What the Courts Did to Curb Patent Trolling for Now | Hacker News Reader

What the Courts Did to Curb Patent Trolling for Now

theatlantic.com

33 pointsnkurz11 comments

The idea that trolls are scared by having to pay legal cost if they lose is not correct. Trolls set themselves up as disposable shell companies. If they lose case, they simply go bankrupt and get exit without actually paying anything to anyone. We need to do much much more than what Supreme Court has done to stop trolling.

True - and perhaps not allowing bankruptcy dismissal would be a good start. After all, there's precedent now - you can't dismiss student loans at bankruptcy proceedings, maybe corporations shouldn't be allowed to dismiss court-ordered payments at bankruptcy.

I understand the difficulty in implementation, mind you, but you're right about how the shell companies are set up, and the disincentive needs to be able to follow the humans, not the companies.

While true, if the law is changed to allow certain entities to go after the personal holdings of an individual because of the actions of a corporation then you'll have severely disrupted one of the main reasons to incorporate. That could have far reaching consequences that we can't even begin to imagine how bad it would be. If such a thing happened and I had corporations of whatever, I would immediately seek to re-incorporate somewhere else if I had the means. If I did not have the means, I would seriously consider taking what I have and removing myself from the corporation at the first sign of any possible legal troubles. That's whether I'm completely innocent of the accusations or not.

Corporations exist for shielding against the consequences of honest risk taking, not immoral acts.

Yet, the legal system is almost completely random, and may bankrupt anybody that is forced to participate in it. I understand where you are comming from, but you are asking for the wrong reform.

I didn't ask for any reform in my post, are you referring to the post I responded to?

I would say that corporations exist for shielding against any negative consequences whether they are risks, immoral, and/or illegal acts. They protect people in the corporation who may or may not have had anything to do with said acts. The reason I would not change that is because what is considered a risk today may be considered immoral tomorrow, what is considered immoral tomorrow may be considered illegal after that. Since we live in a society that is more than happy to discredit and attack based on patterns of the past that may or may not be relevant today, then such protections are warranted.

While not always true, you're right in the context of innovation. Many small European technology entrepreneurs come to the US to launch a new startup because of this insulation from personal holdings, which is not available in many European countries.

Perhaps we should include tests for shell corporations, which tend to be fairly obvious. They often have few staff, no 'real' products for sale, and have not generally existed to do business for any real outcome other than 'licensing IP'. It's not perfect but it seems distinct; and although someone else will probably list various legitimate cases that look similar those shouldn't be corps engaging in IP litigation.

Although that makes sense at first glance, I would be against it. Simply because that's where it could start and the "rules" can be adjusted for someone's benefit. Plus, most of the rules could easily be bypassed which would require more rules which are then bypassed, and so on and so on.

Well, as long as the money is still there.

Yes, I see that challenge too.

Creditors are already able to go after the investors in under-capitalized businesses and other misuses of the corporate form. It's called piercing the corporate veil.

Of course Microsoft could let the gate slam shut after they got their rulings that facilitate their $1B/yr tax on Samsung and other Android vendors.

What? You don't expect them to act in a moral fashion, do you? Business is a game, and most business people play it like a game: how far can I go and still be within the rules?

When morality is divorced from business, this is what you get. I don't see it changing anytime soon.

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