How Newegg Saved Online Retail 259
bargainsale writes with an account at Ars Technica of "the inspiring story of Newegg vs the patent troll. Perhaps the system does work after all." Newegg's lawyer Lee Cheng has some choice words for the business model employed by Soverain Software, the patent troll which tried, with some success, to exact money from online retailers for using online shopping carts. Newegg has prevailed, though, and Soverain's claims are toast. From Ars: "The ruling effectively shuts down dozens of the lawsuits Soverain filed last year against Nordstrom's, Macy's, Home Depot, Radioshack, Kohl's, and many others (see our chart on page 2). All of them did nothing more than provide shoppers with basic online checkout technology. Soverain used two patents, numbers 5,715,314 and 5,909,492, to claim ownership of the "shopping carts" commonly used in online stores. In some cases, it wielded a third patent, No. 7,272,639."
I knew that kid! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I knew that kid! (Score:5, Insightful)
The sarcasm was fun, but if you RTFA, you'll discover this isn't the lone mole. He's been at it for six years, and this is at least the 5th mole. So no, he hasn't Won the Game, but he's a lot farther in than one mole and he still has his mallet in his hand. More to the point, he has NewEgg executives and NewEgg's money behind him, so it's a pretty large and well-funded mallet.
NewEgg's executives should be inordinately pleased with themselves. Their strategy just paid for itself. All the money they sank into this defense will be paid back and then some by not having to pay a tax on every transaction to these stuffed shirts for the next 10 years. (Or 30 years, if they had filed an amended patent that magically re-ups the expiration term.) (Or 50 years. Or forever.)
Meanwhile, there's a laundry list of other retailers with an online presence who either knuckled under or fought just a little bit, then knuckled under. Ask yourself why. The answer starts with "cr-" and rhythms with brony....
Re:I knew that kid! (Score:4, Insightful)
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If there were any justice in the justice system, the patent trolls would be paying Newegg. Not just paying for Newegg's legal fees, etc, but actually paying Newegg.
Those bogus patents pulled from their "portfolio", and given to Newegg, along with a few dozen more patents. They might actually own a valid patent that could prove valuable to Newegg.
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I'd call it "mistaking succesful damage control for correct functioning". Apparently the system isn't entirely dysfunctional as patents can be revoken and it is possible to prevail against a patent troll, depending. But that doesn't imply the system as a whole is functional.
The fact that these patents were issued in the first place and that patent troll companies can exist on settlements and the occasional lawsuit already ought to be proof enough that the system is at least partly dysfunctional and therefor
It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, around the time Amazon was suing people for one-click, notably their competitor B&N [slashdot.org], B&N actually implemented "two click" check out. I think they simply asked "are you sure you wanted to order this item?" which gives you one last chance in case it was a mis-click.
Re:It is okay to use a shopping cart so long as (Score:4, Insightful)
And two-clicks is actually more user friendly because then you don't have to go through a dozen clicks to cancel the order you accidentally placed.
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Thanks, NewEgg (Score:5, Interesting)
If I wasn't already a loyal customer, I sure would become one now.
Re:Thanks, NewEgg (Score:5, Funny)
I think I'll use this as an excuse to buy something I don't need, but would like to have.
Re:Thanks, NewEgg (Score:5, Informative)
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Blast from the past (Score:2)
The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Patent trolls often wield bad patents. There are also companies that make things that wield bad patents. Beware of associating the bad of our patent system only with trolls -- the problem runs deeper. If all trolls disappeared tomorrow, we would still have vast minefields of bad patents and enormous, destructive patent battles.
We have just invented the greatest tool since Gutenberg for the dissemination of information. An almost incomprehensibly powerful tool for decentralizing problem solving. At the same time, we have been radically increasing the breadth and power of patents, which inhibit the decentralization of problem solving. Patents have a good mission, but their method is a hinderance to the information revolution. That conflict is inherent in patents; it does not require a troll to cause harm.
Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're just using too narrow a definition of "patent troll". Patents are designed to foster innovation. They give an idea value so that people will take the risk of investing in that idea whatever the scale of the inventor. If all ideas are trivially copied once their details are known then either the ideas have no value so no one invests in them or the ideas get kept secret and we don't get to know about them and build on them. Good patents provide this functionality, they temporarily stifle competition in order to foster innovation.
Bad patents on the other hand merely stifle innovation. Patents can be bad for any number of reasons(the patent holder has no intention of seeking investment for them, the idea itself is trivial(a hard one since the whole idea of patents is that once someone shows you an idea it usually seems trivial), or the patent should not belong to the holder. Essentially these are patents with no upside for the community.
If you wield a bad patent you're a patent troll be you some little company with no assets or the latest do no wrong tech firm, if you use a good patent you're not.
This still leaves us with working out how the hell to determine things like triviality and prior art, but at least we don't have to try and determine intent. Patents, like copyrights and all sorts of other intellectual property, are a necessary evil, they always have downsides, but they're supposed to have upsides.When they don't, the holder is a troll.
Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
...
If you wield a bad patent you're a patent troll be you some little company with no assets or the latest do no wrong tech firm, if you use a good patent you're not.
...
I think the term Patent Troll is more exactly defined than that, and divorced from the subjective judgment of "Good" or "Bad" patent. A Patent Troll is a non-practicing entity (NPE). The sole aim of a patent is to encourage the creation of new inventions. The mechanism to do that involves remuneration, but that's not the aim. A NPE doesn't produce anything, so it doesn't encourage the creation of new inventions. It sure encourages the creation of new patents, but is doesn't encourage the creation of new 'things'.
You might argue over the goodness/badness of Amazon's 1-click patent, but Amazon at least provides a useful service using the process for which they hold a patent and isn't, in my opinion, a patent troll.
Patents, like copyrights and all sorts of other intellectual property, are a necessary evil, they always have downsides, but they're supposed to have upsides.When they don't, the holder is a troll.
I disagree with you only over the term 'troll'. Otherwise, you've got to the nub. Patents and copyright exist only to benefit society. "We, the people" created them solely to benefit us. If the economic burden of the current copyright and patent system outweighs its economic benefit—which numerous studies have indicated is so—we need to uncreate them
That may seem naive, but OTOH, simply nuking software and business patents would go a huge way to fixing this, and that does seem to be the worldwide trend.
I propose new terminology (Score:4, Interesting)
producing entity + wielding bad patents = patent ogre
Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, patents are designed to foster innovation like my kid's bee costume is designed to let him fly.... badly.
Patents don't give an idea value. They give a piece of paper value. That creates an economy based on pieces of paper, and to prevent those pieces of paper from losing their artificial value, you need to enforce restrictions on people, ie take away some of their freedom.
But actually, all you *really* need for people to invest in an idea is lots of them. The more people you have, the more likely you'll find one willing to invest in an idea. It's that simple. That's how it's always worked before patents even existed.
Here's another secret: all you need for lots of inventions is lots and lots of inventors: educated people with time to tinker. We have those, more than we ever had in the history of the world. Ideas get rediscovered *all*the*time*.
We really don't need silly pieces of paper that are collected by a bunch of rich corporations so they can stop other people from actually inventing new things. And we don't need US courts to tell us we should pay a ransom to the owners of those pieces of paper, just because they paid the USPTO a fee for the privilege of demanding our money.
Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
Intention does not make reality.
The monopoly privilege directly harms innovation by third parties. The least destructive option is therefore trade secrets. I have no problem with that, because it allows others to come up with inventions independently.
As it should be, for if I come up with something that other chemists can duplicate, there's no reason to give me a monopoly. I would only be setting back the scientific advances by a generation.
Nobody said life shouldn't be inconvenient, except those arguing for patents. And they conveniently forget how inconvenient they make life for everybody else, since that is the price for making life convenient for just one.
Suppose you invent an airplane, and patent it. You'll prevent innovation ands stifle your local industry , while in other parts of the world people who are just as smart as you will make huge progress.
That said, you still aren't forced to make sealed cameras, you can sell unsealed cameras that people can tinker with. If your cameras are good, you will still make a nice living from them. And if you get competitors, then the market will grow, and you'll sell more units.
This is not better. You're monopolizing the process, thereby preventing others from improving "your" idea, expect rent from everyone and cause the idea to be shunned by the vast majority of potential inventors until your patent expires. This is not better for the customer, who could be having a full ecosystem of alternatives and modifications.
That is pure fantasy. Have you even read a single patent? They are totally unsuitable for learning a process. Nobody reads patents to learn a competitor's secrets, they just look at the other guy's products, and think through the problem or reverse engineer. Granted, this requires other people with the same basic knowledge and intelligence as the inventor. There are plenty of those in the world.
Finally, I don't believe the claim that everybody is better off if the new guy has to pay royalties. In the absence of patents, the new guy can just reinvent his own version of the product, and price it competitively (you don't believe tha
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Patents are designed to foster innovation. They give an idea value so that people will take the risk of investing in that idea whatever the scale of the inventor.
They are poorly designed then.
1) A lot of really innovative stuff only gets big after many years - takes a lot to get the market ready for your stuff. See Douglas Engelbart and the Mother of all Demos. Whereas Amazon etc get lots of money and leverage from stuff like one-click and "Shopping Cart (Web Edition)".
2) An overworked patent examiner can't tell how innovative something really is in zillions of different fields, and may not have enough to time to look for prior art by comparing broad vague claims wi
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Except that before patents, we had mostly trade and guild secrets enforced by beating the living daylights out of each other, frequent loss of critical knowledge and intermittent dark ages and after patents are put into place we have the greatest period of innovation in human history. I know correlation is not causation, but when you're arguing that there is a causal relationship between patents and the opposite of what happened, correlation is enough to disprove you.
Sure, developing nations steal the ideas
Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
We have just invented the greatest tool since Gutenberg for the dissemination of information. An almost incomprehensibly powerful tool for decentralizing problem solving.
And the reason it has worked is that we have not let governments kill it. Regardless of how you may feel about politics in every other area of life, please leave the Internet the fuck out of it. The Internet is the greatest accomplishment of humankind to date IMHO, and has transformed my life in ways I could never have imagined. I'm about the same age as the personal computer - born in the mid 70s - and I never even imagined any of this would be possible even when I was 12 and got my first modem.
Service Unavailable (Score:2)
And speaking of Soverain Software [soverain.com], their web page is responding "Service Unavailable" at the moment... Lol, and so on...
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Drat -- it's back up. Where is that much vaunted slashdot effect?
Re:The Problem is Bad Patents, More Than Trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your scope is a bit too narrow. All "intellectual property" has this effect. All of it needs reform (sans trademark, which is more for consumer protection than a piece of "property").
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Part of the problem is that patents are too long. In the 18th century having patents last as long as they do made sense as the pace of innovation wasn't that quick. Not like it is today.
I think we need a patent system, last thing I want to do is come up with some clever algorithm that solves a novel problem and only to be undercut by someone with far more resources and market presence that didn't have to do the work of actually implementing or even thinking up that idea. On the other hand I don't want to be
From TFA: (Score:5, Insightful)
Screw them. Seriously, screw them. You can quote me on that.
In Internet vernacular: QFT—Quoted For Truth.
Thank you Mr. Lee Cheng for saying it and saying it with attitude. I'm afraid it will probably cost you in the future when judges read about it and are miffed by your attitude, but you'll probably only be seeing the same six judges for the next 20 years anyway, and they already don't like you on principle, so... full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.
That's one useless little rent-seeker squashed. Only 1000 more to go...
(Mr Lee Cheng of NewEgg has some serious job security.)
Re:From TFA: (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:From TFA: (Score:5, Interesting)
They aren't going to have to do that a thousand times. If they can manage it two or three times, and get nice big public stories about it featured in the news, future patent trolls will conveniently forget to sue Newegg in favor of going after everyone else and collecting settlements that don't endanger their existence.
Sadly, you are correct. Now that you mention it, I think you overestimate the number of times NewEgg will get a chance to defend against a troll. This may be the very last time. NewEgg's lawyer will be reduced to filing amicus briefs on those cases from which NewEgg was omitted.
I do have one question for our lurking lawyers. Does this mean other companies who have previously settled automatically get their settlements refunded? Does Victoria's Secret get their $18 million back? I would assume it's not automatic, so my real question is can they file something and get it back? Or once you've settled, is your money gone forever? That's something I haven't seen addressed in the numerous Slashdot patent threads.
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Most settlements are self-contained, and are not affected by outside events or court judgments. A settlement by definition is a short-cut to circumvent going to trial; that pretty much limits its scope in both directions. The settlement does not affect other litigation (outbound effect = 0) nor is it affected by other litigation (inbound effect = 0).
If other parties to other lawsuits which have settled agree to reopen those settled (i.e. closed) suits, then they are open game. Otherwise, them's the rules
Re:From TFA: (Score:4, Insightful)
It's part of the gambit. They have to generate as much publicity as possible so that other patent trolls see it.
It's the same technique as "we don't negotiate with terrorists". It doesn't work if no one knows it's what you do. The idea is that patent trolls won't bother going after them because the patent trolls want the settlement option, they don't want it to end up in court and certainly don't want the patents themselves challenged.
As a Chinese-American (Score:2)
I am proud of their accomplishments against the status quo of the legal system.
Special Kudos to:
Fred Chang (founder, global CEO)
Lee Cheng (Chief Legal Officer)
James Wu (Chief Technology Officer)
Prior Art (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazon paid 40 million$ to Soverain (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.zdnet.com/news/amazon-pays-40-million-to-settle-patent-dispute/144171 [zdnet.com]
What Now For Amazon and the Others? (Score:4, Interesting)
Soverain had already picked a fight with the biggest kid on the playground and won. The first company it sued was Amazon, and Soverain scored a $40 million settlement from the giant retailer back in 2005. The Gap also settled for an undisclosed sum. That was back when defendants were afraid of RIM-sized damage payouts, before eBay v. MercExchange and subsequent Supreme Court decisions started to put some limits on what do-nothing patent holders could win.
So what happens now to all that loot that these companies paid out?
As far as I'm concerned I hope Amazon can't get any back, what with their own bullshit bag of silly patents...
Re:What Now For Amazon and the Others? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to go... (Score:2)
I'm going to go right now and buy something from Newegg.. Not sure what but I'm going to buy something.
A game where winner still pays the price (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately this doesn't take into accounts the costs. Newegg was lucky that they had an in-house lawyer and the original owner who was prepared to make a stand. This is rare: Conventional wisdom is to hire outside lawyers - patent specialists and all. Lawyers don't come cheap, so Patent troll victims end up owing their lawyers millions of dollars EVEN IF THEY WIN. Under the American court system usually the loser does not have to pay the winners costs, and even in countries where they do, the loser only pays a fraction of the winner's costs costs. The article also doesn't consider the incredible waste of employee time responding to a suit where they could be doing something profitable instead. It also doesn't consider the stress on the employees and the owners. No one will buy a business threatened with a patent lawsuit. Business development grinds to a halt. In theory judges are supposed to dismiss law suits without merit, but they don't - because they don't give a shit about the costs and it gives them something to do.
That the original judge fucked up does not surprise me. Forget what you see on TV about just and fair judges: In patent troll counties like the Eastern District of Texas the judges are blatantly pro-plaintiff. If they were not all the money flowing into their district would dry up, the judges and legal fraternity would be looking for a job somewhere else. The system has not worked. Newegg may have won, but the suit would have still cost them a fortune. This is a rare outcome and usually costs the trolls nothing who shrug and move on to their next victim.
I suggest a new strategy: but the judges of the Eastern District of Texas and other patent troll counties under a microscope and petition the government to remove judges who are playing sides or unfit or incompetent to serve. Did you notice the article doesn't name the original judge? Awesome job. Imagine being able to fuck up like that but everyone is so in awe of your power no one will name you. In any other profession people would be laughing at them over the water cooler.
Re:A game where winner still pays the price (Score:5, Informative)
They did hire an outside law firm, Weil Gotshal, which is one of the top firms in the country.
In theory judges are supposed to dismiss law suits without merit, but they don't - because they don't give a shit about the costs and it gives them something to do. . . That the original judge fucked up does not surprise me. Forget what you see on TV about just and fair judges: In patent troll counties like the Eastern District of Texas the judges are blatantly pro-plaintiff. If they were not all the money flowing into their district would dry up, the judges and legal fraternity would be looking for a job somewhere else.
Absolutely wrong, judges love dismissing cases, particularly complex cases like patent actions, because they don't want their docket to get overloaded. Judges make incorrect holdings of fact and law all the time; that's the whole point behind appeal courts. It's usually not out of malice or incompetence, despite perennial slashdot anger at what is perceived as to the contrary. Speaking as someone who used to litigate in federal courts, the majority of judges just don't care on a personal level about the parties before them, they just want to get the cases moved through their court. The only personal investment most judges have in the cases is they don't want them to be reversed because they consider it as a hit on their reputation.
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hmm (Score:3)
This is the same stupidity, in another form (Score:4, Interesting)
> Perhaps the system does work after all.
Winning your 1 case, does not mean the system is working as intended, regardless of the outcome.
Troll might be close, but ... (Score:3)
... a more accurate term I believe would be leech.
"Perhaps the system does work after all" (Score:5, Interesting)
that newegg had to go to court at all indicates that "the system" is a failure. software is mathematics. mathematics is unpatentable. it was a lower-court ruling ignoring the supreme court which resulted in the mistaken impression that software can be patented: U.S. law *actually* says that only a hardware-software *combination* may be patented, i.e. something like an electronic cash register, or a calculator. if someone makes better software that runs on e.g. TI's hardware then, under U.S. Patent Law, that alternative software *cannot* be patent infringing. the problem is that it's going to take someone to stand up, just like newegg did, but this time to take it all the way through to the supreme court. and that's the problem: the cost of taking things to court. if patent litigation was zero cost to the defendant, including taking things all the way to the supreme court, *then* the system would not be unequal, and would be sorted out pretty damn fast.
Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Informative)
A patent troll is one who files or buys overly broad patents, expressly for the purpose of not pursuing active development or marketing of their patents. A patent troll's business plan is to wait for a company to make big on something that might infringe, or buy portfolios that might be infringed on, and keep them in obscurity, till such time they can be used to sue(read: extort) a company such that proper legal defense is purposefully less than the cost to comply with their licensing agreements.
In short, a patent troll would prefer you not learn about their patent till it's too late, while a proper patent holder wants you to know of their patent so that you will license it from them for your technology.
Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Interesting)
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It seems like the easy way to fix the patent troll situation is for the government to require yearly progress reports (it's not too much to ask to have the patent holder produce something that indicates actual development work is going on whether the product is complete or not). The patent should be rendered null and void if the patent holder has done nothing but sit on it; if the holder hasn't done anything then it's time to let someone else try. No more free money by gaming the system and shaking people down.
I completely agree. I've thought for some time that a patent holder should be given 2 years to produce and distribute a product based on the patent or lose the patent.
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This sounds like a great idea but what if the technology to achieve the idea is what is lacking? Think about creating a fancy new antenna system or something else which simulates wonderfully on software, but it's small enough that the technology to actually build it is just out of reach? Should a design be invalid just because the technology to build it is just out of reach?
(note I said design, not some fluffy broad idea that qualifies as a "patent" these days, but an actual design like a patent should cove
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No need for yearly progress reports, just make patents horribly expensive after the first year they are granted.
And make the patent office liable if a patent was granted that later was considered too broad.
Re:Patent troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
...or... after the second year we should limit patent damage claims to a multiple of what the licensee was paying the patent office every year to maintain that patent. A patent which is earning you millions every year is worth paying $100,000 a year to maintain, right? 5% of the patent's value feels about right.
Hang on... that might actually work.
I've just fixed the system!
Re:Patent troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. That way just opens the door to creating new ways to beat the system.
I think letting patent holders choose how much to pay the patent office, then limiting their damage claims to a multiple of that amount is the way. In that world nobody could afford to sit on a stack of patents in the hope of suing somebody for big money. The only patents being actively maintained would be patents that were earning real money.
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No it wouldn't, because they're funded with public money so they have no vested interest in whether they pay out anything or not.
Now, if it involved patent examiners losing their jobs, that would be something...
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Make the patent offices liable for any patent that's later invalidated (ie. pay all the legal bills). It's the only way.
The problem with this idea is it makes the american taxpayer ultimately liable.
The patent office is basically underfunded and simply cannot afford to fully examine every patent filed and look for prior art in every case. Funding it to this extent would probably cost billions based on the number of patents file every year.
Even if you made the people applying for a patent pay for the process if the patent was found to be not valid, this would still involve the patent office needing far more money that it curr
Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just impractical. You would just get millions of bullshit reports for millions of bullshit patents. If the Patent Office is not able to examine the patent submissions properly in the first place, I doubt they would be able to examine the reports either.
There was a better suggestion involving copyrights that could apply to patents as well:
1) The patent submitter would have to set a price-tag on his patent from the get go - a license price.
2) When it is accepted, the patent holder would have to pay a yearly tax for the patent (a percentage of the price he set up for it)
3) Anyone could pay the posted license price to the patent holder to use the technology
4) If anyone is found to be infringing on a patent, he would be required to pay the patent holder a sum relative to the price tag (such as 200% of the price per year infringed)
The tax could be really small - like 1% so it would not bother real inventors while at the same time would stop patent trolls from clinging onto thousands of patents demanding unreasonable payments for the technologies.
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Re:Patent troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. All that would do is produce another mountain of fake/useless bureaucracy at taxpayer expense. Patent troll are quite capable of pretending to do "research".
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Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, while the point of patents (and other IP laws) was explicitly to incentivize innovation, patent trolls act as parasites and discouragements to innovation. They provide no new ideas or products of their own, instead litigating against and punishing those who do.
They undermine the very system they are abusing, and hurt everyone involved for their own gain.
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Come on, they approved patents on a shopping cart. And they approved (but later was overturned) "put it on my tab" (calling it one-click). Put "on a computer" at the end of anything non-novel, trivial and obvious, and you will get it approved. Then the system is built broken and we'd be better off without it than in the state it's in now.
Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the clearest explanation I have seen of the difference between a troll and a non-troll. Thank you for that.
A troll lurks under his bridge, the one you have crossed every day for a year, and then after you have crossed many times, maybe even built your business based around using that bridge, springs up and says, "You crossed 365 times without paying me. My bridge is critical to your livelihood - now pay me [some enormous amount] or you can not cross again!" The non-troll, on the other hand, proudly stands by the entrance to his bridge and, before you cross the very first time, says "Crossing the bridge will cost [some nominal amount] per trip. Do you wish to pay, or find another route?"
There are in fact legitimate companies whose business model is to perform research, develop new technologies, and license those new, patented, technologies to other companies who produce products using those technologies. Some companies are good at making stuff. Others are good at inventing stuff. They shouldn't necessarily have to be one and the same.
It bothers me that people want to throw all "non-practicing entities" in the same bucket as true patent trolls. Some NPE's add real value. (One example - look at the cell phone in your pocket. The fundamental technology behind that little wonder was developed 30 years ago by a company who today would be called an NPE. They still do R&D, they still actively license their patented inventions. They are the furthest thing from a troll. Google InterDigital.)
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Since they died, it apparently was their time.
Re:Lousy lawyers (Score:5, Interesting)
And this is why the legal system (not just patents ... the WHOLE legal system) is so screwed up. Judgment on cases brought before the court should always, and only, be based on the merits of the case, no matter how good ... or how bad ... the attorneys are. This is what is raising the cost of lawsuits in this country.
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That would be a Justice system.
Some people call what we have a justice system, but they are wrong. What we have in the US is a legal system.
There are a few good things about a legal system. Also a few pitfalls in having a "Justice System".
Though I think I would still prefer a justice system. Even though it would result in the instantaneous execution of many lawyers and politicians.
Notice how such a large number of scum sucking politicians are lawyers?
Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Informative)
A "patent troll" is someone that takes advantage of patent law for monetary gain based on the innovation of others. Patent trolls aren't trying to claim reward for what is theirs. They simply game the system and out-maneuver the innovators such that, by legal definition (but not common sense) they are entitled to reward.
As such, it's mostly counterproductive for the purpose that the method of patenting was intended to serve. (encouraging and rewarding innovation)
Patent trolls siphon off some of the rewards of innovation through litigation and through the licensing of innovations where they themselves were not the innovator.
Fortunately, a lot of courts (at least those that'd don't directly benefit from the litigations, such as texas east district) have identified these people as taking advantage of the legal system and costing it money in exchange not for the support of innovation, but for the enrichment of the trolls and stifling of innovation, and are starting to push for change.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Seems weird to even use a jury for most civil suites. As you quote, the jury wants to go home so if it is a long trial...
As well something like a patent suite is going to take intelligent people to understand, even with good expert witnesses and the odds of one prejudiced juror seems high.
The elected judiciary also seems odd. Judges should be aiming for truth, not re-election, which basically means a bunch of common people who probably have not got all the facts second guessing judges decisions.
Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA. The patents were overly broad/obvious, and there was prior art. Other companies who were approached by Soverain settled because they didn't want to get drawn into a lengthy and expensive legal battle. Newegg stood their ground, and ultimately prevailed.
Yes, Soverain was a "legitimate patent holder" in the sense that they legitimately owned the patents in question. But the patents themselves were not legitimate (in the sense of embodying anything original or unique).
I suspect that one of the reasons Newegg stood their ground is that -- unlike most of the other companies mentioned in the article -- they are exclusively an online operation, and therefore had more at stake.
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I suspect that Newegg stood their ground because of their policy:
"For Newegg's chief legal officer Lee Cheng, it's a huge validation of the strategy the company decided to pursue back in 2007: not to settle with patent trolls. Ever."
Or, that policy could be so much bluster, and Newegg has actually settled with other patent trolls, quietly, behind the scenes.
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Re:Patent troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
I really have little idea - I've allowed for that possibility. But, if you've read TFA, then Mr. Cheng indicates otherwise. You can take your pick - believe Mr. Cheng's statements, or assume that Newegg has settled quietly with other patent trolls. It's possible that Newegg simply believed this case was winnable, while other cases may not have been.
What I am very sure of, is that the patent office needs more funds, more personnel, and orders from congress to weed out all these submarine patents, get rid of obvious patents, and search for prior art patents. Before any of that, though, the patent system itself needs to be overhauled.
It's been noted often enough here, that companies don't WANT an "inventor" to be aware of prior art, etc. They WANT their "inventors" to submit ideas, so that the company can file the patent. They get it filed, if it gets approved, then it's valid on it's face. Better to wait for a civil suit, to have it's validity tested, when everyone can innocently claim, "Well, we did this all independently, and we had no idea that anyone else may have done it. It wasn't all that obvious, from where we were sitting, at the time!" Those, and similar arguments, might convince a jury, or they may not.
Basically, it's all a huge gamble, largely determined by the size of your legal staff - and it's so very wrong.
Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Patent troll? (Score:4, Interesting)
That seems proper, and fitting, to me. Also, increasing the number of examiners would help. I'm half way sure that the examiners are pretty smart people. If an examiner simply could spend TIME on an application, he could probably kick out a lot of the bogus patents.
Face it - if the average slashdotter can take a casual look at a patent, think for less than ten minutes, then provide a half dozen examples of prior art, then a decent examiner could do the same. The examiner's biggest problem is probably time. The paperwork flows onto his desk at a breakneck pace, and he needs to get it off of his desk somehow. Skim it, rubber stamp it, and pass it on to the next person who rubber stamps it seems to be the most common method.
Of course, there is the possibility that half the examiners are actually idiots. I'm not in a position to address that possibility.
Re:Patent troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
The examiner's biggest problem is probably time. The paperwork flows onto his desk at a breakneck pace, and he needs to get it off of his desk somehow. Skim it, rubber stamp it, and pass it on to the next person who rubber stamps it seems to be the most common method.
Well, there is also the problem that in most jobs the ones whom management considers the best workers are those who go through their work the fastest, not those who do the highest quality work.
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Well, there is also the problem that in most jobs the ones whom management considers the best workers are those who go through their work the fastest, not those who do the highest quality work.
Well then it's time to adjust the metrics. Simply add a huge negative factor for any accepted patent that was later invalidated in court for both the examiner AND his manager.
Won't work. The patent office is considered among most of the engineers that I know "a good place to start out and get experience, but a terrible place to make a career". Examiner retention is apparently quite low.
I have never worked there, but I can easily understand the work dynamic, having worked at a company which reviewed blueprints for compliance with the law. Work packages came in, you either accepted them or rejected them. This kind of work was repetitive and tedious. Add the horror of readi
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Sounds like something ripe for automation. Surely this could be significantly improved with an effective pattern matching algorithm (maybe its available but patent encumbered?).
You should be able to run a match against the body of the patent, have a keyword and natural language graph generated (including synonyms and partial phrase matches) and get back a list of top level prior art hits, run again against this set and get back a full set of prior art (if any). A good system would create a table of matches
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At a very rough guess, for every valid patent awarded in the past thirty years, there are about five or six bullshit, worthless patents that never should have been awarded, based on prior art or obviousness.
Using those bullshit patents to shake down legitimate businesses makes one a patent troll.
It's really pretty simple. In some cases an individual patent's merits may not be simple at all - but the distinction between a patent troll and other patent holders is really very simple. Patent trolls, for the m
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Poor choice of phrase, even though it accurately connotes the situation, its so inflammatory that nobody can hear your comment, which is too bad, its a good comment. I'm a little torn by this issue, I understand the pain and anguish this language has inflicted, and that the black culture still experiences some PTSD from it and related language. That said, there is important, vital work, by people like Twain in his stories about life in slave era Missouri, that people need to understand and appreciate, and t
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Re:Fugitive in the woodpile (Score:5, Insightful)
People who didn't want to appear to be complete assholes would avoid a phrase that not only used a vile racial slur, but was a metaphor suggesting that a fugitive slave was a hidden problem rather than a person to be aided by all means necessary.
In the GP post's context, such a person might say "The catch is the word `legitimate'," or "The snag is the word `legitimate'."
Re:Fugitive in the woodpile (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you need to? There is no woodpile. There is no person, African or otherwise. It's just a phrase that means what the damn link it links to above says is means. There's about 17 billion different ways to say the same thing, many of which aren't needlessly jarring (and hence don't detract from the actual point being made).
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Sure if you want to limit your communication and have your point side tracked go ahead and use archaic phrases like that. That the person thought they needed to link the phrase to a wikipedia entry for it pretty much shows that they expected a significant number of people to not understand it anyway, so communication wasn't the primary goal anyway.
That only one reply is actually about the meat of the comment as opposed to the archaic phrase is just further indication of the primary goal.
Re:Patent troll? (Score:5, Informative)
The point of patents is not to protect anyone's investments. The trade-off of patents is disclosure. Prior to patents, trades often kept their methods secret, and if any trades died out, so did their technologies. Patents were created to incentivize inventors to share the secrets of their invention, for the public good. A monopoly on the technology was the bargaining token to encourage them to spill the beans.
Patents systems do not care about investments, it only exists to make disclosure a more appealing option than secrecy.
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let there %= -2;
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Thankfully, the competitors you mention are all dubiously competent, so this is unlikely to be Newegg's death-by-good-intentions.
Re:So in other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
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As they say in financial services ads, "past performance is not indicative of future results". While they were once a powerhouse of technical innovation, Bell Labs' day in the sun has come and gone. They've been in decline for many years, and the bursting of the dot-com bubble (in which Lucent was heavily invested) pretty much finished them off.
I do agree, calling them a "patent troll" is a bit harsh though; at least they were great in the past, and produced (and continue to produce) actual products. But as
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As for Bell Labs, that name is historically important, but "owning Bell Labs" at this point basically just means having bought up some leftover intellectual property that is no longer commercially viable. (The fact that the current owner is doing new R&D under the Bell L
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And Amazon has a comment system filled with vastly more morons, and the search and description of parts is horrible compared to newegg. Maybe worth it if you're buying something like a laptop, but if you're buying parts... newegg all the way. With the possible exceptoin of cases, because they are often so bloody heavy and expensive to ship, it can be cheaper to pick them up from the local computer shops instead -- assuming you have a good one.
I get that 15% restocking is annoying (like, when Asus tech suppo
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Their product listings are generally detailed and accurate enough that the restocking fee is largely irrelevant. As long as you do your homework, you will rarely (if ever) need to return anything for a refund. Over the past decade, between home and work, I've probably ordered upwards of $50K worth of computer hardware from them, and I have never paid a restocking fee.
Re:How is he a patent troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
Under the current system, a lot of people own patents on things they shouldn't have been allowed to patent in the first place. That's the crux of the issue. I've got no problem with people enforcing patents on things that are truly innovative. But too many patents these days are for concepts which already existed prior to the filing of the patent and/or are clearly obvious.
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Ahh, there are always assholes who defend trolls.
Go read the article, it was clearly trollish
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That might be a really good idea (Score:3)
I'm sure a couple tweaks to the idea would be needed. One tweak is that probably the price would go down with each purchase, so someone who wants to be the first to market would pay more than the last. That would almost be required sin
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Like when Samsung beat Apple in the UK, but then Apple won on the same issues in the US. Patents are granted once and valid everywhere, but must be defeated on country at a time. NewEgg saved their own country. Now someone needs to win in every nation in the rest of the world.
My suspicion is that you'll find that only the USPTO was stupid enough to issue patents for these "inventions".