Exposing Patent Trolls | Hacker News Reader

Exposing Patent Trolls

rackspace.com

115 pointsgrimey2713 comments

This is great.

I might also suggest a section of trollingeffects.org called something like "What We've Lost." Meaning, a catalog companies that have shut down, people who have been unable to pursue ideas, expenses that have been passed on to consumers, etc. Use stories. Make it concrete. Clear. Poignant. Because, at the core, that's what all of this is about. What we've lost and what we'll continue to lose to these assholes.

Next step: add an easy way to link these back to http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/prior-art to initiate and document a crowdsourced prior art search.

Yeah now they'll stop extracting their billions of dollars from the industry and be forced to live the rest of their lives with their billions of dollars extracted from the industry! (Bitter that justice is always years behind and these atrocities will never be rectified, just mostly stopped going forward)

How many companies have successfully counter-sued a troll? for harrassment, for example.

Is there a site with names and photos of the trolls and their lawyers? Might be interesting for trollingeffects. SOBs gallery.

Could be wrong, but I think most of these patent trolls are wrapped up in an endless series of shell companies... so going after them simply isn't worth the effort.

I'd take it personally and go after the individuals.. even the lawyers know who is paying them. We're dealing with a set of individuals that are harrassing the entrepreneurial community... and have never IPO'ed anything or have any customers to vouch for their character. They may have patents, but no products, and they are harrassing those creating products and getting customers. If I got a patent troll on my back, I would find a bunch of their other prior targets and get a petition from all our customers, and ..... do what's right. Maybe obtain some punitive damages. They're not acting in the spirit of the law, rather the spirit of the cockroach. One could even conceive of a reverse troll, creating a honeypot company to attract the trolls, and then to counterstrike.

Another resource that exposes patent trolls:

http://www.plainsite.org/tags/index.html?id=635

Very cool.

Here's one that makes me a bit sad: half keyboards have a patent that is enforced.

(http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000021.html)

As an aside, is it possible, and therefore cheaper and more beneficial to the trolled party, to just endlessly stall and delay with various tactics, such as stretching out response times as long as possible and then responding with a proposed (low ball) settlement, awaiting the response to that, waiting again for a long period of time, proposing another (low ball) settlement, shuffling around the contacts at an organizaton, etc. Or is there some requirement to come to a conclusion within a specified time?

Can someone explain to someone who doesn't really know much about this topic other than that it angers them immensely... why can't the laws do anything to stop this nonsense??

Because the trolls are very good at what they do. They usually don't sue, but rather threaten to sue unless the company they're targeting pays a fee. Said fee is set to be below what it would cost the company to fight back.

Virtually every time a company has fought back (and a decision has been reached)[0], the troll has lost. However, it costs companies (especially startups) a LOT more money to fight back. Many roll over and pay instead of fighting, and the trolls make their money.

There is a new law in the works [1] that aims to make the trolls pay the bills in the case the company fights back and wins. This will make trolling very expensive, now that companies can fight without worry of being shut down due to fees.

[0] Sadly, many companies run out of money before this point. [1] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr845

When will this law be put into place? What are the chances of it passing?

Each time I see a patent trolling thread it makes me so mad.

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