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Comment by djk44 | Hacker News Reader

Hi. Cloudflare GC here. Some informed comments here. Feel free to AMA.

1) How can the broader community help end this sort of nonsense?

2) Do you see any potential for a company to offer patent troll defense as a service and drive costs down, or does it seem too big a problem to productize/scale a solution for?

1. It's all about underlying incentives. Short term those will always counsel early settlement, if there's enough awareness and collective action to take the long-term view, then we might be able to push incentives in another direction.

2. Some of the existing collectives combine their IP assets to give each other a license to each other's patents or the benefit of any future settlements, which limits the exposure a bit. Not sure if something like underwriters of patent troll insurance could combine the incentives enough into long-term view to make that worthwhile.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/23/9021191/google-patent-sta...

The same Google that did this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/inventor-says-go...

:thinking:

The reasoning here was that if they didn't patent it, some other bad actor / patent troll would, and that would cause far more problems. Google so far has a record of never using a patently offensively, and only time will tell if this will keep holding true.

Google also has a giant shared patent pool that they let other companies use to defend themselves, so this is part of that, alongside the article I shared.

> Google so far has a record of never using a patently offensively

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/waymo-drops-most...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-bt-lawsuit/google-...

Those are both responses to first being attacked.

BT attacked Google with a patent lawsuit in 2011. And Google certainly held the belief that Uber was acting quite nefariously toward Waymo.

Punch someone in the face, do not be surprised if they defend their self and come back at you.

Those are examples of using it defensively. They use patents to defend themselves against lawsuit.

In this case, anyone is free to use the algorithm, and Google won't go after them with the patent.

The Waymo vs Uber one wasn't a defense against a lawsuit.

There is no legal necessity to patent first, only to publish first if you're only using it for straight defense.

patent troll defense as a service: https://www.unifiedpatents.com

Did you get fees/Do you expect to get fees?

Are any attorney fees you might win actually comparable to the real cost to cloudflare?

Not sure yet where costs and fees settle out. Generally, in US system you shouldn't expect that fee awards would shift the incentive structure.

> Feel free to AMA.

Who says lawyers can't live dangerously? ;-P

Given that part of your motivation is to help others in a similar situation from being trolled in the future, were you disappointed that the CAFC issued a non-precidental summary ruling? Is there a way to petition the court to issue a full opinion that would be binding on lower courts? If so, did you consider doing so?

Did you engage any experts to provide any written opinions or testimony about the technology? (just curious about whether this is a factor at all.)

Do you intent to stop providing material support for known terrorist organizations[1]?

1. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c127778e4b0835fe3277f2f

Will you folks please stop breaking the internet?

And by that, I mean forcing javascript bullshit on HTTP GET requests? Get requests are definitionally idempotent, and shouldn't require me to run garbage and deal with recaptcha.

GC has no scope there really...

Well GP was complaining about garbage, that's exactly the job of the GC.

It seems that in this thread GC means General Counsel not Garbage Collector. ️

I guess he did say AMA...

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