One Man's Battle With Patent Trolls 159
farrellj writes "Dovden Investments, labelled as a Patent Troll by many, got more than they bargained for when they went after Ottawa developer Larry Dunkelman. Mr. Dunkelman wrote BusBuddy, an app that takes GPS and scheduling data from OC Transpo, the local city bus service, and predicts when the bus you are waiting for will actually arrive. But when Dovden came along and asked for $10,000, as a 'licensing' fee, Dunkelman got angry, and decided to fight. 'They claim to have patented the method of using GPS location on vehicles to determine when they will arrive at a certain place,' Dunkelman said. 'This applies to buses, package delivery, airplanes, trains - any business that employs a fleet of vehicles in which they track their location to arrive at a certain place, is open to this patent troll.' Dunkelman hired an intellectual property lawyer and started chipping away at the company's claims. Dovden has since discontinued the suit and are now being chased by Dunkelman and his lawyer for legal costs."
Courts should stamp this out (Score:5, Insightful)
Dovden asked for $10,000. There was probably only a 1 in 1000 chance someone would fight and win. Dovden knew for certain that their patent wasn't innovative; this was no honest misunderstanding. Any damages less than $10000 * 1000 = $10,000,000 makes this a profitable business model.
Any ruling fining Dovden less than $10,000,000 is not enough.
Re:Courts should stamp this out (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm going to reply to myself. And every lawyer involved in sending these notices should lose their license.
Go after the lawyers, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Any lawyer who aids a patent troll ought to be disbarred.
Re:Back under the bridge, troll!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Make it a class action suit. Demand a list of everyone to whom Dovden has ever sent a threatening letter.
Re:Courts should stamp this out (Score:5, Insightful)
They got teenagers with quarter ounces of weed to imprision, stop wasting their valuable property seizure time.
Re:Can someone explain... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. The system is horribly broken.
I suggest a fix: Every patent you are granted is free. Every patent that you are denied costs you. The cost is a sliding scale, the faster the patent office finds a triviality, or previous art, the more it costs the customer. The pantent office has to give the reasons why the patent was rejected, along with the bill. This should a) give the patent office some money, b) reduce the patentload, which means more time per patent for patent office. This creates a balance; patent office has to reject shittty patents to get money, but they have to keep granting good patents, orherwise people will stop filing (which might be a win for society in itself), and they are out of a job.
Re:Back under the bridge, troll!! (Score:5, Insightful)
the point of a class action suit wouldn't be to get everyone rich, it would be to make dovden hurt
Re:Go after the lawyers, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
Felony conviction is cause for disbarment in most jurisdictions.
If an attorney aids and abets fraud, extortion, or is criminally negligent in defending/prosecuting a case, then fucking charge and convict them of -that- crime. They will still be disbarred, and we will actually be prosecuting crimes that matter, instead of letting those with money and power flout the system so egregiously.
Re:Courts should stamp this out (Score:5, Insightful)
Police departments of all stripes can make more money for their departments through property seizure, so why would they waste time with actual criminals which actually costs them money?
The second we allowed as a society police departments to confiscate individuals' wealth was the second we lost our way as a society. It does not help that tickets and other roadside violations are also money that goes to the local police department directly. And so we have police in this country whose jobs are directly depended on outside revenue streams and so their employers are no longer every citizen, but rather those who they imprison and fine. They are constantly looking for additional people to finance their jobs like that. And what does all of this money that they confiscate give them? Military level arms, body armor, and all sorts of little toys that make breaking into someone's house a quite large ordeal. So next time someone "swats you" you can thank the illegal confiscations and mountains of traffic violations that made it possible for semi-trained idiots to go around with military level machine guns and body armor.
Re:Go after the lawyers, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
In neither case do we need more laws on the books.
Re:Back under the bridge, troll!! (Score:2, Insightful)
With the side effect of making the lawyers filing the suit rich while the people actually damaged by Dovden's actions receive a pittance.
Then they can choose to not join the class action and instead take direct action on their own (or do nothing).
Also, having a class action judgement against the firm can give others certain types of legal leverage. In some cases someone who accepted a deal to "drop a lawsuit in return for payment and promise not to sue" may be able to use the class action judgement to get that previous agreement tossed out and press charges.
In any event, it sends a big fat message to other potential patent trolls, which proactively helps others who have not yet been sued. It also makes it more likely people will resist patent trolls who use the extortion racket (pay us or we sue!).
In any event, I fail to understand what your problem with the lawyers is. The ones representing the troll aren't getting much, if anything, and ruining their reputations to boot. If you don't want to hire a lawyer yourself then don't- but if you do then it's only fair that you're paying them for their expertise.