What the Courts Did to Curb Patent Trolling for Now

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/what-the-courts-did-to-curb-patent-trollingfor-now/383138/?single_page=true

by nkurz • 12 years ago

33 11 12 years ago

theatlantic.com

spacemanmatt• 12 years ago

Of course Microsoft could let the gate slam shut after they got their rulings that facilitate their $1B/yr tax on Samsung and other Android vendors.

gretful• 12 years ago

What? You don't expect them to act in a moral fashion, do you? Business is a game, and most business people play it like a game: how far can I go and still be within the rules?

When morality is divorced from business, this is what you get. I don't see it changing anytime soon.

sytelus• 12 years ago

The idea that trolls are scared by having to pay legal cost if they lose is not correct. Trolls set themselves up as disposable shell companies. If they lose case, they simply go bankrupt and get exit without actually paying anything to anyone. We need to do much much more than what Supreme Court has done to stop trolling.

themartorana• 12 years ago

True - and perhaps not allowing bankruptcy dismissal would be a good start. After all, there's precedent now - you can't dismiss student loans at bankruptcy proceedings, maybe corporations shouldn't be allowed to dismiss court-ordered payments at bankruptcy.

I understand the difficulty in implementation, mind you, but you're right about how the shell companies are set up, and the disincentive needs to be able to follow the humans, not the companies.

talmand3• 12 years ago

While true, if the law is changed to allow certain entities to go after the personal holdings of an individual because of the actions of a corporation then you'll have severely disrupted one of the main reasons to incorporate. That could have far reaching consequences that we can't even begin to imagine how bad it would be. If such a thing happened and I had corporations of whatever, I would immediately seek to re-incorporate somewhere else if I had the means. If I did not have the means, I would seriously consider taking what I have and removing myself from the corporation at the first sign of any possible legal troubles. That's whether I'm completely innocent of the accusations or not.

mikecb• 12 years ago

Creditors are already able to go after the investors in under-capitalized businesses and other misuses of the corporate form. It's called piercing the corporate veil.

What the Courts Did to Curb Patent Trolling for Now

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