While helping out gives the students experience, it's not reasonable to consider this any sort of real option beyond an occasional situation in which a startup can solicit a law-student who takes on a single case as part of their curriculum.
From the sounds of the article, there is one small clinic in Brooklyn that makes this a "real option" for companies. It's not like every company that faces patent trolls can rely on it, but I don't think it would be far-fetched to think that other law clinics may begin to (or already do) offer similar services.
As I see it, it's a win-win for both parties.
This is no different than big companies hiring unpaid interns. Sure it can kinda work in a handful of cases, but it's harmful to exploit people to perform unpaid labor.
I can recall a great many HN articles complaining about companies asking coders to work unpaid in a variety of situations. Working unpaid on learning projects in school is super! Getting experience is great! But, the reality of the situation is there are massively degenerate patent laws at work here and the solution isn't for startups to expect a contingent of students to work there buts off gratis for them.
There was a set of rules that came from a court ruling regarding unpaid internships[0]. I would like to go over the points here. These rules dictate whether an intern can go unpaid or not:
> 1. The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;
Your intern can't be a coffee jockey for you. They have to actually learn things from the job. In this case, I believe this is more than can be gained from an educational environment. This involved many more intricate details, and probably a bunch of analysis of the patents at hand. I imagine they were trying to pick apart this patent.
> 2. The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;
This experience was beneficial for both parties.
> 3. The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;
Unless the startup had a legal team that they didn't use, I feel this is self evident.
> 4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;
While the startup did obtain an advantage (having a legal team), if the clinic team had failed, there is a very good chance they would have been greatly impeded.
> 5. The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship;
I highly doubt that any of the team got immediately hired, or were promised a job at the end of the internship.
> 6. The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.
They had come to an agreement that the students would be working for the clinic pro bono.
I feel that all of these points were met, and in this case there was no exploitation of unpaid labor. Both sides benefited greatly from this.
> But, the reality of the situation is there are massively degenerate patent laws at work here and the solution isn't for startups to expect a contingent of students to work there buts off gratis for them.
You're right. But I don't see any other solutions right now. There isn't any drastic reform bill being pushed through Congress. There aren't any big companies standing up to these patent trolls, in fact most have given in. There was a patent troll going around suing companies for shopping cart technologies. Amazon and several others gave in, but Newegg finally stood up and denied them a settlment. Newegg went on to win the court case. They have won several others as well. Given the recent rulings of passing court fees on to patent trolls, I imagine they are getting less complaints in the long run than others that have given in.
[0]: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/the-cour...
I agree this isn't the solution to a fundamentally broken patent litigation process, but these students are almost assuredly better off for the experience and it's a mutually beneficial relationship for the students and clients who can't afford traditional legal representation.
Unpaid labor - students get school credit, and its way more fun that sitting through lectures.