Patent trolls put brakes on S.F. transit app

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/dotcommentary/article/Patent-trolls-put-brakes-on-S-F-transit-app-4778304.php

by coloneltcb • 13 years ago

81 57 13 years ago

In many ways the US patent system gives non-US software companies a leg up. It seems as though foreign software companies are rarely (if ever) sued by these "non-practicing entities".

Patent trolls are the #1 reason why I have no intention of opening up shop in the US, at least until the software patent boogeyman goes away.

Grovara1239• 13 years ago

You can be sued anywhere for anything - you are just saying 'words' without giving any facts. People are sued in many countries for intellectual property issues. USA is not alone. The #1 reason you have no intention of opening up shop in the US is probably something else - ie. you are not a US citizen or you wouldn't even know how to incorporate if you tried - come on.

kintamanimatt8• 13 years ago

I'm very well aware of how to incorporate a company in multiple jurisdictions; it's not hard and rarely expensive. Being a US-citizen isn't necessarily a barrier to opening a company in the US either; there are are whole battery of appropriate visa categories for entrepreneurs.

Indeed you can be sued anywhere for anything, but the matter of jurisdiction arises quite quickly in many cases. Also, American patent trolls don't seem to attempt to sue foreign companies that don't have a presence in the US.

CamperBob22• 13 years ago

Patent trolls seldom go after foreign businesses, or do anything else that even remotely looks like actual work.

jbjohns• 13 years ago

Careful, you don't want to give them an ideas!

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

Such a depressing situation. I shudder to think of such a letter arriving to my small (tiny) business. And yet I know it could happen any time. There's simply no way for me to avoid it - I can't possibly anticipate what bogus patent might be thrown at me, it may even be nothing to do with my business. It would probably be game over, shut down, years of hard work down the drain. And even then, I worry that they would sue for damages from past sales, so I may still be screwed.

How do others deal with this risk? Just ignore it and hope for the best? Is it still statistically low enough chance that that is a reasonable thing to do? Incorporate and protect assets so if you are sued you can at least back out without personal financial devastation?

kintamanimatt8• 13 years ago

You should be incorporating anyway. It's a very cheap form of personal liability insurance.

genwin4• 13 years ago

Beware, IANAL. Yes, incorporate. Then, if the business isn't worth much and it's just you, ignore any patent trolls. In the unlikely event any take you to court, don't show up or otherwise waste your money on the suit, and if they win then continue to ignore them. In the worst case you go out of business and start another business with the same technology.

kintamanimatt8• 13 years ago

Ignoring a properly filed lawsuit is pretty much the dumbest thing you can do. If they win by default (which is what happens if you ignore it) they can still successfully come after assets.

droidist2• 13 years ago

You could go with an LLC instead of incorporating. There's less paperwork involved.

Grovara1239• 13 years ago

The reality is this is the Patent Law of our Country - if we did NOT have it - everyone here would be saying the exact opposite.

It is 100% necessary - and though there might be casualties such as what is going on here - if we did not have Intellectual Property Rights - we would be at a disadvantage.

My suggestion is anyone being sued connect with the individual suing them and work out terms - everything is negotiable. Why not cut the owners of the patents in on a % of revenues?

impendia• 13 years ago

My suggestion is anyone being sued connect with the individual suing them and work out terms - everything is negotiable.

You are condoning extortion. Perhaps, indeed, the individual should negotiate terms -- but for the same reason that if the Mafia showed up to your doorstep, packing heat, then it would be wise to take their demands seriously.

Grovara1239• 13 years ago

Extortion? No. Please. We have a legal process. It was created and it is constantly being developed and reformed. I am supporting our legal process which is not perfect but it is the best we have at the moment.

Love it or not - it is the rules of the game. Someone came up with the idea before you and they registered that idea before you. Vague or not - they had the foresight - and they are indeed entitled to being proprietary.

If you do not like it - challenge it. If you can not afford to challenge it - negotiate for 'fair-use'.

If you think otherwise - you are an amateur.

CamperBob22• 13 years ago

"Again, words, not facts."

genwin4• 13 years ago

Why not cut the owners of the patents in on a % of revenues?

If you do this, you'll be labelled a sucker and get bombarded by more patent trolls. Unless you're an Apple or Google, your business is sunk then. Most every business violates hundreds if not thousands of patents. Simply owning a computer means you've violated many patents.

quadrangle• 13 years ago

There are a lot of baseless assertions there. You have no evidence on your side at all. On the other hand, there's lots of evidence that patents fundamentally retard progress. See http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.ht...

arbuge• 13 years ago

The reality is that the "Patent Law of our Country" is incredibly broken and incredibly overdue for a complete overhaul, as the existence of patent trolls makes unambigously clear.

chasing2• 13 years ago

I didn't know Nathan Myhrvold was on Hacker News! You should do an AMA or whatever the local equivalent is...

gavinpc• 13 years ago

I thought BART trip planning was a solved problem, anyway:

http://worrydream.com/bartwidget/

ebiester• 13 years ago

If I understood correctly, this included the whole MUNI bus system.

ScottBurson5• 13 years ago

A patent is a deal the public makes with an inventor: publish your invention and we'll grant you a time-limited monopoly on it. In order for this to be a good trade, the invention has to make a real intellectual contribution to the art. The problem we have is that no one is unambiguously empowered to ensure that it does so. The PTO does some of this, but has neither the bandwidth to do a good job nor a clear mandate to be hard-ass about it. And then once a patent is granted, the courts tend to defer to the PTO on its validity.

I haven't read the patents in question here, but I nonetheless feel safe in saying that "technologies for tracking vehicles and providing users with electronic updates" cannot possibly make a contribution to the art significant enough to counterbalance the societal cost of the monopoly the patent holder has been granted. I'm sure there are thousands of engineers here on HN that could design and build such a system using well-known techniques.

In some domains, the determination of how much of an intellectual contribution an invention makes is fairly straightforward. If a novel molecule is synthesized -- the chemical and pharmaceutical industries keep a record, I gather, of all molecules whose structures have been worked out, so it's possible to know when a new one appears -- and then proves useful for some medical purpose, it's pretty clear that a contribution has been made, and what that contribution consists of. In software, it's much harder. The field is massive and sprawling, and no one can keep up with all of it.

That's why I'm convinced the only solution is to amend the patent laws to require objective evidence of nonobviousness -- objective evidence that the invention makes a real intellectual contribution -- in order for a patent holder to successfully sue for infringement. Such evidence could come, for example, in the form of publication in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceedings. Absent such evidence, the law should direct the court to invalidate the patent.

An advantage of this approach is that it requires no special-case rule for software patents, which run into the difficulty of defining the term "software patent" precisely. Rather, in domains other than software, the required evidence is generally not hard to come by. So the rule is domain-independent in definition -- and defensible as such, I believe -- but would have by far the greatest impact in the software domain.

Grovara1239• 13 years ago

Everything you have here is debatable... obviously. But interesting perspective.

kinsho3• 13 years ago

While you have good intentions, I have a feeling your idea would backfire some how. Judging the objectivity of a patent through its inclusion within a peer-reviewed journal or a conference is only going to lead to more loopholes that can be easily exploited.

ScottBurson5• 13 years ago

It wouldn't be automatic. Courts consider many kinds of evidence of varying strengths, and the probative value of evidence can be challenged by the opposing side. If it appeared that a journal had sprung up specifically to legitimize patents, evidence supporting that view could be introduced as well. Courts exist to weigh such arguments.

In fact, "objective evidence of nonobviousness" is already a well-established concept in patent law [0]. The change I am proposing is, where currently patents are presumed valid until challenged, under my proposal they would be presumed invalid until evidence of nonobviousness were presented that the court found satisfactory.

I don't think we're going to get rid of patents altogether. No patent system is perfect, but I think my proposal would make for a massive improvement.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obvious...

dalke3• 13 years ago

"If a novel molecule is synthesized ... and then proves useful for some medical purpose, it's pretty clear that a contribution has been made, and what that contribution consists of."

That's not the case. There might be one person who thought of the scaffold, another three involved with trying different variations of the side-group, a fifth who had to solve problems when synthesizing it, and so on. Even on the far end, after it's in trials, there's the chance that it's useful for some other effect altogether. That's how Viagra's most notable use was discovered.

See http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2013/07/17/will-pa... for a recent commentary on the difficulty of figuring out who made "the" contribution.

ScottBurson5• 13 years ago

Oh, I'm well aware that it can be hard to figure out who made the contribution.

But I didn't say anything to contradict that. Reread the sentence you quoted: all I said was that it was clear that a contribution had been made: a previously unknown molecule had been synthesized, and a medical use found for it. This is all that matters for the question of whether a patent should be granted. The question of to whom it should be granted is not one I'm considering here.

kenster07• 13 years ago

The complexity of software patents has grown beyond the capacity of the patent system to properly evaluate them. As such, it this subsection of the patent system is susceptible to rampant abuse, and can no longer effectively serve the purpose for which it is originally intended.

If this were an engineering problem, the solution would be obvious. Unfortunately, it is political, and therefore a well-dressed circus.

x0054• 13 years ago

How about a crowd sourcing website for patent invalidation. Make it proactive. You get sued or threatened. You go online and post the patent. Maybe other people in the same situation, including once who have yet to be sued, can pitch in. There is one thing that most patent trolls are terrified of, and it's a well researched and filed invalidation claim.

My other suggestion, if you think you might get sued for a particular aspect of your app, try to isolate it as much as possible. For instance, if you have an app that makes money through ads. Form one company that makes the app and another that pays a nominal fee to display ads in that app. One Company makes the money, the other "infringes."

Finally, get any lawyer, any one that will agree to represent you and file a declarative action in your jurisdiction to invalidate your claim.

Just my 2 cents. Maybe some real patent lawyers can chime in.

zuppy• 13 years ago

Stack Overflow has a site for that: http://askpatents.com/

They had their first (major) success: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html

blackcat• 13 years ago

Does anyone have practical advice for convincing business people not to pursue software patents? Stating it will give you no real protection and is a waste of money is not enough, even when coming from the attorneys.

Kliment• 13 years ago

Here is a good resource: http://www.tinaja.com/patnt01.shtml

gotosleep• 13 years ago

Intellectual property should be taxed. If a company is sitting on a patent waiting for someone to violate it so they can sue for $X amount, the company should be taxed for $X amount of property. It would make owning tons of patents and doing nothing with them practically infeasible.

Patent trolls put brakes on S.F. transit app

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