Games Where The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play | Hacker News Reader

Games Where The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play

feld.com

51 pointsmrkmcknz20 comments

By now the blogosphere, twitterverse, and even mainstream media is abuzz with the absurd decision that Yahoo has made to sue Facebook over ten software patents with the assertion that Facebook’s entire business is based on Yahoo’s patented inventions.

What is the potentially depressive effect on Facebook's IPO price come this May (or whenever) if it has a lawsuit hanging over it claiming that its entire business model is based on Yahoo's patented inventions and that it would face a ruinous liability should Yahoo prevail?

I suppose the timing could be coincidental but I doubt it. After all, the problem for Facebook can easily go away if it is just willing to be "reasonable" in resolving this quickly. Truly a new low in patent trolling.

> I suppose the timing could be coincidental but I doubt it.

I don't. FB is much more vulnerable now than after the IPO shares have been sold. (That probably translates to a bigger settlement.)

That's what grellas was saying — he doubts the timing is a coincidence.

Sorry, I was snarking: I don't doubt the timing at all. I also won't be surprised if other lawsuits materialize soon.

There's a lot of money in FB, and if they don't have good patent protection, then it's open season.

So if you don't doubt the timing is a coincidence, that would mean you think it is a coincidence?

No, it means there's no doubt. I in fact believe the opposite of what you wrote wrt it being a coincidence. And I don't doubt it.

Got it now?

I understand your intention. But you are using the word differently from most people understand it. If you are convinced that something is not true, most people would say that you doubt that thing a lot. I'm not trying to stir up an argument, just explain why people seem to be having problems with your statement.

Why mess with a winning strategy, see this quote:

Google and Yahoo settled the '361 patent dispute in August 2004. Google disclosed the settlement in an SEC filing just before its initial public offering (IPO). The relevant excerpt from Google's SEC filing states:

    Overture will dismiss its patent lawsuit against us 
    and has granted us a fully-paid, perpetual license to
    the patent that was the subject of the lawsuit and several 
    related patent applications held by Overture. The parties 
    also mutually released any claims against each other 
    concerning the warrant dispute. In connection with the 
    settlement of these two disputes, we issued to Yahoo
    2,700,000 shares of Class A common stock.

From this article: http://www.techuser.net/gcoverup.html

Of course the case isn't as strong this time, but it is a period of time when a troll has more than the usual leverage on the victim.

> This is not a winnable game for Yahoo, the Internet, innovation, or society.

It is however winnable for Scott Thompson's quarterly earnings, which must be a driver for the decision.

BTW, Would love to hear Fred Wilson talk about how Twitter is preparing, because it's a good guess that they're next.

I'm wondering what the result would be if this actually did escalate/spiral out of control with everyone suing everyone for every patent they have in Silicon Valley.

Maybe the best way to bring about patent reform is to highlight the absurdity of the system by blowing the entire system up.

Every patent holding company should just literally clog the court system with this BS. The lawyers from both each side of a suit can even be aware of the fact that the other side has no intention of actually trying to win a case and is instead just asserting its patents and forcing the courts to deal with them.

When you file a patent lawsuit, are you required to claim damages or can you just claim nothing, but just file a suit that you want the judicial system to deliberate on. i.e. can you seek judgement without seeking damages?

I fear that if that happens, the best case scenario would be some kind of "compromise" between the major patent holders, because by then they'd still have a lot invested in them, and the overall situation would still be worse than it is now when web patents aren't enforced.

> spiral out of control with everyone suing everyone for every patent they have in Silicon Valley.

That misses the real dynamic: Yahoo is suing because FB has money + they don't have as deep of a patent portfolio. (It's why Google shelled out a pile of dough for Nortel's portfolio.) The lawsuit wouldn't have happened if they had comparable portfolios; The lawsuits would then have ended in a draw.

Bullying/shakedown at its best. (I'm sure it's not personal to Scott Thompson, just business.)

Nah FB can drag this through the court system for years or even decades and then find some way to kill Yahoo in the meantime.

FB must have made a lot of improvements in online ads, which as far as I am aware, is what makes Yahoo money (side note, do Yahoo actually earn money?) so that would be an obvious place to attack. An alternative is to team up with Microsoft, who desperately needs some sort of social media strategy and have very very extensive patent portfolios.

> Nah FB can drag this through the court system for years or even decades and then find some way to kill Yahoo in the meantime.

It's a big distraction for FB. It's not a distraction for Y! (because obviously they don't have much business left in their business). So my guess is that FB settles to get it off their plate.

If FB instead takes the strategy you mention above and blows all that money, I'd love them to death for it. ("You wanna piece of me?! Come over here and let's rumble!" It would tell patent trolls that they are going to have to blow serious money in the future.)

Define distraction? You would need, say 10 full time lawyers on it, assume 200k/year on average, which would cost about 2 million a year.

Mark doesn't need to focus on the law suit, instead he can simply spawn of a process and subscribe to its signals (to borrow an OS metaphor).

What people don't understand is, patents legally are valued under the legal standard of roughly 'patents that win in court are real patents, those that lose, are not' This means that patents MUST be defended to even really be a patent. This means that, this scenario is almost automatic when a company like Facebook comes up for IPO. Facebook is one of those companies that essentially is 'The Internet' in 2012 on the timeline of companies that have held that title, (Yahoo, Google, Facebook).

This lawsuit will be settled, and then Facebook, Apple, Yahoo-Alibaba, Microsoft, AOL, and everyone else will resume the world war against Google.

Amateur hour in some of the analysis in these articles.

Patents aren't like trademarks -- it's not "defend it or lose it".

It's quite reasonable to have a huge patent portfolio of crap patents, keep them around to use as defensive ammunition (to deter being sued, or as a threat when sued), and not to be a punk ass bitch like Yahoo is now by trying to enforce them against a company contributing an order of magnitude (or two, or three) times more value to the world.

Yes, if a patent fails to stand up in court, it is no longer real, but if never use a bogus-but-issued patent, no one really tests its validity.

This action was entirely voluntary on Yahoo's part, which is why they must suffer. Seriously, if anyone competent is left at Yahoo, quit and get a job at a real company. Being an H1B is really the only reason I can imagine staying there, and I'm sure a competent person can find a replacement employer in the current market.

There needs to be a movement to encourage family members and friends to dump Yahoo e-mail, change their home page from Yahoo, maybe even dump Flickr.

I think that movement was called gmail beta.

Has any blogger found prior art yet?

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