Comment by mmalone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmalone | Hacker News Reader

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In my experience there's definitely value here. Companies get sued on the regular for bullshit like this. I've had to deal with three patent suits at startups. They were all bullshit, and they all ended in settlements of ~$10,000 (cheaper to settle).

Countersuing is probably the #2 most common response to a patent suit (after settling). It's so common that there's a name for it: "defensive patent strategy." Basically, you file a bunch of patents, but you don't proactively go out and look for infringers. You're just hanging on to them in case you get sued. If you get sued you go and look at the person who's suing you and try to find one of your patents they're violating. This actually works fairly well because the patent system is so broken, and patents are so easy to get, that you can almost definitely find a violation given a reasonably large portfolio (and 10,000 patents is reasonably large).

Unfortunately, countersuing doesn't work against NPEs... and NPEs are usually the ones doing the suing.

> They were all bullshit, and they all ended in settlements of ~$10,000 (cheaper to settle).

You are part of the problem. NEVER settle with a patent troll. I've had plenty of these assholes come after me and nothing ever stuck, on top of that I've helped others defend against the trolls with a 100% success rate when and if they stuck to the end.

Yes, it can cost you money, but this real life prisoners dilemma can only be won if we stick together. And MS is playing both ends against the middle here, to their own advantage of course.

Wow, way to blame the victim.

The first two times the decision was made above my head.

The third time I was in the C-suite and it was a joint decision. I had a heart-to-heart with our lawyers because I _did not_ want to settle. Our head IP lawyer said he felt me -- he thought the suit was bullshit, would love to fight, etc -- and if we decided to defend he'd be 100% with us. However, his firm was currently engaged in defending another suit with the litigant and it had been appealed through the circuit court in Texas. At that time it was pending hearing by the Supreme Court. That client had already accumulated more than $250,000 in legal fees and there was no guarantee that they'd win. Even if they did win, it was unlikely that they'd be able to recover any of those fees. He estimated total cost of fighting would be between $250,000 and $500,000.

I reached out to friends at large tech companies to see if they had experience dealing with the litigant. I heard back from two of them that they did have experience, and that they settled. Since there was an ongoing case involving the litigant that was already heading to the Supreme Court (and one that had at least as good a chance of winning) we opted _not_ to spend a significant amount of our venture capital fighting an expensive battle that, at best, would cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars and, at worst, we would lose in Texas.

In the end we spent significantly more money on investigating a defense then we actually paid in settlement.

If you're interested in covering the financial costs associated with fighting these suits please let me know. I would definitely take you up on that and fight all day every day.

Extortion is enabled by the previous rounds of victims paying up, so it's an endless cycle that simply won't stop until people stand their ground.

> If you're interested in covering the financial costs associated with fighting these suits please let me know.

I'm well aware of that, there were years when I paid more to the lawyers than to the tech department. Still, overall it was worth it. Big factor in our survival was that we had an EU parent company rather than one on the far side of the Atlantic.

Even so, I refuse to be extorted.

I did too until I realized that the alternative had a high probability of ending in bankruptcy resulting in loss of employment for two dozen employees. I'm fine taking a moral stand when I'm the only one who stands to lose. It's harder when you're playing with other people's money / lives.

The world isn't fair.

I guess this is where it helps that I was the CEO of the company being sued, had a European parent company (where software patents at the time were not valid) and would rather go down fighting than give in to blackmail. I can see the economical argument and I also see your argument with respect to playing with other peoples lives and money. The problem is that that attitude eventually results in more effect on other peoples lives and money, just not the people in your direct vicinity.

It's complicated. FWIW, if I was the CEO I probably would have fought.

It's great that you can afford that stance. It really is. But you can't expect individual companies all to be vigilantes; it's governments and/or governing bodies that need to step in and fix this mess.

Agreed. But until they do the pressure is on us.

Its clear that you are really passionate about this, however I don't think saying stuff like that helps. The respondent went so far as to describe a very reasonable scenario in which his company was outmatched by the litigant insofar as their willingness to lose money.

I don't think that should be vilified.

100% success rate when and if they stuck to the end

Except your "success rate" doesn't include things you can't get back, like time and effort which is crucial for a startup - even in the unlikely case that you get your attorney's fees back.

> Except your "success rate" doesn't include things you can't get back, like time and effort which is crucial for a startup - even in the unlikely case that you get your attorney's fees back.

That I'll readily agree with. Still, I absolutely believe that settling with these jerks is making the problem much worse.

It would seem obvious that if one party with a large pile of patents can look at an independent entity and their work and find something they own the rights to that their ideas are probably obvious and ought not to be protected.

I agree. Unfortunately, the US patent system doesn't.

Don't think anyone disagrees with that, but choosing between two evils, you know...

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