ideaphore

That's a very good idea. We will reach out to them.

Oh definitely the first two, we're doing this on re-launch after the meta campaign. But I don't follow re: the domain names. Do you mean we should partner with a domain registrar to give out freebies to our users?

If you're willing to share more of your idea, let me know.

That's really interesting. I will definitely discuss this with the team.

That is absolutely part of the plan. Thanks!

That's very interesting. I think this assumes that companies will be asking their crowd to do for them what they do for a living. But we are focusing on customer development (e.g. surveys, interview), and business development (introductions, and social media shares). These are useful, simple things that startups need and are fairly fungible in terms of time-value. For less fungible work, like what you do for a living, those will likely be limited to instances when the company is hiring. In this way, they can distribute one project to all the people who pledge time to that tier and interview the best result(s). Everyone else gets a reward. Also, the site will be gamified in that for every hour you pledge, you'll be given an hour. In other words, if you pledge 100 hours to take surveys and do social media shares, you'll be able to run your own campaign and raise 100 hours for your project for free.

Thank you very much. These are great points and exactly what we set out to solve when we undertook the project. We will definitely put a time limit on when pledged time can be claimed (likely 3 months after campaign closes). Aside from doing work for simple rewards, rewards for pledged time will include cash and equity. So building a profile of some free work could lead to pay work pretty quickly.

That's a fair point and something we're working on. We are using 1-hour blocks for pledges. People have been quantifying and qualifying work in 1-hour blocks for a while and are used it we think. But we will continue to refine that. Thank you.

Thanks! Made that change.

FAQ added, SSL added, resources and guides coming later today. Thanks again for your input.

SSL added.

That's sage advice right there. Would love to chat more, if you have the time. You know where to find us.

Indeed. In fact, filing an inter-partes review, something our partner Hard-IP is very good at, is significantly cheaper than litigation in federal court. Also, with a large enough joint defense group, we may be able to negotiate arbitration or mediation (we would recommend baseball style mediation).

That's an interesting idea. But it doesn't quite translate because each individual copyright infringement case has its own facts, you either did it or not. With patent infringement, the validity of the patent affects every potential plaintiff the same way. But it's something to consider in the future. Thanks.

Thanks! That's really helpful. We'll add all of these things.

Admiral Ackbar? Is that you?

On it. Will switch over.

Good idea. We'll reach out.

It's good to leave that option open, where possible. We would not want anyone to abandon it. For instance, if an IPR fails to invalidate a patent, the fight becomes much harder. And not all demand letters are unfair assertions of patent rights, some are legitimate. It's important to find out what other similarly situated businesses plan to do, but that doesn't mean you won't end up settling.

This is true. During the early days, we will also have to charge a small monthly fee for members during the pendency of their fight. We hope to remove the fee later, if possible.

When trolls send demand letters, they make it sound like it's in your best interests to settle for a license fee quickly before they start suing people. Don't ask too many questions, just fork over some cash. And it might well be in your best interests, you won't know until you know what others who received the letter are doing. But if you tell a troll that you are thinking of fighting their patent, they tend to become irate, raise the settlement figure, threaten to sue, or file suit. We think that this is why there have not been many submissions on trollingeffects. We will do our best to screen members to make sure that they are from bona fide companies that received a letter. I gave a bit more detail on this in a question above.

Trolls might very well try this. We will carefully screen people who sign up to make sure this doesn't happen. We have several ways in mind to do this, happy to discuss if you're interested. If trolls stoop to fraud or bribery to infiltrate the group, there's not much we can do - this is true of regular joint defense groups too. If they do infiltrate, they can make things difficult, but they can't completely destroy the utility of it. Our tools would still make small businesses more powerful than they were alone.

Thanks. It makes our blood boil too.

Appreciate the concern. This is a collaboration between ideaphore (the co-invention platform and service) and hard-ip.net (patent agent firm). Both companies were founded by people who are passionate about innovation and putting an end to predatory patent trolling. We're committed to making this work if people really want it. We'll do our best to protect your personal information.

On trolling effects, uploaded demand letters are displayed publicly. Small business owners (targets) are worried that the trolls will retaliate if they find out the target is looking to fight back. We will not post your demand letters, but will instead confidentially match you with others who have received similar letters. Also, we will provide a private collaboration environment where all participants sign an NDA and fundraising tools.