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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

Congrats!

How is the case of fighting off Dolby's patent racketeering going? They tried to attack Snapchat for using AV1.

Last update seems to be "lawsuit was filed" with zero updates since then. That stuff tends to move slowly.

Hopefully their patents will be busted and preferably Dolby will be also forced to pay damages for filing invalid lawsuits. That's the only way to teach patent trolls proper lessons.

How is Dolby a patent troll? :D

Because they have nothing to do with AV1, they simply want to leech on it. It's fitting to call them a patent troll.

they're a company that doesn't make any products. they just get actual hardware engineers to pay them to put a logo on their devices and to prevent Dolby from suing

While I agree with the general sentiment, I would not classify Dolby as a "patent troll" — they still do invest in research and developing products, right?

Patent mob seems more fitting.

Another example is Qualcomm

I'd classify any patent racketeer as a troll. Dolby has nothing to do with AV1, they just want a parasitic rent on it. Whether the troll actually does anything else besides the trolling part isn't really relevant.

Dolby's patents are garbage, and they know it. They managed to patent entropy coding somehow. This will not stand to challenges, and they managed to poke a well-resourced company.

This will always happen. There are just some entities that can't stand not seeking rent.

It may always happen but it would happen less if we updated patent laws to fine people who filed invalid patents or enforced some kind of similar punishment. If you file a patent, it's up to you to verify that your patent is actually valid, and the courts shouldn't have to do that legwork for you. It also doesn't help that the patent office/components of governments don't review patents as thoroughly as they used to. Same with trademarks.

Even better, software patents should not be allowed in the first place.

I generally don't like the current patent law but it sounds a bit off to pay the government & wait for them to review your patent claim and then get fined by the government when both of you were wrong about it. There are already processes to additionally fine a company bringing about a truly frivolous patent lawsuit, it's just rare because usually it's not so cut and dry as we'd like it to be.

I mean my idea isn't the only one in that solution space. My reasoning was to ensure that the government actually reviewed the patent and ensured it was valid instead of rubber stamping it. Or, even better, the filer of the patent application would do that. Although the best is probably to make software unpatentable anyway.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind getting rid of software patents. Or, at least, making the patent reviews more rigorous before assignment.

Why patents is a problem, please explain. If you build something that has been patented, then, well, you pay the per piece fee on it.

> In the 1980s, when IBM accused Sun of violating seven patents, Sun examined the patents and argued that IBM didn't have a case. The reply of IBM's lawyers was "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?" And Sun paid out.[4]

Big corpo shenanigans, from the 80s. Any recent quotes?

It's pretty much the modus operandi of any patent troll or in more general case - of any racketeer. Nothing new about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz0_r4PDyCs&t=1m30s

That doesn't warrant a general ban on patents, just because some out of touch living in a fantasy reality kids have an erection saying this.

Ban on software patent is more than warranted, only trolls themselves don't like such idea obviously.

But what also needed is persecution these patent trolls for racket like any mob racketeers. There were attempts of persecuting them this way in the past, but they should be renewed.

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