Patent Troll sues Facebook, Amazon and others for using Hadoop

http://gigaom.com/2012/07/13/troll-sues-facebook-amazon-and-others-for-using-hadoop/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom

by ukdm • 14 years ago

69 31 14 years ago

gigaom.com

mindstab• 14 years ago

What if (somewhat borrowing an idea from PG actually, but I think this might be a bit more feasible) big tech companies started retaliating against trolls and lawyers who support them by banning them from their services. These guys (lawyer's site) have a linkedin link on the front page. What if they were banned from that.

Do they use gmail or other google services? Banned Facebook? Banned

Obviously it's actually probably excitingly hard to maintain this list with an accuracy but it's an entertaining thought experiment.

Do you support and supply service to patent trolls and their lawyers who harm the community and may one day actually sue you?

jvehent• 14 years ago

what if, instead, you would just let them use your service, and simply spy on them ?

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

If insurance companies can charge me quadruple premiums for the rest of my life for a trivial "existing condition", or prevent me from insuring my home because I once filed a flood claim, I think tech companies can find a way to freeze out trolls. We just need a CLUE database for trolls.

farmdawgnation• 14 years ago

There's actually precedent for this in other industries. Some rental leases include clauses that say they can throw you out if you're found guilty of libel and slander against the real estate company. Of course, they've got to prove that first - but same deal.

cma• 14 years ago

Taft Hartley prevents secondary strikes/boycotts, it potentially makes this strategy illegal.

bazzargh• 14 years ago

Not quite. Taft Hartley prevents labour organizations from pressuring workers into boycotts. I don't think its applicable. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1069361?uid=3738032...

The suggested strategy doesn't seem all that different from the Open Invention Network to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network

edouard1234567• 14 years ago

This reminds me of the cold war. Big powerful countries growing their arsenal of WOMD to dissuade each other from attacking. Using them against the other side would mean self destruction, so instead they agree they won't let any other country get them : non proliferation treaties... . But this only works when you have something to loose that's why we are so afraid of fanatics getting their hands on WOMDs, they can't be dissuaded and these treaties have no effect on them. Today big tech companies amass patents of mass destruction (POMD) to dissuade each other from suing. Unfortunately this doesn't work against patent trolls because they have nothing to lose. So what you are suggesting is a kind of patriot act against the "technology terrorists" and start a war against patent trolling! :)

firebones• 14 years ago

I think you're describing asymmetric warfare. Study of countermeasures for asymmetric warfare would be fertile ground for learning how to counteract the trolls.

I'm not a real student of this, but off the top of my head the techniques used in real asymmetric warfare include:

* Buying off the enemy (pallets of $100 bills to Afghanistan)

* Drone strikes (perhaps not quite yet feasible, although domestic drone usage is increasing and no doubt gives corporate legal teams hope)

* Win the hearts and minds of the locals (equivalent: raise awareness in the judiciary so they no longer give aid and comfort to trolls)

* Supply them with arms (have them do your bidding by harassing competitors in exchange for not harassing you further)

* Legalize it (stop drug cartels by taking the economic incentive away from their profit center--in this case, change law to strip away their incentives)

What else?

pooriaazimi• 14 years ago

These trolls haven't been appeared from thin air. The same (giant) companies are behind them. See here for example: "Apple And Microsoft Behind Patent Troll Armed With Thousands Of Nortel Patents" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4027246

(And don't think Facebook or Google are any better than Apple or MS. They just don't have enough patents.)

rz2k• 14 years ago

What do you think about consumers who complain about their ISP?

Or, should you be able to call the police while you're being robbed if you sued as a victim of police brutality in the past?

The claims seem absurd, but that doesn't mean the plaintiff should be fought using any means possible including outside of court. It sets a terrible precedent, and would apply to plaintiffs you're more likely to agree with.

Really, even Samsung and Apple continue to do business with each other in the midst of suing eachother.

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

They are perfectly free to continue their use (misuse) of the laws and the courts. Just as technology companies are free to sell things (or not) where, when, and to whom(1) they choose.

I for one would enjoy seeing a company refuse to ship goods to that entire wacky eastern Texas district that made such a nuisance of itself by supporting trolls.

(1) With obvious limitations on race religion etc.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

It's been on my mind for a long time, although in a broader context. It seems one of the avenues left to "us" "reasonable" people is, to use the antiquated term, "shunning".

With facial recognition and the like, it could even be taken down to the individual context and innumerable situations. Though I consider this a dangerous path to tread.

Such people may have large bank balances. But if "nobody" -- or at least, nobody they need and of above average competence -- will take their money, perhaps that would send a message. Or, sink them. Either way.

The message being, no matter how "rich" you are, you are part of and embedded in a larger community. No [one] is an island. Or, "don't sh-t where you..."

Zenst3• 14 years ago

The way those patents are worded, they could equaly apply to TCP/IP, switch's/routers, any HA system and many more previously used technologies out there predating this drivil. There a load of bollocks and how they got allocated patents is in itself a case for the aformentioned companies havinga right to sue the patent office for incompetance.

monochromatic3• 14 years ago

I'm guessing you haven't read the claims?

Zenst3• 14 years ago

I had a quick look at the patents and there wording which the claims are based upon.

Your right I didnt read there claims but when somebody says 3 and there working out is 1+1 then I'll look at the working out and not there conclusion. In this case its the patents.

gergles• 14 years ago

Why is this bullshit platitude always a response to anyone complaining about a patent? The claims for software patents almost never provide anything more than the abstract, just in a few hundred more words.

As an example, let's take the first independent claim from the '662 patent:

" A storage system, comprising:

one or more memory sections, including one or more memory devices having storage locations for storing data, and a memory section controller capable of detecting faults in the memory section and transmitting a fault message in response to the detected faults; and one or more switches, including one or more interfaces for connecting to one or more external devices; and a switch fabric connected to one or more memory sections and the external device interfaces and interconnecting the memory sections and the external device interfaces based on an algorithm; and a management system capable of receiving fault messages from the memory section controllers and removing from service the memory section from which the fault message was received, and wherein the management system is further capable of determining an algorithm for use by a switch fabric in interconnecting the memory sections and the external device interfaces, and instructing the switch to execute the determined algorithm, wherein an interface of the switch is connected to a non-volatile storage device, and wherein the management system is further capable of instructing the non-volatile storage device to load data into one or more of the memory sections via the switch."

So... any HA system ever invented? Like the summary said. Great, thanks. Glad that you won a point on "you didn't read the claims!!!!1111" which are content-free garbage, like every other software patent.

emperorcezar• 14 years ago

Sometimes I fantasize about a company with a lot of buying power, like Amazon, retaliating by hiring some mob thugs to break a few legs.

Hey, respond to scum with scum. Of course it's just a fantasy.

Edit: Company, not Computer.

timaelliott• 14 years ago

I fantasize about computers too. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see.

alttab• 14 years ago

Hopefully enough of these get thrown out so the trolling will stop. Then we just have to worry about people stealing your technology overnight and turning every new innovation into a perfectly competitive market. I'm not being snarky, I think it's a tough problem to solve.

Of course, the "toughness" is in trying to preserve financial incentives and profit, when maybe we should all just be motivated for the better of humanity and to make the world a better place? But maybe that's the folly of man and we are asking too much. In which case as a species we get what comes to us.

I think that's enough existentialism for one night.

*silly iPad autocorrecT

ljd• 14 years ago

Taking the position that non-patented work could be stolen overnight is an irrational, yet strangely a pervasive fear in software. It's why new entrepreneurs push NDA's on their initial contacts. It's been my experience that there is a tremendous amount of work that goes into building a successful tech company.

Anything that is truly new technology is often kept as a trade secret. In software, patents are only great for defense.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

I'm curious why Google isn't on the list?

Hadoop is basically a clean room implementation of MapReduce and GFS anyway, to the point where Google graciously offered Apache a liberal patent license just to make sure Hadoop users didn't worry about Google coming after them when their patents came through on this stuff.

rit• 14 years ago

Probably because Google clearly has prior art.

The initial white papers about Google Filesystem were presented in 2003: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=945450

tzs• 14 years ago

One of the patents was filed in 2002, so 2003 is not early enough to be prior art.

rhizome• 14 years ago

Charles Carreon is selling an ebook of his experiences for $5MM a copy.

abhaga• 14 years ago

Who are the four people who were originally granted the patent? I tried searching for them but all I got were either patent grants or the news about them suing other companies. I am interested in finding out the technical credentials of these inventors.

keymone• 14 years ago

sometimes i think patent laws should be a bit more strict. like execute patent trolls and their families just to keep human genome a bit cleaner..

fpp• 14 years ago

Enough ranting lets get constructive before those xxx have ruined our industry completely.

Step 1: It's election times soon so all politicians will normally be supportive to the one killer argument - patent trolls kill jobs in the US:

(a) start tracing where the money paid within these "successful extortions" goes to - I'm confident a line to drug fused parties with Brazilian hookers, private jets & yachts, endless squandering lifestyles of some of the beneficiaries or their children can easily be established and generously visualized.

(b) start large scale advertising campaigns together with these documentaries along the line "... our companies would have established xxx thousand jobs in the US if we would have not been forced by lobbying to finance the squandering lifestyles of the very few that are abusing the patent system..."

/* call that throwing around dirt - well that seems to be the language our politicians e.a. immediately understand */

Step 2: Patent laws can already be rendered nil today based on national security concerns - we need something similar in the interest of the (real) economy:

(a) all profits / royalties / fees from patent licensing are taxed at the double or at least maximum income rate due immediately when the money flows - all offshore entities are barred from receiving any funds before these taxes are paid - this is to insure that patents are used defensively and not to monopolize complete business sectors or extort huge sums from those actually creating products by NPEs.

(b) all additionally collected taxes from this are earmarked to support startups / SMEs in defending against patent litigations or generally as start-up funding

Step 3: The patent system is being reformed and all previously granted software, plants / DNA patents reviewed. Patent reviews might be prioritized e.g. by large number of requests, overwhelming prior art, clear obviousness of the invention etc.

(a) all software patents have to be demonstrated with a functional model / prototype - the application of the prototype defines the application of the patent.

(b) While these reviews or changes to the patent system are ongoing, patents claims are evaluated in all litigations in the strictest sense of the actual application / apparatus described and no (overly) broad adaption are allowed like today e.g. patents for doing xxx in telephone switching solutions blocking the same things 15 years later on the web.

In an optimal implementation these changes are coordinated / also implemented in other leading economies rendering the possibilities to circumvent or block these measures unprofitable.

A historical side-note: In times of dire economies whenever the "rulers" of countries have seen benefit from innovation, creating of new industries and companies, they have relaxed the patent laws that overall in history almost all the time have been used merely to create monopolies or protect existing monopolies from competition. My best example for this is the rise of Prussia to one of the globally leading industrial nations from a farm based economy and the parallel downfall of the UK from leading the first industrial / technology revolution.

Now I'm almost certain that most of the above will never happen due to the vested interests / special interest groups involved or benefiting substantially from the current situation, but it would be nice to at least see some reason in the use of patent law again.

Patent Troll sues Facebook, Amazon and others for using Hadoop

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