[izqui]

The curious thing is that patent trolls exist at all because lawyers are so expensive. The reason almost no company can afford to fight patent trolls is because the legal costs are so expensive.

On a related note, I also find it incredible how people can make a living out of these kind of businesses and sleep well at night...

[baldfat]

Seems like a business opportunity to me. If you can get people who are being sued by these people to buy patent troll insurance and pool the resources you could out resource the Patient Troll and make a profit.

[Bartweiss]

If I remember, that's one of the things Cheng has done. He tries to find companies currently facing threats from the same troll and share costs to drive the price of a suit under the (summed) price of settlement.

There's no real way for the defenders to make a profit, since getting damages out of the troll is basically impossible. And unfortunately, that means that even with pooled resources, trolls are purely a drag on the economy. But at least this way, they tend to lose and stop being a drag for the next guy.

[marme]

there is actually no way to get money from them. Most of them know what they are doing. They will setup an empty corporation thats only assets is the patent and then hire themselves as legal counsel for the corporation who gets paid 100% of the proceeds from any lawsuit so the company never has any money. If they lose a lawsuit their patent will be invalidated and have 0 assets so there is nothing to take from them if you try to collect damages in a counter suit, they will just declare bankruptcy and fold the corporation and make a new one

[gnopgnip]

If the only reason the company exists is to file frivolous or bad faith lawsuits a judge can hold the corporate officers personally liable. Increasingly there are anti patent troll laws being passed that allow a patent holder to receive statutory damages.

[intrasight]

Losing more frequently than willing could shift the economics away from trolling. Even better would be court sanctions and/or having to pay defendants fees.

[Bartweiss]

Absolutely, and we might be starting to see that - I'm just mad that it's still purely negative for the defenders.

Of course, it's hard because paying the opponent's fees opens up other kinds of abuse. If you get sued by Coca Cola, you can't just judge what lawyer you can afford, you have to realize that even a small decision against you could come with the million dollars in costs they paid to take the thing to court. I don't really know a good answer to "litigation is expensive, and that produces abuse".

Sanctions or frequent invalidation of patents would be great, though. One other thing I would love to see is a change to the choice-of-venue rules - this would be less of a problem if we weren't seeing every case fought in East Texas where summary judgement is impossible to get.

[baldfat]

Patreon for Corporations with a bounty for every case won?

[Bartweiss]

There's got to be something like that possible. If nothing else Newegg has been reaping some rewards from very publicly fighting these cases and gaining good will.

If the government can't put together competent reforms, maybe they could put up some money to reward people who get bad patents struck down? Hell, maybe some percentage of infringement winnings could be directed into a reward pool for patent strikedowns.

It'd decrease the overall value of patents, but I'm pretty ok with that.

[baldfat]

Profit from the defenders! Though that feels dirty

[josaka]

RPX does something like this: https://www.rpxcorp.com/

[izqui]

RPX settles with trolls when it is the most cost effective thing to do.

[Phemist]

>> On a related note, I also find it incredible how people can make a living out of these kind of businesses and sleep well at night...

What we do is legal, therefore it is not unethical; if it were unethical, it would be illegal.

[hood_syntax]

I think people missed the hidden /s in this post.

[triplesec]

If /s means sarcasm and you are correct, then GP is intending the opposite of what they say. That unsignalled irony will be missed by 95% of readers, and is probably ill-advised. I certainly didn't pick up on it, and I'm usually decent at that.

[Ar-Curunir]

Was a bit difficult to pick up on it.

[Natanael_L]

I found it obvious by context.

I'm guessing this is a good example of Poe's law.

[izqui]

I think your logic is failing there, the fact that something is legal doesn't make it ethical straightaway.

You can do unethical things using legal loopholes without it being necessarily illegal.

[omginternets]

That's... exactly his point ...

[Ar-Curunir]

Legality != Morality. Some of the NSA surveillance is legal; that does not make it ethical.

[0xfeba]

I think that's his point. A better example would be slavery. Since it was legal at some point, was it then ethical?

[sireat]

Depends on your sense of morals, I am sure there are many NSA employees who sleep well at night.

Many people follow what I call Godfather's I ethics. Vito Corleone cares about his family and friends and will do rather mean things to those who threaten the well being of those around him.

Tribalism has stayed with us over the millennia and is unlikely to go away any time soon.

[jessaustin]

The word "legal" is sort of meaningless for behavior that is never observed by legal authorities.

Also, see irony.