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Patents Businesses The Almighty Buck The Courts

Rackspace Goes On Rampage Against Patent Trolls 132

Posted by timothy from the there-should-be-blood dept.
girlmad writes "Rackspace has come out fighting against one of the U.S.'s most notorious patent trolls, Parallel Iron. The cloud services firm said it's totally fed up with trolls of all kinds, which have caused a 500 percent rise in its legal bills. Rackspace was last week named among 12 firms accused of infringing Parallel Iron's Hadoop Distributed File System patents. Rackspace is now counter-suing the troll, as the firm said it has a deal in place with Parallel Iron after signing a previous patent settlement with them."
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Rackspace Goes On Rampage Against Patent Trolls More

Rackspace Goes On Rampage Against Patent Trolls

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  • The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06, 2013 @10:50PM (#43382219)
    The laws must be changed.

  • Getting "tough"? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Saturday April 06, 2013 @10:52PM (#43382225)

    Rackspace is now counter-suing the troll, as the firm said it has a deal in place with Parallel Iron after signing a previous patent settlement with them.

    So what they are REALLY saying is...

    Honey, we left the cash on the dresser, and now you want more?

    • Re:Getting "tough"? (Score:2)

      by vencs ( 1937504 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @10:53PM (#43382235)
      And what about the good ol' "Don't feed the troll"?

    • Re:Getting "tough"? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:14PM (#43382339)

      Actually, this is just a really really horrible summary.

      What really happened: IP Nav had approached Rackspace, claiming that Rackspace was infringing some patents of an unnamed client of theirs. IP Nav told Rackspace that they would disclose neither the identity of their client nor the patents in question unless Rackspace signed an agreement not to sue without giving 30 days written notice that their side was terminating licensing negotiations. As it turns out, the agreement went both ways, with IP Nav agreeing to the same 30 day written notice provision. (Peculiarities of patent law are such that if a patentee approaches you about your potential infringement, you can sue them for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement in a federal district court of your choosing; IP Nav was trying to avoid this so they could choose the venue.)

      Rackspace agreed to those terms, and found out the patents in question as well as the identity of the patent holder: Parallel Iron.

      After some time had passed, licensing talks weren't really going anywhere, so IP Nav/Parallel Iron filed suit against Rackspace and others in federal district court in Delaware.... without providing 30 days written notice to Rackspace. So Rackspace - indicating that since IP Nav/Parallel Iron breached the contract not to sue, Rackspace was no longer bound by the agreement - filed suit in Texas (where Rackspace is HQed) for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement as well as damages for the breach of contract.

      Ars has more details, including a link to Rackspace's complaint. [arstechnica.com]

      • Concerted lawsuits against linux? Who's behind it? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by girlinatrainingbra ( 2738457 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:53PM (#43382467)
        Another war against Linux? Do I detect a whiff of Microsoft's scent in the air surrounding this?
        :>(
        Thanks for the link, and that page has even more informative links. It looks like Rackspace won a dismissal against Uniloc for a patent troll argument [arstechnica.com] asserting patents on simple mathematical operations: rounding a floating point number up or down before performing a mathematical operation on it, rather than performing the math operation and then performing the rounding afterwards. The judge's dismissed Uniloc's suit stating that "simple mathematical operations are not patentable". [slashdot.org]
        .
        That patent was PTO#5,892,697 [uspto.gov] and only the first claim was asserted for that lawsuit.
        .
        Interestingly, the way the lawsuit was filed shows that Rackspace was being sued for deploying Linux servers, and the servers were claimed to be infringing # 5,892,697 because they ran Linux. Doesn't this look like another wave of concerted lawsuits and patent trolling against Linux? I wonder who the concert-master is in this case, waving the baton and funding this crazy patent assertion of rounding numbers before an op being performed rather than after the op is performed? Is there a whiff of Microsoft in the air?
        • Microsoft is (or should be) so busy saving its own skin it can't afford a war with anyone right now. Windows 8? Meh. Office 365? Meh. The Microsoft iPad thingie what was it called again? Yeah. Was it worth pissing off all the OEM's over? Ballmer just keeps shooting himself in the foot again and again and again. It's almost as if he wants Microsoft to fail.
        • IMHO, mathematics should not be patentable AT ALL and IN ANY FORM. However, what galls me particularly here is how this whole patent business appears being settled among a bunch of ignorant monkeys.

          In mathematics, the analysis of rounding operations is nontrivial, and in general making a choice about rounding before or after some other operation can sometimes be extremely clever. So while the judge made ultimately the right decision, his justification based on labelling the claims "simple mathematical operations" seems woefully inadequate, suggesting that he has no clue at all. His official argument should at least be based on a more substantive understanding of whatever the system claims to do.

          This reminds me of another famous example [wikipedia.org] when a bunch of non-mathematicians decided they had figured out some simple mathematical operations.

          • don't patent mathematics (Score:3, Insightful)

            by girlinatrainingbra ( 2738457 ) on Sunday April 07, 2013 @06:03AM (#43383233)
            re: IMHO, mathematics should not be patentable AT ALL and IN ANY FORM.
            :>)
            My humble opinion is that you are completely correct. I agree with you 100% (as that is the maximum allowed by the laws of mathematics, though the laws of idiomacy allow for greater percentages). Also, numbers ought not be patentable. Say even a 2MB number which may or may not be prime, but whose binary representation just might happen to match a Linux elf executeable file for the Macintosh-G4-powerpc architecture that has a standard debian operating system and libraries on it. That program is just a number; it's a very loooooooong binary number. But integers are just an element of mathematics. Again, I agree with you. But the devil's advocate made me say it!

          • IMHO, mathematics should not be patentable AT ALL and IN ANY FORM.

            The problem with that is that everything can be seen as mathematics. The operation of any machine or process is really just evaluation of quantum mechanical wave equations. So mathematics IN ANY FORM includes physical reality itself.

            Business method patents would still be fine, though, due to the disconnect between economics and reality.

      • Re:Getting "tough"? (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07, 2013 @04:47AM (#43383047)

        All of this mumbo jumbo stinks of Dungeons & Dragons style legal tomfoolery.

        X casts silence.
        Y repels silence.
        Y casts fists of declaratory judgement for 50HP damage.
        Y casts fiery breach of contract.

        Next we'll find out the lawyers really are using 12 sided dice.

    • Re:Getting "tough"? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:18PM (#43382351)

      Bad summary. According to a post on the Rackspace blog, "we negotiated a mutual forbearance agreement that required either party to give 30 days’ notice before bringing suit." It isn't that they had agreed to pay the troll, it's that Rackspace was doing their best to get the details about the alleged infringement without waiving their right to bring a countersuit. Source: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/why-rackspace-sued-the-most-notorious-patent-troll-in-america/ [rackspace.com].

    • Re:Getting "tough"? (Score:2)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Sunday April 07, 2013 @01:14AM (#43382637)

      So what they are REALLY saying is...

      Honey, we left the cash on the dresser, and now you want more?

      This is more of a Barney the Dinosaur rampage than a Godzilla rampage.

  • Imagine that (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06, 2013 @10:52PM (#43382229)
    Patent trolls go after those who will settle. Let that be a lesson before paying off the next troll.

  • Trolls Will Always Troll (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06, 2013 @10:54PM (#43382237)

    You can't make a deal with a troll. They will always come back for more. It's just their nature to be greedy assholes who want everything for nothing.

    Dear Rackspace: fight the good fight.

  • Would this work? (Score:3)

    by MrDoh! ( 71235 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @10:57PM (#43382269) Homepage Journal
    First patent troll to stick their nose into your business, license with the proviso that now you've signed with them, any later actions by anyone else are on their head, then just point patent troll at patent troll. If they're that sure they own the patent and it's strong enough, then surely they'll be ok to step up and indemnify you from there on against others? If not, then they're not as sure of their validity as they hope and you refuse. "Oh, hello there new troll, oh, you think you own that? Well, we just license it from them, they took all the money from us, and it's them you need to speak to" and you get to the greener grass on the other side of the bridge.

    • Re:Would this work? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by femtobyte ( 710429 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:13PM (#43382337)

      The problem is, when you've established that you're a profitable to trolls, they're much more likely to gang up to backstab you. I suspect the following wouldn't be entirely atypical:

      Troll 1) We have patent! Give us meellion dollar, or we sue!
      You) O.K.; here's $1M, but you've got to protect us against the next troll.
      Troll 2) We have patent! Give us meelion dollars, or we sue!
      Troll 1) Our board of directors take meellion dollar bonus for hard work! Now we bankrupt! Our directors find new job with Troll 2!
      Troll 1+2) Give us two meellion dollar! Or double sue!
      You) ... aww, shit.

      Since the troll companies are generally just empty shell corporations for investor psychopaths, they have no reason to stick around to fight each other (knowing that, by the time they ever won a case, the payout cash would have long ago vanished into some other Cayman Islands fund). A company with a solid revenue stream from actually making and selling products, that's proven itself a juicy target for Troll 1, is just asking to be bilked twice (by the same leeches under a different corporate name).

      • Atlas Smug (Score:4, Funny)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:45PM (#43382441) Journal

        investor psychopaths

        I'll have you know you're talking about the Job Creators! The Makers, not the Takers. Those people who want to build and sell stuff are just parasites.

        So that will be "Mr Investor Psychopath" from now on, if you don't mind, except "Mr Investor Psychopath" happens to be a trademark so until you get expressed written permission just keep your mouth shut and pay up, you leech.

  • WTF is the link to? (Score:5, Informative)

    by pspahn ( 1175617 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:01PM (#43382285)

    It might as well be spam in my inbox.

    Why not just link the damn blog post by Rackspace itself? link [rackspace.com]

  • What patents? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by supersat ( 639745 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:02PM (#43382289)

    As I understand it, HDFS is just a clone of Google's GFS. What IP could Parallel Iron possibly own?

    Oh wait...

    "IP Nav told us that they could not divulge the details of their infringement claims -- not even the patent numbers or the patent owner -- unless we entered into a 'forbearance agreement' -- basically, an agreement that we would not sue them."

    So they probably have nothing. How is this legal?!

    • Re:What patents? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:55PM (#43382471)
      I'm told that in Australia that would be "demanding money with menaces", which is why the SCO scam never collected a dollar in Australia despite some people ringing up and offering to pay in the hope of doing a bit of entrapment. Where you are you can thank the Libertarian mindset that makes it perfectly legal to make unspecified threats of legal action to frighten people into handing over money.

    • Re:What patents? (Score:1)

      by NonFerrousBueller ( 1175131 ) on Sunday April 07, 2013 @10:02PM (#43387613)
      So they probably have nothing. How is this legal?!

      Because America.

  • Once you have paid him the Dane-geld (Score:4, Insightful)

    by L. J. Beauregard ( 111334 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:09PM (#43382317)

    you never get rid of the Dane. [poetryloverspage.com]

  • Uniloc (Score:3)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:11PM (#43382325)

    Here's something a little "funny", Rackspace and Red Hat sued Uniloc over the idea of patenting mathematical algorithms, and Rackspace / Red Hat won. Guess where Uniloc parks their servers?

  • Still not good enough (Score:5, Funny)

    by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:31PM (#43382389)
    I'm not going to be happy until we get a Slashdot headline that reads something like: "Rabid Ninja Mosad Assassin Zombie Horde Goes On Rampage Against Patent Trolls".

  • Interesting idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:36PM (#43382411) Journal

    It would be funny to settle with the troll and have something in the contract like, "agree not to sue me or my assigns" and then assign rights to all my software patents to everybody.

    IANAL and have no idea if such a thing would hold up in court; but it's no more ridiculous than most of what passes for law these days.

  • Are the courts the enemy of the people? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CuteSteveJobs ( 1343851 ) on Saturday April 06, 2013 @11:50PM (#43382455)
    The problem is with overinflated lawyers fees, court procedures which encourage paperwork which makes even more fees for lawyers and and court fees that the courts are so expensive you are looking at handing lawyers and courts two million up just to defend yourself from a patent troll. If cases were streamlined and it only cost $10K to defend a patent troll it would be far fairer, but lawyers and judges would be out of work. Have you ever heard of judges being laid off for lack of work? Judges whose communities depend on patent trolls for a steady stream of cases have a conflict of interest. If they came down hard on patent trolls and threw out meritless cases there would be boarded up lawyers offices all over town. Instead the judges say well geez better have a trial anyway just to be sure. It might get an answer but it wastes a fuckload of cash to get there. If the USPTO issued firm rulings we wouldn't need the courts. Instead the USPTO scratch their balls and say well I will just approve this shit because I can't understand it anyway and let the courts sort it out. The problem is as much the court system as it is the USPTO. They should streamline these but do you really think lawyers and judges will be putting themselves out of work?

    Patents are written in bullshit confusing language so courts argue what they mean. A software engineering looking at one of these wouldn't even recognize their own system in one of these documents. Lawyers write them to be broad and confusing so they can make money arguing it. The USPTO shouldn't be approving patents that are unreadable. And if a IT graduate can't read one of these and work out what they mean, they shouldn't be granted.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll [wikipedia.org]
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-32973_3-57409792-296/how-much-is-that-patent-lawsuit-going-to-cost-you/ [cnet.com]
    http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2013/03/guest-editorial-throwing-trolls-off-the-bridge.html [patentlyo.com]

  • Patent trolls make ... (Score:2)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Sunday April 07, 2013 @01:24AM (#43382653) Homepage

    ... debt collectors look like angels.

  • YOU KNOW........ (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07, 2013 @01:29AM (#43382665)

    ......a crooked corporation that wanted to pad expenses in order to reduce tax burden could just form shell corporation that holds a cheapo patent, and then claim infrigement to the main crooked corp. Then, the crooked corp "pays" that shell, launders the money for other purposes, and claims the "damages" on its loss statement, writing it off for taxes.

    Hope you're listening, government and court system! This loophole of patent abuse can be used directly against you, so I wouldn't be so fast to condone it just because you shortsightedly think it benefits you, LMFAO

    • Re:YOU KNOW........ (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 ) <`ten.knilhtrae' `ta' `nsxihselrahc'> on Sunday April 07, 2013 @07:37PM (#43386969)

      No, it can't be used against the government. The government has previously claimed patents that have been issued to others as not only it's own, but as it's personal secrets, so you, the inventor, are also not allowed to use them. Then it's hired someone else to use them in its name.

      Perhaps there are circumstances where patents can be used against the government, but not if it really cares. (OTOH, the patents I'm thinking of had to do with processing fissionable materials.)

  • Game theory (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Sunday April 07, 2013 @03:42AM (#43382949) Journal
    It surprises me that this hasn't become a policy before. Patent trolls exist because they know that the company will roll over if it's cheaper to comply than to fight.

    Problem is, that only works for a single stage game. What we have is a repeated stage game. The optimal strategy for the troll victim is to fight, and to do as much damage to the troll as possible. This increases the cost of operation for the troll, and makes the victim a lot less lucrative a target for future lawsuits.

  • Not surprising (Score:2)

    by symbolset ( 646467 ) * on Sunday April 07, 2013 @04:24AM (#43383011) Journal

    "as the firm said it has a deal in place with Parallel Iron after signing a previous patent settlement with them."

    If you pay the Danegeld you will never be rid of the Dane.

  • Hadoop Distributed File System... patents??? (Score:2)

    by macbeth66 ( 204889 ) on Sunday April 07, 2013 @10:10AM (#43383871)

    Say what? Okay, so I'm late to this dance.

    I just started looking into Hadoop, but from what I've read, I thought that the HDFS was open source. It certainly looks that way when I perused Apache Hadoop yesterday.

    What did I miss?

    • I just started looking into Hadoop, but from what I've read, I thought that the HDFS was open source. It certainly looks that way when I perused Apache Hadoop yesterday.

      What did I miss?

      Only a decade or two of rampant "intellectual property" abuse, and impotent raging about it on Slashdot.

      Everything's patented, usually several times over. It doesn't matter if it's open source; open source only provides you with rights that the original author had the authority to license; a third-party patent doesn't fit into that category.

      The earlier patent Rackspace fought off patented the steps of loading a floating point value into a register, rounding it, performing an operation on it, and storing it back into memory. Even aside from being unpatentable subject matter, it's been done billions of times before (rounding before or after; both have been done); it's both obvious and non-novel. But the USPTO accepted it, so some troll had something to sue over.

      • Everything's patented...

        This is one of the reasons I think the next 10-15 years could get interesting. There was a story a couple years back about how a company had failed an appeal against a troll that had a patent which broadly covered distributing digital music. IIRC, the patent was going to expire in 2017. There are a lot of patents like this that have been filed in the 1995-2010 period and I think the more savvy small businesses will begin searching expired patents and making them work for their needs.

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