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Comment by cromwellian | Hacker News Reader

I thought it was impossible to be more of a douchebag than Intellectual Ventures, but apparently, there's a new winner in town. It was obvious when the Rockstar bid won and you looked at who made up the group, what was going to happen.

I used to get really angry and outraged when reading stories like this, but now I'm just resigned. Patent reform isn't going to happen and this kind of predatory and unethical abuse of the system by sharks and parasites will continue as the cost of doing business.

One can only hope for karmic retribution one day.

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"I thought it was impossible to be more of a douchebag than Intellectual Ventures, but apparently, there's a new winner in town."

What Rockstar is doing is very shitty, but IV takes the cake because they're a non-practicing entity. It's one thing to sue competitors for making products similar to your own, it's another to make no products and sue people who dare to make something vaguely encroaching your vaguely defined patent.

But that's exactly what Rockstar does. From the article:

> Part of the company's strategy is avoiding a patent-countersuit by not having any operating businesses. Essentially, Rockstar wants to enjoy the same advantage patent trolls have, even though it's owned by direct Google competitors like Apple and Microsoft.

"But that's exactly what Rockstar does"

Rockstar acts as a firewall, sure, but the parent companies make things. IV made a mosquito-killing laser that no one could buy, then allegedly got down to business by flicking individual patents to shell LLCs and suing indie app developers for using iOS's in-app-purchase APIs. Classy.

I think RockStar is even worse because they are an NPE that is a sham front set up to further the anticompetitive business interests of two of the largest and most dominant companies on the planet. That's all the evil of a patent troll plus extra ...

> [...] largest and most dominant companies on the planet.

... in software.

No. By market cap, Apple is the largest company in the world, full stop[1]. Microsoft is number 7, having spent much of the 90's at #1. Google does not rank at all. So at least by some definitions these companies are indeed the largest in the world without qualification.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_...

Market cap is one indicator. You can also look at full capitalization, ie debt plus equity. Or you look at number of employees, or total sales. Also, quoting your Wikipedia article: "Some state-owned companies are far larger than even the largest public corporation. For example Saudi Aramco's value has been estimated at $10 trillion, which is twenty times the size of Apple [...]."

Anyway, Apple and Microsoft are pretty big and dominating in their industries. No doubt about that.

Google actually ranks 15. http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/ft500

Hang on a sec, if the patents are found valid, and Google etc. are found infringing, then they have s/broken the law/failed make appropriate agreements so that they are then allowed by the owner of the monopoly defined by the claims to use the defined invention, and are now liable to a civil suite from the owner of said patents in order to exercise their exclusive right granted by the ownership of a letters patent/.

s/Breaking the law/Using patented inventnions/ is OK when you're Google, but an abomination if Apple/MS do it I guess? Obviously Google knew the value of the patents, and clearly knew the contents, and if it's found they continued to infringe them, then they're getting what's coming to them. If it were small companies without the resources to discover the patents they might be infringing it'd be a different matter, but this is absolutely not the case here.

Edit: law ain't broked, but Google et al potentially open to exclusion of the use of the inventions defined by the exclusive patent right.

You don't understand how patents work. Patents allow you to prevent someone else from selling a product that is covered by your patent. But to do so; you have to get a court order and show that the product in question is covered by the patent in question. It's not a question of whether the defendant is doing something illegal; it's a question of whether the rights the plaintiff asserts are valid. Of course, once the plaintiff has won an order; defying it is ... ill-considered.

Right you are, a small slip on my part. To clarify for anyone playing along, a granted patent doesn't make using the invention illegal, but it does mean the owner of the patent how the right to a)exclude you from using it if they so choose, and b) they may also seek reparations due to potentially lost income from someone making use of their invention. (as well as other stuff)

Google didn't bid on these patents because they were infringing - they bid on the patents so they wouldn't get patent trolled.

... if they're not infringing, then they have nothing to worry about. Are you kidding me?

That reminds me "if you're a honest person, you need no privacy". It's not like there are tons of bullshit patents on everything on Earth from hyperlinks to rounded angles. Of course if you're a honest man you have never to fear from bullshit patents and the words "patent troll" mean just a character in Discworld novels who is a troll and makes living my analyzing patent applications.

... if they're not infringing, then they have nothing to worry about. Are you kidding me?

I'm sure their infringing. Hell, I'm sure I've probably written some software somewhere along the lines that infringes on some patent this company holds.

Developing software with patents around is like pirating media. You just have to hope you don't give anyone a reason to come after you.

You seriously are unaware of how the legal world around patents works, but come on here and decry how HN is supposedly so ignorant about patents?

No I'm not kidding you - patent trolls sue looking for a settlement because fighting the suit usually costs much more than settling would.

Calm down. Google didn't break "the law". Intellectual property is covered by civil law. One party has to prove that a contract was broken, a patent misused or other IP misused. They also have to prove their damages. They do this in court and if they make their case then the other company has to pay for those damages. It is not a crime. It is not breaking a law. This is not a semantic issue either. It is a civil matter.

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