[scarmig]

There should be some kind of patent troll clearinghouse. Companies can check it to see if other companies are reporting the same shakedown tactics for a given patent.

Though, could a patent troll could get around that by spacing out the trolling? So by the time any company finds another company that's been trolled, they've already paid it up and don't have as much incentive to fight the patent troll after the fact.

They could even offer a "discount" conditional upon mandatory non-disclosure of the legal threat.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

Most importantly, there need to be penalties for patent trolling. If you try to enforce a patent even though you must know that there is prior art (e.g. because you've been provided clear evidence of it), you go to jail. Not "the bankrupt LLC is liable to pay some money it doesn't have", the actual people behind it, behind actual bars.

Of course, the tricky part is not preventing legitimate patent litigation, but if you word it carefully enough, it could make it risky enough for patent trolls to not be worth it. The tradeoffs change when it's not LLC money at risk but the participant's personal freedom, so even if only 10% of patent trolls could be actually convicted, it might be enough to discourage the rest.

Or, of course, just dump software patents alltogether...

[ebcode]

really liking your second option there ... if only there were some way to convince lawyers that their jobs were unnecessary.

[mchannon]

https://trollingeffects.org

[mysterypie]

Regarding trollingeffects.org, someone needs to submit this current case to the them. I searched for all of the following: 7,177,838 (the patent number), Playsaurus, Clicker Heroes, deBruin/Rubin/Rudman/Jacobs (the trollish lawyers). Nothing showed up.

The site does look like it's being maintained. The most recent case I found was from June 2017:

https://trollingeffects.org/demand/landmark-technology-llc-2...

Also noticed in the "About" section that Trolling Effects is a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Which is another great reason to support the EFF.

[danielEFF]

This is Daniel Nazer from EFF. Trolling Effects is still maintained and we still welcome any demand letter submissions. This site is not one of EFF's more successful projects, unfortunately. We've found that companies are generally reluctant to publicly post the threat letters they receive (perhaps fearing a vindictive response from the patent owner). In the year or so after the site launched we spent a fair bit of time encouraging companies to submit but had very little success.

[PhasmaFelis]

> Though, could a patent troll could get around that by spacing out the trolling? So by the time any company finds another company that's been trolled, they've already paid it up and don't have as much incentive to fight the patent troll after the fact.

That's still a minor win, since it mitigates the amount of damage the trolls can do per unit time.

[deeg]

According to the OA there's only two years left on the patent. Spacing them out would at least limit the number of small companies targeted.

[dexterdog]

This idea has probably already been patented.

[matttah]

That's a great idea...perhaps a quick weekend project there we'll talk on!

[cortesoft]

As a sister comment pointed out, thankfully it has already been done! https://trollingeffects.org/