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Comment by mmoustafa | Hacker News Reader

> "In the end, Sable agreed to pay Cloudflare $225,000, grant Cloudflare a royalty-free license to its entire patent portfolio, and to dedicate its patents to the public, ensuring that Sable can never again assert them against another company,"

Holy cow, that’s incredible. Cloudflare has single-handedly shut down one of the biggest tech patent trolls. I don’t know how they possibly got Sable to agree to those terms, but kudos to Cloudflare counsel.

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My understanding is that it comes from the top, kudos to CF counsel for sure, but also Matthew Prince who has a storied career of fucking with bad actors. Thanks Matthew!

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/cloudflare-s-matthew-pri...

Sable was on the hook for costs after losing. I imagine this settlement was a fraction of what they owed. If there is truly justice in this world, Sable principals will have to go out of pocket for tax liabilities and costs associated with shutting it down.

So it was not justice - just predatory capitalism finding out that there is always a bigger fish. Cloudflare wasn’t doing that from goodness of their heart, they were protecting their own profits.

I'm sure it would have been cheaper (in the short term) for cloudflare to have just paid off the troll, like everyone else does

It's absolutely a public service for them to have fought them

Beating a patent troll in court is predatory capitalism? I think you’re forgetting Sable was the aggressor (aka the Plaintiff), and they lost their suit in a court of law. Nobody is obligated to roll over and show their bellies if they can win against an unjust lawsuit.

patents are granted by the government. hardly seems like a problem with capitalism.

Newsflash: Property rights (including imaginary property i.e. artificial monopolies) are all granted and enforced by the government. As is currency.

Bwahaha, seriously?

Next you’ll be calling someone shooting a burglar ‘predatory capitalism’ because hey, a house is capital and they were protecting it! And they totally could have let the burglar with a gun leave peacefully, or something.

Not sure whether I understood the following :

If Sable dedicates their patents to the public, what does it mean for CF to be granted a "royalty-free license to its entire patent portfolio"?

I imagine if later they try to renege on that public grant, CloudFlare is still shielded.

Good spot, smart comment. Didn't occur to me but ofc you're right.

Still feels good to see the troll fall

From the Cloudflare version: "Sable IP is merely a shell entity formed to monetize (make money from) an ancient patent portfolio acquired by Sable Networks from Caspian Networks in 2006. Caspian Networks was a router company that went out of business nearly 20 years ago"

... if the patent portfolio is 20 years old, they must all be right at the end of their lifetime (the one in the lawsuit expired a year ago). Probably not worth it for Sable to keep them.

Maybe they had compromising info on their directors.

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