Cloudflare Declares War on a Patent Troll with $50,000 Bounty

Previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14316486.

I hope Cloudflare wins this one because screw patent trolls.

I have to say though, a company that's looking at massive patent fees vs. the paltry $50k offered for someone to play lawyer for them, and the fact their security bug bounty program gets you a whole 1 year's free service + a limited edition t-shirt (!!) + on some website hall of fame...

I don't understand why their policy is literally "Let's toss 1 dollar bills at people and hopefully someone will go to bat for us!" instead of paying regular fees for real lawyers or anywhere near industry standards for bounties. It seems almost insulting.

Next twist: Blackbird provides the prior art and claims the bounty.

Archived copy, which can be read without JS enabled:

https://archive.fo/zjFdt

Such a vague patent shouldn't have been accepted in the first place. It's essentially an idea with no specific details. How long before we get a patent on "Something that serves a purpose of any kind" ?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=H...

This is just more ammo in the 'Patent system is broken, just abolish it' argument. From my point of view it harms innovation. Sadly there is the valid view that it helps the newer inventor though. The whole Patent system makes me sad.

Not to undermine the effort, but $50K doesn't qualify as war by any measure. A war-like outcome would be seeking to bankrupt the troll or at least severely constraint its ability to abuse the legal system in the future.

>[...] Blackbird, popped up last year after several attorneys quit their jobs at big law firms to try their hand at "patent trolling"

Sadly, "Patent trolling" is to law as to what "creating an unicorn startup" is to tech. High risk, everyone dislikes it but the payout is great if it works.