Startup Won't Give in to Motivational Health Messaging's $35k Patent Demand | Hacker News Reader

Startup Won't Give in to Motivational Health Messaging's $35k Patent Demand

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171 pointsDiabloD329 comments

Oh wow. That lady, Rachael Lamkin- Motiv's lawyer in this. I wouldn't want to get on her bad side:

Finally, a word about tone: this letter is strongly worded, and contains more vigor than is usually employed in legal communications. But here the language and tone are intentional. Motiv is a small start-up, with limited resources, working like mad to create something helpful and innovative. Motiv is also a patent holder that respects valid patents. But MHM’s patent is neither innovative or valid, and should not be asserted, especially against good companies trying to do good things. And on a personal note, as you (Ed) know, I have repeatedly defended small companies, and the terrified people working for said companies, from S&T. I have seen the harm caused by S&T’s business model first-hand. Please counsel your clients to rethink this course.

Classic case of a playground bully relying on fear and intimidation to steal lunch money. The EFF is doing a great job of showing instances where people stand up to he bully and more often than not win, which in turn empowers others to do the same. People become less intimidated, and the bully begins to lose his key weapon.

I think the root of this problem is the US patent office that keeps approving this ambiguous and silly patents. Is there anything being done to stop this kind of patents from going through?

Allowance rates cratered after Alice v. CLS Bank, and when they USPTO makes a mistake, there are stronger mechanisms to limit the damage. Cost/time to kill a patent is about 1/5 of what it was five years ago; the Eastern District of TX is no longer an option for most suits; and it's much easier to get the plaintiff to pay for your legal fees when you prevail in a frivolous suit.

Well one thing we could do is actually fund the uspto with more tax dollars instead of having like 99% of their budget come from fees. That the fees are higher for accepted patents creates some obvious conflicts of interest.

Good luck getting any politician to push for that.

I don't care about the general patents they give out. I think there should be patent categories like tech, physical, medical, etc

A tech patent should only last 3-5 years, which is a lifetime in tech to give you an upper hand.

I think that would help solve the problem. I mean its insane Amazon was able to patent a 1 click buy and just stop everyone else from using it for so long.

Nope nothing is being done. I feel the patent office has got a little better (just adding on a computer doesn't make it novel thanks to the Supreme Court), but they are self funded (funded by fees), so if they're not issuing patents they won't make as much money and Will face a budget crunch.

The patent office is not held financially liable for issuing bad patents either. So in the end they're just going to keep issuing bad ones until the rules are changed.

Why not abolish the patent system altogether? Don't allow private companies to use government force to monopolize ideas in the first place.

Patents were created because we believe that there’s a win-win to providing limited term protection for new inventions. There are fields, like IC design, where lack of IP protection would halt innovation pretty quickly - nobody is going to invest tens or hundreds of millions to build a new chip if a competitor can copy it in a matter of months.

That said, it’s a bargain made for the public good, and we should always keep that in mind. It’s pretty clear that there are abuses of the patent system, we need to think about how we can modify it to minimize those abuses while protecting valuable research.

I've only founded one startup that made a chip, and patents didn't help (or hinder) us at all.

Another example would be Intel: you're saying that Intel would stop designing chips if there were no more patents?

Nobody's saying to get rid of copyright, things as specific as a chip design could still be protected.

There might still be uses... But I would say granting of patents should be conditioned on the good they do society.

And limited in timed based on the investment made.

Still, it's tempting to think patents should only be permitted in certain areas...

> granting of patents should be conditioned on the good they do society.

Perhaps that's the standard, according to some, that is upheld today? Whose opinion shall we then use to uphold such a standard?

Yep. It's fairly recent too. The patent is from 2015.

Our business model is based on similar mechanics (tracking activity through our device + performance-based suggestions). It's too soon, but wondering when they point their eyes on us...

From the article: It provides examples such as (...) messages like “do not fear” and “God is with you” when a “user enters a dangerous neighborhood.”

I would go crazy with those messages poping-out all the time, here in Poland.

Meanwhile, in Shenzhen no one gives a fuck about patents.

I wonder how patent abuse and no patents will compare in the long run.

No, China is entering the era where trademarks and patents begin to mean something. Unfortunately the first time you run into that it might be because someone in China trademarked your company name, but hey...

Not my field, but I've heard it suggested that China-style government corruption is better for innovation than US-style. When influence buying is less pervasive, more concentrated in large incumbents, the resulting regulatory capture, and associated intellectual policy (patents and copyright), places more of its anti-competitive emphasis on reducing the threat of innovation.

One of the concerns about TPP, and especially its investor-state dispute settlement (sort of regulatory-capture insurance), was globally institutionalizing the less innovationally-productive style.

In China you know who is in charge. In the U.S you get all sorts of weird laws and policies and it's all a bunch of proxies implementing them. There's no one to negotiate with because the people setting the priorities and agendas of the proxies are hidden and the only solution is to lobby your own proxies to move around on the chessboard.

Given the silent downvote, I note that I heard it at a talk by a Harvard economic development professor. But it was said as an aside, and I'm unclear on whether it was within their own research focus/expertise. And Harvard econ profs don't exactly have a great long-term trackrecord at avoiding nonsense. So speculative, but not news media random noise. Speculative wrt China - the US description should be relatively uncontroversial.

But government and self censorship is a real problem. Interesting juxtaposition.

Maybe it isn't. The ability to freely say whatever you want has been something that's only been true in the US this century and in Europe after the world war (where still some kinds of talk is restricted). Historically this condition has never been true.

While they didn't pay the $35k, it couldn't have been cheap. I wonder how much was spent on lawyer fees to produce the documents presented in TFA. All of them thoroughly researched (to me, a layman) and presented. Looks expensive.

Who's to say the charges would stop at $35k? Others may try to extort them too if they appear willing to pay.

Signaling to the market that you won't settle may prevent future problems.

That is historically the risk if giving in to extortion.

IANAL and don't know anything about this, but I suspect she's defended against enough of these "frivolous" lawsuits that she's able to write these responses relatively quickly. While expensive, they're probably not as expensive as paying out what's demanded in the initial claim.

This is why I love the EFF. The EFF and ACLU give me hope that all is not lost. RIP JPB.

There are also tons of "good" patents that prevent startups from innovating.

It's hard to believe that patents are given for very obvious ideas that many people must have thought about independently. I've had similar ideas (only not based specifically on location), and wouldn't consider them patentable.

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