Meta ordered to pay $175M for infringing on two patents held by Voxer Inc | Hacker News Reader

Meta ordered to pay $175M for infringing on two patents held by Voxer Inc

militarytimes.com

172 pointsgrej73 comments

Meta paying $175M would produce much needed schadenfreude.

However it's worth mentioning that this case appeared before the notoriously patent-troll-friendly Judge Alan D. Albright. The man actually openly encouraged patent owners to appear before him, and senators have asked the Supreme Court to reprimand him (the Chief Justice has since criticized him). The Albright situation is so bad that the Western District recently had to introduce a forced case randomization in order to keep plaintiffs from shopping for him. I'd say the chance this was overturned on appeal would be high.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/t...

Can someone who knows about US law explain why it's easier to change procedure and introduce case randomization than to simply sack the judge for handling cases in an obviously biased way?

I am not a lawyer, but am a US citizen.

A central design goal of the US system is to prevent any one person or group from getting too much power. Judges in particular were seen by the Founders as an important check on the power of the legislative and executive branches of government, so those 2 branches probably simply do not have the power to remove the judge. Other judges, perhaps on the Supreme Court, might have the power to remove the judge, but only for breaches of ethical standards.

A judge can be removed from cases. But they continue to get a salary and benefits until impeached.

Practically it’s easier to force a resignation than impeach.

I'm far from an expert, but on a cursory search it looks like federal judges can only be removed by congressional impeachment, which would be extremely hard to pull off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Te...

AFAIK, judges can't be "fired" in the traditional sense. If they are going to be removed, they need Congress to impeach the judge in question.

As we saw with the Trump impeachment, getting a 2/3 vote in the Senate is exceedingly difficult.

It's the same reason a jury cannot be punished for giving the "wrong" decision. Otherwise you can influence the jury/judge.

In both cases, appeals are the accepted method to solve the issue.

Judges are elected or appointed, they can't be directly fired, and it would take the federal government to call for impeachment. This is a non-trivial matter, and the fallout would require a special appointment, or special election.

To institute a policy that increases fairness of the whole system instead of targeting a specific individual makes sense. After all there is nothing to say that someone else (or several someones) wouldn't have the same issue.

This solves the problem, without having to literally make it an act of congress.

You can't sack federal judges, they're subject to the same removal process as the president: 1/2 the house has to vote to impeach, then 2/3 of the Senate has to vote to convict.

It happens, but generally for criminal reasons: https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/impeachments-federal-judg...

Caveat Lector: Not a lawyer.

This man is a federal district judge, who's appointment and removal are governed by Article 2 of the Constitution. Specifically, he must be nominated by the president, and confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime term. While he converts to senior status at some point, that doesn't change much in his case*. To remove him, you must have the House of Representative pass a bill of impeachment, the senate must hold an impeachment hearing, and 60 senators must vote in favor. That bars him from all federal service.

To change local district procedure, the Chief Judge can simply make it so. A lot easier than getting Senators to agree on something. One guy who's under a lot of outside pressure (from appeals courts and potentially the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who senators were asking to look into the issue) is highly motivated to fix a problem in his house, so to speak.

Unrelated to the message of your comment, but where on earth do people learn phrases such as 'Caveat Lector'?

Honestly I see things like this on Hacker News all the time, some obscure (to me) latin phrase that I've never seen outside of these message boards. Is there some specific body of literature that sprinkles latin phrases in otherwise common english text?

> recently had to introduce a forced case randomization in order to keep plaintiffs from shopping for him

I thought all U.S. District Courts had random assignment of cases to judges?

He's the only district judge in the Waco Division, so if you applied there, you'd get him.

Oh, so I guess they didn't have random assignment across divisions (which maybe some districts do and other districts don't?).

I'm completely clueless on the court process. Wouldn't that mean that, depending on who you got, you might have to travel an absurd distance just to get your court case heard? It's good to help fight patent trolls, but it sounds like it puts a lot of burden on the sincere cases.

Indeed, my company had a case in front of him, and like most companies do, we settled because it was cheaper than taking it to trial.

although the case was initially handled by Judge Albright in Waco, the case was transferred in November 2021 to the Austin division and Judge Yeakel, who handled the case thereafter (including at the jury verdict stage).

Seems unlikely to me that Facebook Live based their development on this Walkie Talkie app and reading the complaint [0] many of the patents seem excessively broad. Both streaming and storing a live video transmission can be patented?

I suspect that military veterans get extra deference by Texas juries.

[0]: https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1...

Yeah, I was reading through the complaint, started looking through the patents, and unless I'm missing something, this seems more patent-trolly than any sort of legitimate complaint.

The complaint itself makes Voxer seem a little red-flaggy itself. Why Voxer created the application is immaterial to whether or not Meta infringed on their patents. The fact they won "Best New App 2013" from "Random bullshit SV award mill" is also immaterial. The "Silicon Valley Business App Awards" themselves call themselves an advertising company. It's an award you buy to say you won an award.

And from the patents I've looked over, it seems they're trying to patent the overall concept of chunking the data. Is that right? Am I missing something? I've seen nothing specific. No implementation.

don't..blame the player? I agree this is not constructive, hinders progress, and just invites this kind of decadent courtroom posturing.

but thats the game that is playing, right? I have some of these nonsense patents myself. I sort of had to go along as a condition of my employment

If they held the patent defensively, that would be one thing.

But this is not that. They are suing Meta for damages. That doesn't happen unless Voxer brings it to court.

It's not like Voxer wrote the patents, sold them off, then is getting money because TrollCo is suing Meta for infringement of those patents. No, Voxer is suing. We can completely blame them if they are suing based on shit patents.

I'm conflicted here. I hate both patent trolls and Meta. Not sure who to root for.

Against Meta in general, against patent trolls in this case?

That's the rub, ain't it?

But at the end of the day, the actions matter more than the players.

Root for Meta winning on appeal eventually - because we don't want this kind of precedent to stick - but wasting a lot of time and money in the process?

The idea of sending media before you actually have a destination address is interesting because the patent mentioned network hops. If that just means storing it then that's boring, but if it meant designing a live network that could update and rewrite destinations in flight then that is interesting. In the real time media systems I know of you always know the endpoint address before sending, even if that address is merely the next hop or a bridge.

ethernet has a broadcast mode in which the specific destination is not known (obviously "all nodes on some range" but that's not specific), and media is one of the tentpole use-cases of these sorts of multicast

Every aspect of media delivery has a patent associated with it. Adaptive bitrate streaming? Patented. Segmented delivery of a stream? Patented. Picking a quality from a drop down? Patented. One machine passing video to another? Patented.

If you run a service which shifts video/audio in any decent scale, then companies like Xperi, Kudelski and many patent trolls, will come out of the woodwork and make your legal team work overtime.

This headline is terrible... it's not that Meta "copied a veteran's app", more like Meta infringed on patents held by Voxer, a veteran-founded company.

Yes but the moderation here is very pro big company. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32855747 The title was not edited until long after the article fell off the front page despite the thread’s substantial push-back and the GCloud employee sending a request to HN mods.

Titles on HN are a reflection of the HN mods personal and financial incentives. Just like any spammy news site, don’t take what YC posts as gospel. (Even if pg has written a gospel …)

Voxer is also well-known enough, at least a decade ago, to be mentioned in the headline. I remember having it for some reason, probably because people I know actually used it in that early era of smartphones.

if I'm not mistaken, the gist of the patent (10511557) seems to be

  1) video playback can be switched between "live" and "vod"
  2) a playback system (MCMS) that renders 1 or more streams and automatically prioritizes which streams to watch?
  2) video streams can be persisted to device
  3) video streaming reduces in quality during poor network conditions

I can't think of any live stream app that doesn't do anything similar (youtube live immediately comes to mind). It does seem like the patent was applied for in 2007, but seeing something like makes me think anything anyone builds now is bound to be sued eventually.

How is justin.tv being started in 2007 [0] not prior art given the timing?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin.tv

There would seem to be a lot of prior art that could be invoked to challenge these patents. For example, my friend Andrew Green released a Mac app he wrote called "NetPhone" in 1995. This is so long ago that the app had to worry about squeezing the traffic out over dialup to get to the internet.

source: http://baby.indstate.edu/CU-SeeMe/devl_archives/feb_95/0299....

> The Texas jury found that Facebook Live and Instagram Live incorporated two pieces of Voxer’s technologies that involve streaming media over networks

I don't feel sorry for FB at all, but patents for streaming data over a network seems nonsensical, at best. I just picked out a random patent from the lawsuit (https://ia801906.us.archive.org/16/items/gov.uscourts.txwd.1...), and the claims are so dumb.

Patent (https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...):

> Users are empowered to conduct communications in either: (i) a near-synchronous or "live" conversation, providing a user experience similar to a standard full duplex phone call; or (ii) in a series of back and forth time-delayed transmissions (i.e., time-shifted mode). Further, users engaged in a conversation can seamlessly transition from the live mode to the time-shifted mode and back again. This attribute also makes it possible for users to engage in multiple conversations, at the same time, by prioritizing and shifting between the two modes for each conversation. Two individuals using the system can therefore send recorded voice messages back and forth to each other and review the messages when convenient, or the messages can be sent at a rate where they essentially merge into a live, synchronous voice conversation.

Hmmm... this sounds familiar... (stripping away all the nonsense patent language). So people can send voice messages or text messages, or both, or call. Wow, such innovation.

> This new form of communication, for the purposes of the present application, is referred to as "Voxing."

Thank god this never caught on.

This appears to be the complaint https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/09/22/voxer_complaint_1_july_202...

"The Texas jury"

This was another one of those fraudulent patent cases from the patent rocket docket in Texas.

Expect the award to be overturned. It's very likely the underlying patents will be thrown out at the appellate level as they cover a number of things that are not patentable. (In a nutshell, doing something and adding "on a computer" does not make it patentable, but that is precisely what the underlying patents in this case try to claim.)

This is a federal case in Austin. I don’t think you’re talking about the same thing (Eastern District).

The Eastern TX patent trolling should not be a thing anymore due to this Supreme Court ruling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC_Heartland_LLC_v._Kraft_Food...

This is good to know. Thanks.

“Filings in the district of Delaware have increased.”

The situation in East Texas sucked, but how is that better than the fact that the State of Delaware is the nations de fact merchant court?

I do not agree that the state of Delaware is the nation’s de facto merchant court, but even if true, in this case it would be because businesses choose to incorporate there, which is a legal right in the US.

If I recall correctly, the reason patent trolls used East Texas is because a judge there has sons that have law firms and coincidentally come up with favorable patent rulings.

There is a completely different reason to use Delaware, explained in the linked Wikipedia source.

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/patent_lawsuits_drop...

>The ruling said the word “resides” requires suits filed under that prong of the statute to be filed in the state where the company is incorporated. The patent law also allows businesses to file patent suits in a district where a company being sued has a regular and established place of business.

>In the first half of 2017, patent lawsuits filed in the Eastern District of Texas dropped 21.3 percent from the same period last year, according to data from Lex Machina cited by Texas Lawbook. In the same period, patent cases in the District of Delaware, where many companies are incorporated, jumped 71 percent.

All patent cases are federal cases...

Right but last I checked, Austin was in the Southern District not the notorious Eastern District.

Yes, but "the Texas jury" point of my comment still stands.

I'm happy when anything bad happen to Meta, but why does it matter than the app is from a Green Beret veteran?

The "veteran-owned company" angle might be the reason Voxer won the lawsuit. They requested a jury trial for a patent infringement lawsuit in Texas, that's not a decision one makes if they are wanting a ruling purely on the techical merits of the case.

It should be interesting to see what happens during the appeal.

The article is from militarytimes.com

So we like this one because the patent holder made their own product as well?

or do we still just not like software patents

or do we like that there is a (read: any) remedy for this person having their idea and product copied

or do we just not like Meta and their tactics

Here, let me help:

1. "Facebook approached Voxer about a potential collaboration that led to Voxer sharing its patents and proprietary information with the company"

2. Facebook then said 'naaaaah'

3. Facebook then copied some of the technologies he'd shown them to both Facebook and Instagram

The conclusion most people would draw is that Facebook is a piece of shit.

Does that clarify things? Or would you like to keep suggesting that people here have double standards regarding software patents?

You missed the "Facebook revoked Voxer’s access to key components of the Facebook platform". That isn't a good look when you exclude the competition even if you own the platform. Ask Microsoft how well that works in court.

Its not an antitrust lawsuit its a patent infringement lawsuit

in fact its the exact opposite of an antitrust lawsuit since patents themselves are a 20 year state-sanctioned monopoly

Actions taken against a party factor into any lawsuit.

The question is whether you would hold the same opinion if the patent holder never made their own app at all

Because since this is a patent lawsuit the existence of a video technology patent is all that matters

Not the ways facebook did grimy actions

This isnt fundamentally different than other software patent litigation threads, so yes I am suggesting a double standard and am here to confirm it

> that led to Voxer sharing its patents

Wait what does this mean? Isn't the whole point of patents that it's supposed to be public? If so, how could you "share" them any more than you already did when publishing the patent?

> copied some of the technologies

That's the part people are disagreeing with. The patents are overly broad and the Judge is well-known for siding with patent trolls.

So is Voxer patent trolling here? Does it matter because it is meta? Does their earlier meeting about the voxer app actually factor in to it?

If we are living in a world with patents (we are), it is good to see their benefits extended to the small guys as well as megacorps.

Personally, I think there are good patents and bad patents. The existing criteria are pretty good, but poorly applied. In particular, the difficulty is the obviousness test.

Patentable inventions should not be obvious to an expert in the field at the time of filing.

It is very difficult to assess what is novel/non-obvious after the fact. E.g. the wheel now seems an obvious solution to help move weight. Before it was invented, not so much.

One quibble, almost? everything is obvious to a bona fide expert in the field at the time of filing. The legal requirement is that something be non-obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the field.

I think we are both a little off. The test is for someone with with ordinary skill for someone practicing in the field, eg an ordinary mech engineer for a mechanical patent.

Everything is not obvious to an expert. There are actually hard problems that take time and effort to solve, even for experts.

I also often feel like HN takes inconsistent positions on things, but it's important to remember that the community here is composed of different people with different positions. Every position you list above is held by, and voice by, someone — but not everyone. So, it's not actually inconsistent unless you forget that individuals all have their own minds.

its not the stated opinions I’m that interested in, its the surfaced opinions by way of consensus

glorifying a software patent could easily be greyed out or collapsed by the community

while top comments also reflect at least several people’s willingness to substantiate the quality of

I'd love to know what kind of patents someone developing a walkie talkie app can get. Unfortunately, despite being a software engineer for 20+ years, I have no ability to actually decipher what is actually present in patent applications.

Seems like they should have settled this right away. I predict the reward will be increased through further litigation.

Based on what? Are you aware of the relationship between texas and patent trolls?

Another possible scenario is that when facebook saw how basic Voxel is they quit the collab.

WTOI - Walkie Talkies on Internet

I think it is Radio over IP since a handie talkie is just a transceiver broadcasting a signal in half-duplex. I think a handie talkie may be even simpler in that it is broadcasting simplex.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_communication

Radio over IP

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_over_IP

Amount is missing a few zeros no? Should have been worth more.

What a great win.

When being interviewed with Facebook (or anyone else for that matter) about your product, always impose and enforce a non-disclosures agreement (NDA).

I am not a lawyer but damn, … this is basic business law.

odd take, people and organizations that get a lot of deal flow wont bother with you if you put those kind of barriers in place, 99 out of 100 times your idea and proposal is junk

this jury result is based on a finding of patent infringement

Right. My bad.

Unfortunately nobody savvy is going to sign that NDA.

You have to either a) not tell them anything useful or b) accept the risk.

What a great time to be an entrepreneur trying to crack the angel market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com