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Comment by ipsum2 | Hacker News Reader

Although AltspaceVR's public announcement claims they're shutting down due to lack of funds, I suspect that being sued by a patent troll also contributed to the closure of the company.

See: https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/12511784 and discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/6q4idg/alt_space_pate...

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All other cases file by this patent troll:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=VIRTUAL+IMMERSION+TECHNOLOGIE...

Patent in question:

https://www.google.com/patents/US6409599

Here is the original product:

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/1996/12/09/focus...

in this instance the patent itself bothers me more than the trolling.

These kind of overly broad patents which should have never been granted in the first place are really thing biggest thing killing innovation in the USA.

Nothing like giving a few years of your life to a project and having it shut down over a bad patent.

On the other hand it was nice to see them using a number of innovations I created in 2005 but didn't patent.

(Cofounder here) Note that we didn't file any patents, this was no accident.

Software patents are generally evil, and I used to feel that creating them was bad. Then a mentor taught me that often your patents can be used to offset other peoples patents. But with Trolls they have nothing to protect.

Any reason why they wouldn't have mentioned the lawsuit in their press release if it was a big issue for them?

My uninformed guess is that talking about current legal proceedings is frowned upon by their lawyers.

"Lack of funds to cover ongoing legal fees" is "lack of funds".

It is, but it's a far more nuanced version. Lack of funds is more leadership to blame. Getting sued by a patent troll, is what we all hope our side projects avoid long enough to obtain sufficient funding, so we can pay the crooks if need be.

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