Oracle Sues Lodsys | Hacker News Reader

Oracle Sues Lodsys

groklaw.net

118 pointsdminor37 comments

Mirror mirror on the wall, what's the most hated company of them all?

Intellectual Ventures!

Isn't there speculation that Lodesys is a derivative of IV?

It's still speculation. Lodsys has come out to flat out deny any partnership or involvement in any way[1], but the #078 patent was originally assigned to Ferrera Etherial LLC in 2004, and then Webvention LLC in 2009, and then finally to Lodsys in 2010. A 2009 Law.com article [2] cites Ferrara Ethereal LLC as a shell company of IV. There is no knowledge of who or what Webvention is, except that it holds a ghost office in the same area as many other known or speculated shell companies IV operates.

Useful trivia: #7,222,078 [3] also happens to be the main patent behind Lodsys v. (independent iOS and Android developers), with #7,620,565 [4] backing it up. Lodsys only holds 4 patents, all four are cited as

[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/w...

[2] http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?i...

[3] http://www.google.com/patents?vid=7222078

[4] http://www.google.com/patents?vid=7620565

Mirror replies: That's a tough question, Nathan, because you just keep creating new ones. No single company can accumulate that much hate and they can't be easily linked to a single source. Disperse the hate. I must admit, you are one clever guy.

I'm reminded of Henry Kissinger's quip on the Iran-Iraq war:

"It's too bad they both can't lose."

Since they are seeking to invalidate the patents, I am rooting for Oracle in this suit.

There doesn't appear to be any evidence Kissinger said that. And anyway, they kind of did both lose.

Is it just me or does that sentence mean that both can only win?

Are you sure it is not: "It's too bad they can't both lose."

You are correct, but English is not as strict as math. You can read it as "It's too bad"->"It's not possible" "they both"->"for both of them" "can't lose."->"to loose".

Fascinating suit. I am wondering about the impact of cases like Bilski v. Kappos (cannot patent hedge fund algorithms), Prometheus v. Mayo (you can patent a method of testing, but not now to interpret the results), and Caraco v. Novo Nordisk (not really on scope of patent act but another indicator of hostility against abuse of our patent system, essentially using another act to strike down method of use patents as a method to keep exclusive access to a drug market in the US) on this one.

Basically it seems to me that in the last few years, the Supreme Court has tightened up criteria on what can be patented and how those patents can be used, so as to prevent abuses aimed at overly broad patents.

Anyway, it's strange to be rooting for Oracle here. BRB while I grab the popcorn.

Heel Face Turn? http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn

If we are looking for fictional analogies, the one that strikes me is "It was evil against evil in the ruins of Shadar Logoth ... foul fighting vile." http://www.dragonmount.com/forums/topic/56250-mordeth/

Blue and Orange Morality.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMora...

Their axis is "Profit" vs "Loss"; "Good" and "Evil" are secondary to that.

Great PR move from Oracle. Playing bad cop, good cop. I think this is purely about getting some love from the crowd that critized them for the Google suit.

Nah. They don't care what that crowd thinks. I think PJ got it right in the article. Lodsys is probably threatening Oracle customers with patents that cover Oracle software. If that's true, Oracle is suing to take away the threat from Lodsys. They also get to signal to customers and trolls that they won't put up with this sort of thing. Makes a lot of sense.

[edit for grammar]

That's exactly it according to GigaOM

> Oracle has decided to weigh in because Lodsys “has repeatedly threatened numerous Oracle customers” such as Walgreens over the use of a web-chat feature Lodsys claims to own.

- http://gigaom.com/mobile/oracle-sues-to-smash-patent-troll-l...

See Bryan Cantrill's talk from LISA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&feature=playe... , where he has a good comparison of not anthromorpizing Larry Ellison and Oracle. Paraphrased, "Think of him of as a lawnmower. The lawnmower doesn't care about opensourcing Solaris. The lawnmower _can't_ care about it, it's a lawnmower".

Oracle cares about making money and protecting their revenue stream. Getting Lodsys of the backs of their customers is one way of doing that.

Yeah, I saw that - some great stuff in there, particularly on the history of Solaris. It's great context for understanding what's going on in the Illumos world.

The trolls trolling the trolls.

I don't understand why they need to sue anyone. Looking at their financials - they look like they are doing fine.

I always thought patents were meant for defence when you are making money, and attack when you are losing money (my observations - not fact).

Looking at Oracle's cash flow/balance sheet -> they are definitely succeeding.

They don't need to sue anyone, but their customers have asked for protection as they are being threatened by Lodsys for using Oracle products, as far as I can tell. So this is a mixture of customer service, P.R. and flyswatting.

Has Oracle pivoted to become a law firm?

This is pretty much business as usual for the enterprise space. Threatening a company's customers tends to illicit a response.

> illicit

Or elicit, if it's legal.

I swear I typed the e - autocorrect is not my friend (heck, most times I type "the" it keeps changing to "he").

Yes. Long ago.

There's no content in the article about which four patents are at issue or what their significance is. Anyone recognize these?

   5,999,908 “Customer-Based Product Design Module”
   7,133,834 “Product Value Information Interchange Server”
   7,222,078 “Methods and System for Gathering Information from Units of a Commodity"
   7,620,565 “Customer-Based Product Design Module”

The patents share a common inventor (Daniel H. Abelow).

The patents all descend from the '998 patent ( http://imgur.com/dJT7o ): the '834 patent is a continuation of the '908, the '565 is a continuation of the '834, and the '078 is a continuation of a different continuation of the '908.

The patents have been in ~15 to 25 suits, depending on the patent and including declaratory judgment actions, since 2011.

They are all 4 of lodsys' patents according to wikipedia.

There's no content in the article about which four patents are at issue or what their significance is.

There is a link near the start of the article to groklaw's coverage of lodsys and their patents. http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2011061523...

They are also each referenced more than once in the text of the complaint.

I get the impression that Oracle's antics the last couple of months could have been moves done on behalf of Apple.

It's no secret that Larry and Steve were good friends, and purchasing Sun, just so Oracle could sue Google seems like something that could plausibly happen.

Similarly, Oracle suing a patent troll that was previously hounding Apple and their developers sounds just as likely.

For others who are slow: He means Larry Ellison, not Larry Page.

If Apple wanted to buy Sun's patents to sue Google, why didn't Apple just do it themselves? Jobs already declared "thermonuclear war" on Android, after all.

Oracle wanted Java more than Apple wanted Sun's patents, at a guess, and Java+Patents in a friendly Oracle's hands doesn't do Apple any harm.

It would have been nice if apple could have done this months ago when Lodsys started going after mobile app developers. Nice move by Oracle.

Apple did step in...

http://gamepolitics.com/2012/04/13/apple-wins-motion-lodsys-...

And just like that, from being disrespected and the world wanting them to lose, they will now be immensely popular with the world cheering for them!

On a serious note, I think if Oracle wins this, maybe there can be a system that can be setup that is cost effective to invalidate most patents.

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