and go after the people who owned / operated the company. (IE, sue them so they loose their homes.)

Also makes me wonder if this is in the playbook the next time a patent troll comes sniffing around.

Somewhat related: In MA, to fight NIMBY-ism, we passed a law that people suing new housing developments can be forced to put up a deposit, without requiring proof that the case has merit. I wonder if a similar law could help with patent trolls: IE, making it easier that the plantiff put up a deposit when suing for violating their patent.

mnemotronic3• 2 years ago

That payout to Cloudflare seems really, really low, considering the claims postulated by sable ip. I think $225M would be a more convincing way of de-incentivizing patent trolls.

chuckadams2• 2 years ago

Piercing the corporate veil usually only happens when there's both criminal malfeasance involved and personal resources are intermingled with the company's so that individual and corporate actions are largely indistinguishable. Sable might have been a fetid pond of rancid scum, but they were still a legal operation.

ryukoposting• 2 years ago

The excerpts from the Borchers testimony are a riot.

The responsible business people in this business actually sit down and talk to folks before they sue them, fair?
Fair.
And you don't do that, do you, sir?
No.

I'm not a fan of Cloudflare in general. I think "Browser Integrity Check" is banal malware, the McAfee of the Web 2.0 era. But this? I love this. Settling with a patent troll out of court is cowardly.

Spivak• 2 years ago

But in the settlement they got to ask for something the court can't grant them. Cloudflare could have settled in court and got more money but this is better, no?

anentropic• 2 years ago

I think parent comment is referring to the other companies before Cloudflare who settled out of court with Sable, not Cloudflare who just destroyed them in court.

eob• 2 years ago

A Project Jengo grant for using Agents/LLMs to identify prior art could be a fantastic experiment..

breck• 2 years ago

Thank you cloudflare! Fighting patents is god's^god work.

Patents are poison. Patenting your invention is like poisoning your children. Never do it.

We need to abolish these things.

They were a great way to build a centralized public library of all new inventions in the early days of the Union at no cost to the government, but now are purely a drag on innovation and society and create horrible incentives that lead to things like the Opioid crisis.

^god feel free to find/replace this with nature/universe/humanity etc.

hermitcrab• 2 years ago

Kudos to Cloudflare. Patent trolls are parasites. The sooner they are all put out of business, the better.

silexia2• 2 years ago

Please please please banish the patent system already. It is solely used by corrupt lawyers to persecute and rob successful entrepreneurs.

epolanski6• 2 years ago

This is a very bad take.

Patents most important goal is to protect entrepreneurs and the resources they spend in R&D and to promote entrepreneurship and innovation.

Imagine spending millions on developing, say, a new method to produce something at 1/10th a cost.

Now imagine a world without patents, where competitors can just copy your process.

Who's gonna invest and innovate?

Apply that to everything from batteries to telecom from anything healthcare to car engines, etc.

Without patents we would not have the same technological evolution.

20after47• 2 years ago

Even with a patent it's not that easy to stop someone from copying your invention. They can just change it a little bit and tada, now it's not a violation. Or a company in China can clone everything about your invention, right down to the marketing copy and aspects of the branding. Then they can buy placement on amazon.com to steal your market and drink your milkshake essentially zero consequences.

throwaway484766• 2 years ago

We seriously need patent reform. I propose all patents should require a prototype to be demonstrated that embodies all claims in the patent.

gleenn• 2 years ago

While noble, the immediate strategy with that is that prototypes can be overwhelming expensive in time and money to produce. Patents are supposed to protect inventors, but if that's the bar then right out the gate you are favoring the corporate behemoths who have the resources and can then just snatch the idea and weasle out the not-so-resource laden inventor. This is the type of thing where there seems like there should be easy solutions to the problems but a little nuance reveals that these things are very lucrative and some level of corporate apparatus will find a way to abuse the system and reap potentially hefty winning at the expense of the actual people coming up with stuff.

baby_souffle• 2 years ago

Would a better approach be to limit the amount of damages that can be claimed to some multiple of whatever the patent generates in revenue?

A patent that’s only sitting in a war chest and not being used to actually enrich the owner would be able to claim damages of zero if somebody else was found to be infringing

throwaway484766• 2 years ago

No, inventions that are never produced have no value and do not need protection. For most things prototypes are cheap and production is expensive. The patent system already gives you a provisional year if you're not quite ready but want to stake a claim.

tdb7893• 2 years ago

I get why it doesn't immediately need a prototype (I feel like there's a pretty obvious situation where someone has an idea and needs funding but wouldn't get funding without a patent). I don't get what the benefit is of never requiring one

nashashmi2• 2 years ago

You know, something far less intensive would be if any patent was used in an official lawsuit, it would have to be added to the record of the patent.

This way the corp suing first and asking questions later would have disclose everyone it has sued. It would also open the door for many many disputes and ripples.

throwaway484766• 2 years ago

Lawsuits are public and so are patents.

fennecfoxy• 2 years ago

Exactly, patents used to be for inventors. Now they're for "idea men" MBAs that spitball some bullshit idea with the half-listened-to assistance of a couple tech people.

I feel like there are so many patents in the pool that are just companies waiting for a technology to be actually invented by a clever engineer - but bc the company had the "idea" they have the rights to it. At that point we may as well automate it by having an LLM spit out ideas en masse.

zoom6628• 2 years ago

Would love to see results of all such prior-art research work going to EFF and patent offices to build a database for troll-crushing by anybody who needs it. Once refutation is made much easier and far less expensive then is much harder for trolls to operate.

ggm2• 2 years ago

Are patent trolls a uniquely American disease or do they just thrive in a patent rich environment which America is?

I don't recall any famous European patent trolling cases.

robertclaus• 2 years ago

I would love more details on how the case transitioned to the counter-suit. I feel like going from Cloudflare owing millions to dissolving all the troll's patents was more complex than the article implies.

scotty793• 2 years ago

It's amazing that they got them to admit, "yup, we are patent trolls, nothing we do is reasonable, suing people is our entire business, you got us, we are giving our patents so we can't do this again".

jb1991• 2 years ago

This is a small win for a company, but one giant win for mankind.

khafra3• 2 years ago

Lotta proposed solutions to the patent troll problem in this comment section, and they all have bad unintended consequences. So here's mine:

Institute a new tax on rent-seeking. Tax rent-seekers for close to 100% of the value they extract (basically a version of Georgism generalized to everything, instead of just real estate).

This would require basically a second IRS, and they would occasionally get things wrong and stifle value-producing businesses, but if it was at all effective it would be a net benefit to the economy instead of a net drag on it, and it could easily pull in enough revenue to let us eliminate income tax.

saagarjha2• 2 years ago

Ok, and what do you define as rent-seeking?

khafra3• 2 years ago

Wikipedia: growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth.

Obviously, we have to also tax people who are free-riding on the social or political manipulations of others--not every real estate owner profiting from a 5x increase in property value was actually involved in NIMBY political actions, and not every patent troll worked toward creating judicial conditions conducive to their trolling.

samuelec• 2 years ago

Today the world is a better place.

Thank you!

RantyDave• 2 years ago

Can someone explain what a "line card" is that a network card isn't?

thrance• 2 years ago

Kudos to Cloudflare. The mere existence of patent trolls should be enough to see how sick our current intellectual properties and copyright laws are.

bartread• 2 years ago

Yeah, hats off to them. That was a great read, and I certainly appreciate their efforts to give these kinds of "businesses" the absolute kicking they deserve.

Somebody or some organisation had to start standing up to patent trolls for the situation to change and kudos to Cloudflare for choosing to be that organisation. Hopefully it will encourage others to do likewise.

barfingclouds• 2 years ago

I think companies small and large should pay for an insurance that will obliterate patent trolls with legal fees. They often win by bullying individual small companies. But if there’s a collective response then maybe they can’t get so far?

tmtvl• 2 years ago

Is there a list of the patents being dedicated to the public somewhere? I would love to know if there's anything useful among them.

mattferderer• 2 years ago

Congratulations to Cloudflare! Stepping up as the Newegg of the 2020s! Proud to be a customer.

SideQuark• 2 years ago

We do this by asking the public to help identify prior art that can invalidate any of the patents that a troll holds

It's easy to split patents into separate companies for lawsuits, so it's harder or impossible to find these other patents.

artursapek• 2 years ago

What a massive waste of human effort. Patent trolls should be publicly executed.

Kim_Bruning• 2 years ago

Weren't folks lobbying for new laws to make these defenses stop working again?

Cort3z• 2 years ago

Why is patent trolls even a thing? I thought you had to have a clear intention of using the patent in a product for it to be valid. How is it not a 5 minute court case showing how the patent trolls have no employees other than lawyers, which shows clearly that there is no intent to make a product?

anakaine• 2 years ago

Go Cloudflare! Public good!

Now, hopefully this emboldens others who have been suffering from patent trolls or ADA claims to fight back.

Bambu Labs vs Stratasys would be another wonderful fight that would push community driven development forward.

Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public

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