Rackspace Goes On Rampage Against Patent Trolls 132
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."
The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The only ones who win are the lawyers."
-The laws must be changed.
Which is exactly why the laws won't be changed.
Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now lobbyists make the laws, and lobbyists are paid for by the winning side.
Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly how many non-geeks are actually knowledgeable about patent trolls? Two? Three?
Talk to most random people about patents, and they think: "lotto" -- invent something cool and retire. Try to explain what is wrong with the system and their eyes glaze over. The notion that patent reform will come from the masses and that they will demand change is .... wishful thinking? ludicrous? Crazy? Pick any word that's the antonym of "possible."
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And of most of the 'geeks' around who wouldnt be first to line up and patent something if they actually came up with something cool? Ah...
If you can up with say a revolutionary image creation system or compression system. You would patent the hell out of it.
They only ones screaming for reform are those being screwed over by the existing system. Hell even MS has been screwed over yet their push for reform is basically crickets in the room.
Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:5, Insightful)
"who wouldnt be first to line up and patent something if they actually came up with something cool?"
I presume that you're familiar with the name "Linus Torvalds"? Copyleft authors are legion and myriad. It's not unusual to see a license that says something to the effect, "Hey, enjoy my cool stuff, for free! If you really like it, visit my homepage to leave compliments or to make a donation!"
Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:4, Funny)
So it is not always the lawyers who win. Sometimes it is the hit-men.
What is the difference?
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One's a scourge on the nation taking dirty money to do terrible, terrible things. The other just kills people for money.
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The hit-man charges less and guarantees that the target will never bother you again.
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Many of us are employed as software developers. We invent something comparable to stupid software patents like "slide to unlock" in every project and we'd rather keep that level of grunt work non-patentable like it is supposed to be.
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And of most of the 'geeks' around who wouldnt be first to line up and patent something if they actually came up with something cool? Ah...
If you can up with say a revolutionary image creation system or compression system. You would patent the hell out of it.
They only ones screaming for reform are those being screwed over by the existing system. Hell even MS has been screwed over yet their push for reform is basically crickets in the room.
I wouldn't. I came up with a synthesis for a new compound. It would
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First, getting that patent through the system is a lot of expense.
Second, publishing prevents someone else from patenting a later invention of same.
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someone else could patent it
Only if you keep it a secret. If you publish your results, then the inventive step is public and no one can patent it any longer.
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"Don't blame the patent trolls, blame the laws that make patent trolls an inevitable outcome."
Bullshit, thats a cop-out. Nobody stuck a gun to their heads and *made* them act like assholes. Not patent trolls, nor anyone else in business. Its just like in poliitics, nobody has the balls or the maturity to be honest and own up to their own actions.
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You might be right. I hope not though.
I mean, I couldn't explain net neutrality to my parents or friends and have them get it, but I could say, "do you want Comcast charging you $20 a month just to use the Netflix you already pay for over the internet connection you already pay for?" They sure as hell understand that argument. And the blackouts did get peoples' attention.
In this case, much as it was with net neutrality, businesses look at patent trolls as a miserable pain in the ass, keeping everyone from d
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Just start with "If you ever do invent something you could retire on, some troll will show up and take it away and the crooked court system will help them". Now you've got their attention.
New wealth, maybe (Score:1)
Wealth too is transitory. It's often gone within two generations, and usually less.
Newer wealth, perhaps. Recognisable faces such as Gates, Zuckerberg, etc.
However, old money, often invested through hard-to-trace organizations, is likely a big factor as well.
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Re:The only ones who win are the lawyers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Fines and jail time won't work. Asset forfeiture on the other hand could put a dent in this business. Just apply the RICO statutes. After all, it is racketeering.
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Is a fine not a forfeiture of assets? I don't mean to be - uhhh - pedantic is the right term? But, the idea of a fine is to discourage certain conduct. I think that what you are really suggesting is, fines are levied against trolls far to infrequently, and the fines are much to small.
Maybe a single fine shouldn't be ruinous to any person or to any company - but trolls should be racking up these penalties every time they go into court. Cumulatively, these fines should be ruinous.
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Then an obvious solution is, if you fail when you attack someone for a patent violation, you lose the patent. That would stop trolling instantly.
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People with money will always vote laws for them.
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Getting "tough"? (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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If you don't feed the troll, an even bigger troll comes after you (the government).
Re:Getting "tough"? (Score:5, Informative)
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)
:>(
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]
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That patent was PTO#5,892,697 [uspto.gov] and only the first claim was asserted for that lawsuit.
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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?
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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 ope
don't patent mathematics (Score:3, Insightful)
:>)
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 st
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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.
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Parasitic? (Score:2)
If by "parasitic" you mean legally licensed BSD code then yes. They might have based their first IP stack from BSD code but then again wouldn't anyone do this instead of writing from scratch? I know the command line FTP program in WinNT was BSD based. But again why rewrite something when you have mature established code to license from.
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That means they didn't break the license agreement, it doesn't mean they aren't parasitic.
OTOH, I'm biased in favor ot the GPL, so my use of the language might not seem appropriate to someone who favors the BSD.
Re:Concerted lawsuits against linux? Who's behind (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second.
Is Microsoft parasitic? Undeniably.
For using the BSD implementation of this, that, or the other?
Uhh, no, I don't think so. Isn't BSD allowed to be used any damned way anybody wants to use it? That's the selling point of BSD over the GPL, isn't it? You can analyze it, use it, change it, make derivative works, then license those works as you see fit. It's appealing to industry, it's appealing to hopeful startups, it's even appealing to government and private individuals who are hoping to cash in.
Yes, Microsoft is parasitic, but not for using a BSD licensed software or method.
If BSD's methods and software happen to be the best, fastest, most secure, and most elegant solution in any given situation - take it and run with it. That's basically what the license says.
If the GPL people want their license to be respected, then the BSD licenses need to be respected.
And, lest I be misunderstood - I am NOT making an argument that BSD is better than GPL, nor am I arguing that GPL is better than BSD.
Symbiotes feed on GPL; parasites feed off of BSD. (Score:2)
A parasite is a parasite, whether you give it permission to be a parasite or not. Someone who hits you in the head still hit you in the head, even if you say "I told 'em they could hit me, I swear, I did! I asked for it!"
:>)
A symbiote is part of a symbiotic relationship, in which the symbiote gives something back to the host. Even with the permissive licensing of BSD, requiring the BSD attribution alone, us
oopsie, "parasitic", not "parastitic". (Score:2)
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Oh-kay. I'm not going to argue real hard about any of that. I don't really agree with that position, but I don't really disagree.
I will note that there must be some symbiotes contributing back to BSD. Without ongoing contributions, the body of BSD licensed OS's and software would soon become obsolete, and forgotten. Maybe it's more fair to say that BSD is more tolerant of parasites than GPL is?
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Remoras aren't parasitic. Well not in the biological sense at least - I suppose they still are in the fluid dynamic sense [wikipedia.org] (groan).
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So it's parasitic in terms of transport and st
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That is not the definition of parasite, however. A parasite exists to the detriment of its host. If both benefit, then that is symbiosis or mutualism. If the host is unharmed or unaffected, then this is not parasitism, it is commensalism [wikipedia.org]. You can try to make the argument that incorporating BSD code into a closed-source project is parasitism, but I think that would be a fairly weak argument. Now if a company took BSD code, incorporated it into their project, then sued the maintainers of the BSD code or asser
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I don't think that's what the GP meant.
I think they meant there are people/groups that peruse the source of open source software, find good ideas in it, patent them, and then sue based on those patents.
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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)
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].
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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.
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At least with Godzilla you can run screaming. You might even get away.
Barney is everywhere. (thankfully, not as much as he once was...)
Imagine that (Score:3, Informative)
Trolls Will Always Troll (Score:2, Informative)
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)
Re:Would this work? (Score:5, Interesting)
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! ... aww, shit.
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)
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)
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)
It might as well be spam in my inbox.
Why not just link the damn blog post by Rackspace itself? link [rackspace.com]
Re:WTF is the link to? (Score:5, Funny)
You clicked the link? That's weird.
What patents? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?!
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Yes, which is why I call myself a libertarian, I'll NEVER call myself a Libertarian.
FWIW, even "libertarian" has lots of sticky places, but fewer than Democrat or Republican.
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It's part of the Libertarian mindset because "do whatever you want as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others" is the libertarian mindset.
Suing someone is not infringing their rights. It's accusing them of infringing upon yours.
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You are confusing "libertarians" with "Libertarians". (Though I'll agree that some libertarians have the mind system you are objecting to.)
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That's like claiming that "Democrats" are actually democrats, or that "Republicans" are in favor of a republic. (Actually, that last may be generally true, though it's hard to be sure, and depends on which centuries definition of republic you are using.)
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Also you are correct, I do not think with my rear end. Mine is quite dumb so I normally just sit on it. I do applaud you for being able to think with yours but you may find you get better results with a different organ.
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It does most definitely include using the legal system as a blunt instrument against those that can't as easily afford lawyers though
I get it.. you made one claim, and someone challenged it and you realized how stupid it was, so now you are making another claim.
I challenge this one too, because its just as dumbass as the previous bullshit claim you made up.
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Because America.
Patent troll E patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Patent trolls don't make refrigerators, they make patents. So there would be no waiver because they would have no reason to license the fridge patent.
Some of these are quite laughable, if you read the article, you'll see a patent on rounding floating point numbers with non standard exponents without changing the exponent size, i.e. what every floating point package did before IEEE standardized the representation of under and overflow case.
Putting aside it was a patent on math, the patent office thought to g
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Patent trolls don't make refrigerators, they make patents.
Patent trolls don't make patents. They don't innovate.
Patent trolls buy patents or companies with patents to halt innovation.
Huge difference there.
Once you have paid him the Dane-geld (Score:4, Insightful)
you never get rid of the Dane. [poetryloverspage.com]
Uniloc (Score:3)
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)
Interesting idea (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Except, since so many trolls are shell corporations, they'd just dissolve themselves, and the next shell company would not be bound by the agreement, right?
Are the courts the enemy of the people? (Score:5, Insightful)
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]
You are playing the wrong way (Score:2)
Around here, the troll would have received a "corrective", and in the next morning his lawyers would appear floating downriver.
Re:You are playing the wrong way (Score:4, Interesting)
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(accidentally modded "offtopic" so posting to undo that)
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The government is the enemy of the people and the courts are just a portion of the government. Judge is a political position. Justice is for sale and we have institutionalized slavery in the form of privatized prisons, without even producing any useful output (which is not a call for work camps...)
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"The few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons." Frédéric Bastiat, The Law.
And, by extension, participation in the legal system.
Patent trolls make ... (Score:2)
... debt collectors look like angels.
YOU KNOW........ (Score:1)
......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 i
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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)
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)
"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)
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?
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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 in
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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.