Newegg Defeats Alcatel-Lucent in Third Patent Win This Year 143
Newegg's policy of not backing down from patent trolls, even ones as large as Alcatel-Lucent, continues to result in victory. Earlier this year, Overstock and Newegg successfully defended themselves with a jury invalidating Alcatel-Lucent's main patent used to force companies as large as Amazon to settle. Naturally, Alcatel-Lucent appealed, but the appeals court quickly ruled in favor of Newegg and Overstock.com. From Ars: "Federal Circuit judges typically take months, and occasionally years, to review the patent appeals that come before them. Briefs in this case were submitted last year, and oral arguments were held last Friday, May 10. The three-judge panel upheld Newegg's win (PDF), without comment — in just three days. ... Alcatel-Lucent dropped the case over its other two patents, desperate to get back the '131 patent that Newegg and Overstock had killed at trial. 'If they had been able to revive this patent, the litigation machine would have continued on,' Reines told Reuters after the win."
Fuck Yeah! (Score:5, Informative)
Give 'em hell, Newegg!
Another big PC build order comin' your way! Keep on winning
BTW, on a sad note, does anyone remember when Lucent actually innovated stuff? The legitimate heir of Western Electric and Bell Labs has fallen very far.
Re:A simple summary... (Score:5, Informative)
I know this is not appropriate to Orthdox Slashdotism, but if you had read TFA, you'd have found this link [google.com] to the actual patent in play.
East Texas jury invalidated Alcatel-Lucent claims (Score:2, Informative)
This article http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/newegg-nukes-corporate-troll-alcatel-in-third-patent-appeal-win-this-year/#p3 explains the case.
Essentially everyone had given up. The patent covered eCommerce.
NewEgg did not give up.
Re:A simple summary... (Score:4, Informative)
I read it -- it took me 4 minutes to figure it out.
Old way: Server sends, say, menu of 5 items with indicator to highlight first.
User arrows down two, client sends two down arrows. Server notes this that it is on 3rd item, but only in theory.
User hits enter. Server receives enter and decides 3rd item is selected.
Patent: Send IDs for all that shit and client reports ID-based activities.
Re:A simple summary... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Force (Score:5, Informative)
Force is a euphemism for blackmail, and it's not inaccurate when applied here. "Nice web site you got here, it'd be a shame if we had a court order you to take it down. Give us $100,000 and nothing bad will happen to it, or you risk losing a $100,000,000 in court if we win." That's force to a company that doesn't have $100,000,000 in their bank account.
Newegg's made a corporate decision that said "we don't care if it's a thousand times cheaper to settle than to risk losing a lawsuit. We have a very large pile of money, and we have promised to call every single bluff presented to us. We will never fold our hand."
Go, Newegg!
Re:Fuck Yeah! (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, on a sad note, does anyone remember when Lucent actually innovated stuff? The legitimate heir of Western Electric and Bell Labs has fallen very far.
Do you mean like this? Light Radio [cnn.com], a programmable cell tower the size of your palm?
While true it has been a while since the hey day of Bell Labs coming out with new tech every few years, they don't seem dead just yet. I blame their current state on chasing quarterly or yearly profits and having a somewhat unfair playing field with companies like Huawei and ZTE instead of investing in the long term tech.
Per wikipedia
On August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas, including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software.
That and their merger with Alcatel hasn't been very smooth. Though too, perhaps the wireless tech is maturing so there is not the low hanging fruit anymore?
Also for clarification Bell Labs is still around in at least some form, it is the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent. Lucent merged with Alcatel back in 2006.
Re:Good show, NewEgg! (Score:5, Informative)
THIS is why I give my business to companies like NewEgg, and have and will NEVER buy a single damn thing from ones like Amazon.
Amazon settled because it is also a patent troll. Blood runs thicker than water, especially between patent trolls.
Amazon are not pure patent trolls or they would not have been sued. They actually use their technologies. I'm not saying they are squeaky clean, I certainly didn't like their 1 click patent [wikipedia.org], but they are not a complete troll.
Indeed, the genius of the pure patent troll company is that I can never be attacked in the same way it attacks. Since the troll company doesn't produce any useful products or services, there's no activity it does which could be considered for patent infringement, at least until one of them is granted a patent on enforcing patents as a business method.
Big corporations wield large portfolios of patents as weapons all the time, suing and countersuing each other when it looks like that action will help profits. While this is a very damaging abuse of the patent system, it's quite different from the type of trolling described in TFA. Also, the fact that Amazon chose to settle has little to do with how that company may have abused their patents in the past. They made a decision calculated to be best for their bottom line, whether that was a correct decision or not.
As a customer, I think it's a mistake to make broad buying decisions based solely on one aspect such as the suits described in TFA. I've been a customer of NewEgg for years because they have good prices and service and now I have yet another reason to use and recommend them. I've also been a customer of Amazon, especially of their music store which has long provided downloads unencumbered by DRM, proprietary formats or requirements to use specific client software. OTOH, I'd never use Amazon's Kindle system with its very restrictive DRM and other lock-in mechanisms.
Re:Fuck Yeah! (Score:2, Informative)
Lucent was the name given to Bell Labs when it was spun out.