We dealt with some patent trolls back in the 2010-2020 era, for those who have not experienced it, it is absurd. In our case, the patent "troll" was an LLC w/ ~5 members - 2 lawyers, 1 person who owned the original patent, and some spouses. The only "asset" of the LLC was the patent. I think it was around scrollbars or some CSS overflow thing - they sent us a demand/cease-desist letter saying they will sue for $1M and asked for a call. Classic Lawyer call "well, we can make this all go away for $25k." We ended up fighting it a bit because of "principles" by our founder. - in discovery there was something like 1,000 of these exact demand letters they had sent.
The kicker? If you fight back, it costs a ton in legal fees, and even if you win, you can’t recover those fees — because the LLC’s only asset is the patent itself.
Just insane to me we would take a step back like this.
See Blue Jeans Cable's classic response to a patent cease-and-desist letter from Monster Cables: The Blue Jeans Cable CEO was a former litigator who pulled no punches in his response. [0]
Because they don't expect to win the lawsuit. Their odds of winning a lawsuit aren't that good, so their goal is to badger a founder into settling. A founder would likely be killing their creative endeavor to become their own lawyer and go to court for themselves, and the trolls choose targets for whom paying a lawyer for the length of one of these trials would be prohibitively costly.
In other words, their real business model, the reason that they can be considered a "safe investment" is that they operate as an extortion racket at scale with the justice system itself as their (free) muscle.
> We ended up fighting it a bit because of "principles" by our founder. - in discovery there was something like 1,000 of these exact demand letters they had sent.
I am noting you have not said how this ended up. What does 'we ended up fighting it a bit because of "principles" of our founder.
It means they pushed back then settled without any useful resolution. The troll didn't get a big payday, but they didn't get told to stop and it set precedent helping them shake down others.
How come you can sue others and the court doesn't check whether you have the funds if you lose? I mean if you don't have funds allocated away in case you lose, then why start the proceedings?
I think like so many things the idea of 'patent trolls' has taken on a meaning whereby anyone who has a patent but no operating actual company (as you are describing LLC with 5 members and a lawyer) everyone automatically thinks 'sham'.
On the surface by stories related that certainly appears to be the case.
However we don't have any data (only anecdotes) on how many patents are pursued this way that are actually valid. And 'back in the old days' it used to be that you could have an actual patent and then get shafted by some large corporation simply because they could afford lawyers and you couldn't (meaning 'mr small inventor')
What I am saying in no way means I don't think there is probably abuse (there are enough anecdotes to think 'something is wrong here') but really we need the entire picture and dataset to decide that (in all fairness).
It's not really a question of whether the patent troll has a legitimate patent or not—in the sense of having clear ownership over the IP, that is. They generally do. We consider someone a patent troll when they don't make use of the patent themselves, except to extract money from other people, typically through threats of legal action. They're exploiting the fear of being sued for a lot of money in order to get a comparatively small amount of money in exchange for agreeing to not sue. "Troll" here is in the pre-internet sense of the word, not someone making up a fake story on a message board, but more like a troll living under a bridge, demanding money from people in order to cross it.
The policymaking with regards to industry is functioning more like a clearinghouse, where every interest group gets to have their targeted policy, than a coalition, where the event that one interest group's target policy would hamstring another member would result in dealmaking and some sort of compromise. Certain industries like the steel industry receive steeply protectionist trade restraints, but they're also being de-prioritized in favor of non-producing vexatious litigators who stop them from innovating. In essence this is similar to how some industries are seeing major policy-driven price increases on their outputs and inputs. Multiply that by every lobby and that's all I can interpret out of the big picture.
> Congress Created IPR to Protect the Public—Not Just Patent Owners
For this administration, this is a problem to be solved. Big business are the masters now and we need to make it easier for them to step on small business by any means.
Big business isn't really monolithic when it comes to patents. Some large tech companies love patents (MSFT, e.g.), while others (Google, e.g.) seem to abhor them.
Also, the troll problem is a problem for big business, not a benefit to big business.
Patent trolls benefit from it being expensive and time-consuming to challenge patents (and defend yourself from infringement claims)
These regulations are actually beneficial to big business. It makes it significantly easier to defend your own patents and sue anybody that infringes on them.
I imagine that these benefits are much bigger than the downside of dealing with patent trolls.
Asking someone who knows history better than I do:
Is it the case that every time a society has developed extreme wealth concentration, that concentration gets diffused only via violence? E.g., by internal revolution or by takeover by another country?
It's always been this way. The "rags-to-riches" stories are fabrications to keep the average worker thinking they have a chance. You have a better chance of winning the lottery, which coincidentally, is another psyop to keep people believing that they have a chance.
You are off by several orders of magnitude - a person starting in wealth quintile 1 (numbered poorest to richest) has an ~18% chance to reach quintile 4 or 5, and starting from quintile 2, that rises to 25%.
I think systems grow by themselves - more like a biological ecosystem. Even powerful politicians seem to often be reduced to dealing with the outcomes of a system without seeming to understand how that system works. The idea that people are in charge leads to conspiratorial theories: imagined incentives of people behind the scenes.
However I know I look at the world differently from most people: so it is just as likely my own views are warped.
We must get rid of the patent system. It is solely a way to grant monopolies to those who do not deserve them and slow down all human progress. Henry Ford said the gas engine was delayed twenty years by a frivolous patent.
IPR is a tool that weakens all patents. Saying it helps trolls at the expense of everyone else (which this article says) is a bad faith argument. Weakening IPR helps all patent holders fight for their rights, including trolls. Considering how the tech industry has bullied its way past numerous rightful patents, this seems like it could be reasonable or might not be.
If you think we should have no patents be my guest, but this helps non troll patent holders and not just trolls.
Defensive patents don't really help against trolls since they don't actually make products. That means that they don't infringe on any patents and thus your defensive portfolio doesn't get to play.
Readit News
The kicker? If you fight back, it costs a ton in legal fees, and even if you win, you can’t recover those fees — because the LLC’s only asset is the patent itself.
Just insane to me we would take a step back like this.
[0] See https://www.oncontracts.com/monster-cables-picked-the-wrong-... (self-cite).
Sumptuous!
In other words, their real business model, the reason that they can be considered a "safe investment" is that they operate as an extortion racket at scale with the justice system itself as their (free) muscle.
Send out 1,000s of dubious demand letters which don't cost much. Some percent of those will settle with minimal effort on the troll's side. Profit.
Drop the ones that look expensive and hope they don't counter sue.
I am noting you have not said how this ended up. What does 'we ended up fighting it a bit because of "principles" of our founder.
Dead Comment
On the surface by stories related that certainly appears to be the case.
However we don't have any data (only anecdotes) on how many patents are pursued this way that are actually valid. And 'back in the old days' it used to be that you could have an actual patent and then get shafted by some large corporation simply because they could afford lawyers and you couldn't (meaning 'mr small inventor')
What I am saying in no way means I don't think there is probably abuse (there are enough anecdotes to think 'something is wrong here') but really we need the entire picture and dataset to decide that (in all fairness).
For this administration, this is a problem to be solved. Big business are the masters now and we need to make it easier for them to step on small business by any means.
Also, the troll problem is a problem for big business, not a benefit to big business.
These regulations are actually beneficial to big business. It makes it significantly easier to defend your own patents and sue anybody that infringes on them.
I imagine that these benefits are much bigger than the downside of dealing with patent trolls.
Deleted Comment
If there is no continuous effort to tax rich people and split up political power, democracy will fall back into feudalism
Is it the case that every time a society has developed extreme wealth concentration, that concentration gets diffused only via violence? E.g., by internal revolution or by takeover by another country?
You are off by several orders of magnitude - a person starting in wealth quintile 1 (numbered poorest to richest) has an ~18% chance to reach quintile 4 or 5, and starting from quintile 2, that rises to 25%.
Source: Figure 1, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/stuck-on-the-ladder-wealt...
The people with all the gold make all the rules.
Deleted Comment
However I know I look at the world differently from most people: so it is just as likely my own views are warped.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equat...
If you think we should have no patents be my guest, but this helps non troll patent holders and not just trolls.
Deleted Comment
And we want people using the patents, so you'd have to actively troll...
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070244837