Kim Dotcom to Google, Twitter, Facebook: I Own Security Patent, Work With Me

http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-to-google-twitter-facebook-i-own-security-patent-work-with-me-130523/

by chemcoder • 13 years ago

68 83 13 years ago

torrentfreak.com

nolok2• 13 years ago

Patent link: https://www.google.com/patents/US6078908

Granted in 1998 and referenced by pretty much every tech giant. Ought to be interesting.

jacques_chester• 13 years ago

I read it yesterday.

The patent refers to authorisation, not authentication. They are different. The usage described is distinct from 2-factor authentication as practiced by Google et al.

IMO he's just grandstanding and will be rightly ignored.

IANAL, TINLA.

bsenftner• 13 years ago

Starting to love this guy

MrUnknown• 13 years ago

Why? Do you favor extortion?

feralmoan• 13 years ago

He's a smart guy, you'd think he'd try to broker these deals through more discrete channels if he were actually serious. All this theatre ensures the companies Kim's trying to court won't touch him with anything like a $50m pole. He's fun to watch but a bit of a trainwreck.

C1D• 13 years ago

If a company does actually help his legal battle the US gov won't be happy. I hope he does get help with his legal problems and I want to see how this whole thing plays out. It's likely that companies like FB, google and twitter will ignore him so I want to see how he's going to respond to that.

famousactress• 13 years ago

On the other hand, this sort of high-profile strong arming could be helpful in changing opinions about software patents. Someone using software patents to blackmail companies into pouring money into a case against the US govt might be exactly what we need to change the opinions of some congresspeople...

aolol• 13 years ago

It's interesting because this is the type of patent system abuse that we often rally so hard against. Now that the objective is somehow more 'noble' will we ignore that this approach is still fundamentally opposed to the prevailing opinion on the patent system and those who abuse it?

icebraining2• 13 years ago

But let's be careful and not attribute opinions from different individuals as incoherence by the whole community. Not everyone here agrees with the prevailing opinion on the patent system.

betterunix2• 13 years ago

I think this is more a case of "give them a taste of their own medicine," or at least that Kim Dotcom wants it to be viewed that way.

[Edit: OR maybe not, should have read the entire article first...]

notatoad2• 13 years ago

I think this is very, very clearly abuse of the patent system, and kim dotcom knows this. every time there's a highly-public and totally absurd abuse of the patent system it erodes the system a little bit more. I would never suspect apple or oracle of attempting to erode the patent system by bringing absurd lawsuits, but it certainly sounds like the sort of thing that kim dotcom might do. I won't be so quick to judge him, given his stance on IP in general.

of course, i could be wrong and maybe he's just a massive hypocrite.

will_brown3• 13 years ago

>I would never suspect apple or oracle of attempting to erode the patent system by bringing absurd lawsuits, but it certainly sounds like the sort of thing that kim dotcom might do.

What about Apple patenting the rectangular electronic device(see here: http://www.google.com/patents/USD504889) and suing Samsung for $2.5 billion dollars with the majority of the claim for producing rectangular phones/tablets (see here: http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/08/03/apple-vs-samsung-who-...)

nicholassmith• 13 years ago

I wouldn't have called this as patent abuse, he came up with a neat idea, and applied for a patent. He didn't use it, but that doesn't invalidate that he came up with the idea, he just moved on. He hasn't sold it to anyone, he's never used it aggressively. He's being a dick now and saying "I might have to sue you!", but it's not patent abuse in the way Intellectual Ventures approaches it.

Edit; Actually, I don't think it's patent abuse as much as it is good old fashioned extortion.

icebraining2• 13 years ago

Patents aren't supposed to protect ideas.

genwin13• 13 years ago

> I don't think it's patent abuse as much as it is good old fashioned extortion.

Precisely. Large companies routinely employ such negotiation, as does the US gov't to an extreme. Kim Dotcom is no worse.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

> Actually, I don't think it's patent abuse as much as it is good old fashioned extortion.

Seems to me that that's like saying "I don't think its criminal homicide so much as it is good old fashioned murder." Using patents to facilitate extortion is the main form of abuse that the phrase "patent abuse" is used to refer to.

will_brown3• 13 years ago

I am a proponent of changing IP laws, but this does not seem to run a muck of the type of abuse typical of most patent trolls. KIM obviously developed this system, because he is/was intimately involved in the industry and he likely invented the patent in question, and actually used or intended to use the same in commerce.

Whereas your typical patent troll buys IP for the sole purpose of shaking people down, trolls usually did not invent or file the patent themselves, and they usually never have any intent to utilize the IP in the market. Additionally, patent trolls usually hold patents on patents that should not have been registered in the first place (they were obvious or the technology was already in the stream of commerce before the registration).

Disclaimer: I emailed KIM with interest in researching the issue, performing due diligence, and maybe enforcement per the article. Though any response will be maintained confidential. I also have a track record of supporting KIM on the underlying legal problem, including a few posts/comments here on HN.

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

Uhm, I'm for changing patent law and I'm also for patents being abused as much as possible. The latter is linked to the former. People are never going to change patent law unless it hurts them.

I don't want people not to do it - some people are always going to do it and the longer it goes on the greater the damage - I want it not to be doable, have a decisive engagement, so to speak, and have the problem put to bed for a while.

staticfish• 13 years ago

You must be joking, right?

aidos• 13 years ago

So I guess this wouldn't cover, for example, Google Authenticator (what I think of as 2-factor auth)? There's no transport mechanism and the agreement is via a shared secret so it's seems like a different kettle of fish. Then again, I'm no expert on security so don't take my word for that....

adventured• 13 years ago

$50 million in legal bills? Not a chance that's accurate.

xlevus• 13 years ago

It's Kim DotCom. He's both figuratively and literally larger than life.

Flimm• 13 years ago

How is he literally larger than life?

betterunix2• 13 years ago

Actually, that's only 50x more than a person would need to spend to defend a federal criminal suit in the US. It is a big number, but not completely outlandish, especially for someone the government has it in for.

josefresco• 13 years ago

Do you speak with any experience or have any information that might be able to back your claim? I'm not saying you're wrong, just want to see an informed discussion.

genwin13• 13 years ago

Probably includes a public relations team, campaign contributions and other favors in kind. Given the about-face by the NZ gov't (in a short time too) I can believe $50 million.

mtgx• 13 years ago

Aaron Swartz needed a few million dollar for his defense (probably the main cause of suicide).

I don't think $50 million for someone like Kim who was probably at the top of the list of the Obama administration along with Osama Bin Laden, is that outrageous.

genwin13• 13 years ago

What a twist! There seems to be a lot of related prior art referenced by the patent. I thought patents were valid only for the country that issued them. How is this a worldwide patent? Trade agreements?

cunac• 13 years ago

I don't see how this is valid patent. He just changed delivery method from mail; as described in prior art section; to more modern (SMS etc..) but he didn't invent any new process. Why change of delivery medium would be sufficient to grant patent?

genwin13• 13 years ago

The patent clerk has about 7 hours on average to examine prior art. The clerk may not be technologically savvy.

dtp• 13 years ago

Exactly. And even once the patent is granted, prior art can be re-examined in the courtroom when a lawsuit is brought. I'm not an expert or anything, but I wouldn't expect this patent to stand up in court.

dspillett• 13 years ago

You might be right for how the system is supposed to judge validity, but how many patents have been successfully used and abuse that are nothing more than "<insert_old_idea_here> over the Internet"?

footoverhand• 13 years ago

Perhaps he missed the memo which clearly states that patent's are used to protect multinational corporations and governments, not individuals or small corporations.

huhtenberg• 13 years ago

That's some quality trolling.

It can't be anything else, he's not an idiot.

I may not like his business ventures or his personality, but I just cannot not respect him for having a backbone and a pair of balls to keep pushing this thing forward. They did him wrong and he doesn't let go. This is really impressive.

nolok2• 13 years ago

Had trouble getting your last paragraph right, double negative makes it harder to read. Agreed with what you said though, he knows there is no trial possible over it.

nevir• 13 years ago

Where was he years ago when this sort of 2-factor auth was starting to get popular?

Don't you have to actively defend your patent? Sitting on it for 15 years and then deciding to sue on a whim can't look good in a court's eyes...

rlpb• 13 years ago

> Don't you have to actively defend your patent?

No, you don't. You may be thinking of trademarks, which you do have to defend or license to avoid dilution.

You may say that this is a problem with the patent system. But here on HN, we already know how broken the patent system is, don't we?

lquist• 13 years ago

Blackmail. Pure and simple.

genwin13• 13 years ago

But no worse than what large companies and the US gov't routinely do.

umsm• 13 years ago

That doesn't mean it's illegal. He's just trying to right a wrong.

mpobrien• 13 years ago

But isn't suing to enforce his patent rights also an expensive legal battle that he would need to somehow fund? I don't see how this threat could be seen as effective.

genwin13• 13 years ago

Some other group who buys the patent from him, paying his bills and then some, would sue to enforce the patent rights.

hcarvalhoalves• 13 years ago

Let's see if he even manages to sue the tech giants, let alone what the judge rulings will be like when the patent owner is an individual instead of a tech giant.

genwin13• 13 years ago

I could see a company or investor group buying this patent from him at $50M+. It's worth more even at a penny per authentication.

youngerdryas• 13 years ago

HN becomes a bag full of stupid when fetishizing Kim Dotclown.

GoofballJones• 13 years ago

“I never sued them. I believe in sharing knowledge & ideas for the good of society. But I might sue them now cause of what the U.S. did to me".

So in other words, you believe in the "good of society", but now that you have legal fees, screw society?

guelo• 13 years ago

The smart threat would be to put the patent up for auction. The fear of the trolls getting the patent would bring the big guys to the table.

resu_nimda3• 13 years ago

At the end of the article:

“Want to buy the worldwide license to my two-factor-authentication patent? (13 countries incl. US & China) Email: twitter@kim.com,” he concludes.

edit: I may be wrong, is buying "the worldwide license" different from buying the patent?

danielsamuels• 13 years ago

Yes, license would be allowing Google etc to use the method described in the patent (and potentially making money from it), buying the patent would give Google etc the ownership rights and allow them to license it out themselves.

smnrchrds• 13 years ago

I guess he means he will license his patents more than one company. In contrast, if he sells all the patent rights, he can't sell them to anyone else and those who want to acquire a license should negotiate with the buyer.

onemorepassword• 13 years ago

If people would actually read what he writes on twitter instead of the sensationalist blog posts derived only from those tweets, they would get a much more nuanced picture.

n00b101• 13 years ago

The patent system is so horribly broken.

Let me get this straight ... something as simple as 2-factor authentication can be patented in the US and enforced world-wide? Let's say I'm running a start-up or a small business and I need secure, remote access ... my go-to solution would be to use 2-factor authentication ... but I have to worry about getting sued or finding funds for paying extortion money just to apply an idea that's about as dead-simple as passwords? How is this a good thing for inventors?

homosaur• 13 years ago

We've well established at this point that the archaic US Patent System and software patents in general are not good for inventors, consumers, or the economy in general.

They are good for lobbyists and entrenched megacorporations, however, which means we can ignore all that and it's good for the public. Now go take your medicine, slave.

dreamdu5t2• 13 years ago

It is not well established or popular opinion. I work at a startup and many of my co-workers support patents, copyright, and intellectual property while simultaneously decrying patents like this.

dsl2• 13 years ago

Don't confuse commonplace with simple. I think lots of people argue that a patent is trivial, because the idea has gained adoption and become universal. At the time of invention something might be totally groundbreaking, but a critical part of every household 10 years on.

I'm not saying that is the case here (A quick Google search finds SecurID was released in ~1994-1995), but the dismissive attitude of patents in general because you've come to rely on the technology really irks me.

mattmanser• 13 years ago

Do you have example patents to prove your point?

Why can't I just claim all software patents simple? You just have to be presented with the problem and have a smart person sit down long enough to come up with the solution. And often that's measured in hours or days once the problem is presented clearly. None of us are as smart as we think we are, even if the solution appears elegant.

They don't take thousands of different filament tests. Or massive amounts of research trials. No repeated prototype builds. Or anything that actually costs money apart from simply thought.

And worse still, there's often no other way to solve the problem than the patented way and as we see so often the idea is solved repeatedly by different people.

You might reasonably argue that realizing the problem exists is 90% of the work and that is expensive, but then you're really patenting a business processes just like one-click shopping or two factor authentication.

fakeer• 13 years ago

1. Patent system is broken, you said it. So is copyright and many other systems or maybe nearly all of them.

2. Now, the guy just wants to fight it according to the broken system and if nothing else then at least the double standard (of authorities/govt) will come out evident.

Having said these, his patent is just too generic but then so are many "touch", "pinch", "zoom", "rectangular computing devices" patents and we have had very interesting verdicts from around the world.

kbenson• 13 years ago

If you look at the SecurID wikipedia[1] page, in the references you can find a paper discussing two factor authorization in 1996[1]. Also, it's not defining two factor authentication, it assumes the reader knows what it is.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID

[2] http://www.homeport.org/~adam/dimacs.html

1337biz• 13 years ago

I just wish Kim would start something like Startup Chile for New Zealand - but only for privacy and security related startups. He would have the right swagger to make this thing successful and (at least over the more recent past) a credible track record for standing up for what he believes in.

lignuist• 13 years ago

This guy is in the wrong business. He should run a tv show, because he is so entertaining.

Kim Dotcom to Google, Twitter, Facebook: I Own Security Patent, Work With Me

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