How Like.com Shut Down A Competitor–And Broke Up Its Funding Round
blogs.forbes.com
blogs.forbes.com
As for this story, I don't understand the investor reaction. You would think that finding that Google fear you would be even more a reason to invest in the company and to raise a boatload. They should have raised the 500k with a view of raising a larger round a little later on - who knows, part of the patent settlement may have been that Google buys the company. Not unheard of
ps. software patents suck. i wish there was a mutual agreement amongst valley companies not to enforce against each other. a bit like mutually assured destruction with the soviets. most people here understand it is the execution and not government idea protection that makes you successful. google has their own history of this with adwords and adsense, so i am sure they could be bought around :)
My best wishes to Arlo and AJ. What comes around goes around, the valley is a small place and these things don't go unnoticed.
The patent system, in cases like this, is merely camouflage for anti-competitive drive-bys.
even in this case i'd say it depends on whether it was done on your own dime or public money
that just shows wide-spread mismanagement of public money. At all the private companies i've worked, i signed the document that all my patents done on the company's dime, are to belong to the company.
>You use public money to drive the paved roads.
And thus the contractor-builder of the road can't charge the toll on the road (well, except for the cases when he got a sweet deal what normal people would consider mismanagement of public funds )
But private companies are very different than governments. Private companies generally want to make sure that no one else has this IP, but themselves.
A government, at least a capitalist one, is generally happy that you're incentivized to invent and create patents. Although they may want to also have use for themself, but it needn't be exclusive (like your employers desire).
In US we have the Bayh-Dole Act which gives you ownership of your invention, but of course, the US has a "non-exclusive, non-transferable, irrevocable, paid-up license to practice or have practiced on its behalf throughout the world".
I don't understand how you can consider that mismanagement of public funds. It seems to satisfy both the capitalist angle and the greater good.
And to be clear this only applies if you take direct funding from the government, typically in the form of a grant, where you sign a specific agreement. Using public goods, such as the roads, street lights, food inspection, don't impose any obligation on your part -- except taxation.
As a shareholder(taxpayer) of this corporation(government) i think it is a mismanagement of the funds to allow for the uncompensated re-assignment of the rights to the direct products of the direct investments done by the corporation. You think it is not. Difference of opinions. As in the example i mentioned before - when contractor/builder gets full rights for the toll on the road he merely built and when he was paid in full for the work - i'd see this as mismanagement, and you'd see this as the capitalist angle and the greater good. Difference of opinions.
Fair enough... maybe it's obvious from the name: VladRussian :-)
510. User selects an image of a merchandise > 520. Perform image analysis > 530. Perform similarity operation to identify merchandise that is similar > 540. Return result with images of merchandise deemed similar
From Fortune column, a description of what Modista could do:
It could take a particular handbag and match it to other similarly shaped and colored items.
According to Kumar, "Modista’s technology was better". Then, Kumar "contends that the patent should not have been given in the first place" and "Modista should’ve been given the chance to compete on its own merits."
I don't know about the validity of the Like.com patent or how different Modista's processes are from those described in the claims of the Like.com patent. But, looking at the patent issue from another perspective: How would Kumar feel if one of K9's other portfolio companies -- such as twilio, whose cofounders have filed for several patents -- learned about an upstart with a very similar technology? Would he be willing to let the company compete with twilio on its own merits? Or would he want twilio to play hardball, too?
But the patent wasn't on technology at all. If it was, it would have covered, for example, a method of image analysis. A competitor could then use their own, different method of image analysis.
The next time you get called by a junior analyst at a time when you're not raising and haven't gotten any tech press, it's likely because someone else is raising -- ringing up competitors is a pretty standard part of due diligence.
You can sometimes figure out who's out raising just by asking your own investors -- they tend to know what's going on at other firms.
Not everyone is sweetness and light in this situation. Really, blocking a competitor from raising is the only reason why you should take the call.
You've been given a piece of information you've never heard before, about behavior that people aren't exactly going to jump out of the woodwork to self-report. You might need to do a little digging of your own to determine whether it's true or not - but then you'll have information you can't just Google for, and that's often the most valuable kind.
Or you could just be snarky.
This isn't wikipedia.
And yes, this happens.
The best technology doesn't always win, and I'd argue often doesn't due to a myriad of issues.
The blog article would be better if it wasn't 100% whine. Linking the original [1] would have been better HN material.
Nobody told the founders at Modista to file a patent on their work? There's $2500 bucks that would have been well spent. They could have simultaneously achieved patent protection and a re-examination of Like.com's patent. Since Like's would come up as an office action, they would turn around and send all the prior art that shows why their idea isn't like that patent but that even that Like's patent didn't have any original ideas, which internally could have started other wheels rolling.
Like it or not, you have to file patents for things that you are doing that are cool. This does two things for you, one it brings out people who might have applied for or done something similar, and two it gives you a way to prevent other people from jumping into your space. The Like.com guys did that, the Modista folks did not.
And more to the point, why should you have to file a patent just to get a different patent re-examined? And with as little effort as the patent office puts into examining patents (as evidenced by the patents they grant), why should anyone expect them to find other relevant patents for you?
Patents just provide a tool for stopping a competitor rather than actually competing with them. "Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone else to do the other 95% so you can sue them."
I don't know if you read stuff from Nolo press [1] but we are fortunate that you can get the help you need for filing a patent in Sunnyvale [2] The last time I checked the filing fee was like $1500. You do need to put it in the form required for the application, and you need to respond when the patent examiner sends your patent back with questions.
Attorneys are nice, they provide a service which takes a lot of worry out of things and some of them are pretty aggressive at getting the patent issued even if the claims whittle down to something fairly obscure but they do charge by the hour. The last time I saw the bill for doing the patent paperwork it was about $12,000 total.
[1] http://www.nolo.com/products/patent-it-yourself-PAT.html
[2] http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/Departments/SunnyvalePublicLibrary/R...