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Comment by jimmydddd | Hacker News Reader

While I agree that more transparency is typically better for the public at large, I don't see this specific issue as a big deal. Letting companies keep certain things confidential might speed up the settlement process and get issues resolved quicker and with a lower cost, which could be a public benefit. So yeah, more transparency would have benefits, but some downsides too. So good luck with your fight, but for me personally, I don't really care one way or another.

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Why is it a public benefit if companies resolve cases faster saving themselves cash? I’d rather the court records and data be open by default.

Because less time in the court is less time that public institutions have to spend on it, which means less money spent by the taxpayer on the case.

What's an estimated dollar amount on this, for all patent trials in the US, with court fees paid by the loser excluded?

I'm going to throw out a guess of less than 0.01% GDP.

I’m not just going to accept giving up on public government data and records because some patent trolls are wasting tax dollars.

If exposing a patent troll's identity would make the patent troll file frivolous lawsuits less often then public institutions might save money in the future.

Why do you think transparency would make things take longer?

You’re getting downvoted but it’s true. A lot of these suits are patent trolls, and a lack of secrecy mostly hurts the victims, not the aggressors.

If you think it’s bad that you got sued by a patent troll, wait until the court makes you reveal the otherwise secret structure of your LLC, or the trade secret inner workings of your product, just because the court deems the fact of public disclosure as not damaging enough to warrant secrecy - even though you did not choose to be here and did nothing wrong.

Beyond that, having to carefully justify every redaction massively increases costs. Those costs mostly flow from the victim to the lawyers, and in reality increased costs and risk of disclosure will mostly just result in higher settlement values for the trolls.

I think a lot of people here would see revealing the "secret structure" of an LLC to be a positive.

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