[kkielhofner]

The risk, as I see it, is multi-fold:

- There's definitely no privilege with a competitor. The only people you should provide ANY detail or discussion on any of this are your attorneys. Full stop. That includes this post and discussion.

- You signal to your competitors the very weak and vulnerable position you're in. Many will be happy to dance on your grave...

- Business can be absolutely ruthless. I wouldn't put it past some Machiavellian type competitor to tip off the troll to let the troll take you out for them (or who knows what).

Business doesn't have to go full "Art of War" but to many people that's exactly what it is.

[restingrobot]

I think you're drastically overestimating the competitive nature of business. I don't know your personal experience, but this sounds like a naive perspective. The number one thing a business cares about is the bottom line. None of these options specifically help the bottom line, especially considering that OP is a one person shop. There is simply no way they are big enough to matter to a large company, (why would they worry about this if they had large pockets), and other small companies wouldn't take the risk of themselves getting sued. The advice was to see if the same troller targeted someone else, and I absolutely would help my competitor take down a patent troll.

[kkielhofner]

I really enjoy and appreciate the sentiment expressed in posts like these. I wish my experience more closely matched the decency and reasonableness expressed here. Unfortunately it doesn't.

The OP has been provided with copies of lawsuits that sound like they may have been resolved one way or another. OP doesn't sound like they have any resources to assist in the matter.

This would likely incur additional expense on their part (as OP is unlikely to contribute much to the legal fight) and enable a competitor. One immediate impact to the bottom line and potential future impact by saving another competitor in the field.

Assuming the competitors are currently or have incurred expense in dealing with it, the only reason left (as I see it) would be altruism on their part in banding together with a competitor.

There aren't many examples of this actually happening for a reason.

[restingrobot]

>Assuming the competitors are currently or have incurred expense in dealing with it, the only reason left (as I see it) would be altruism on their part in banding together with a competitor.

Its not just altruism. If you expend resources on something, you want to get the most value out of it as possible. It would be extending the value of their investment into lawyers/settlement/etc. to band together and get a possible reversal of judgement/recompense. There is definitely something to gain from taking down the troll, including recouping any initial settlement.

[dmabram]

There are multiple means of contacting a competitor, you don't even have to identify yourself or your business. You can have someone else do it on your behalf. All they have to say is "I know a company being sued by troll X over patent Y. I can see that your company was in a similar situation. Would you be willing to refer me to your attorney in this matter?" How much more you choose to share is up to you.

[gamblor956]

There's definitely no privilege with a competitor.

Telling a competitor that you are being sued by a patent troll does not impair confidentiality. And if they are a true competitor, it is very likely that they have also been sued by the patent troll, or are next on the list, and may join in multi-party litigation against the troll.

You signal to your competitors the very weak and vulnerable position you're in.

Maybe in your particular industry or geographic niche its dog-eat-dog.But especially outside of tech, most companies will band together against outsider threats.

I wouldn't put it past some Machiavellian type competitor to tip off the troll to let the troll take you out for them

The only way this would happen without backfiring on the plotter is if they were already targeted by the troll and lost.

Businesses aren't as ruthless as you seem to think they are. They are run by real people, and they and act like people. The kind of ruthlessness you describe is something you see at the largest levels (i.e., Amazon and Apple) where sociopathy is a virtue rather than a hindrance, and even those companies will band together against patent trolls.

[kkielhofner]

"Successful" businesses are ruthless at any size. Due to litigation, etc we have internal documents and records dating back to the 80s that demonstrate how ruthless Microsoft (as one example) was even at a time when they were relatively small.

I'm not saying this is always the case. I'm saying that unless you're completely desperate or absolutely know otherwise it's the safer assumption.

[denton-scratch]

Not sure why you were downvoted.

I nice worked for a Big 5 company. I'm not aware of Machiavellian efforts to destroy competitors; they just bought them.

I've worked for an international software company with ~1,500 staff. I do not think our management were inclined to collaborate with their competitors unneccessarily; they had a fiduciary duty to their shareholders.

I've worked for two small-town website developers, with say 10 staff. There's four or five competitors in this town. My management were happy to collaborate with competitors to stage conferences; but I know in both cases they wanted to crush them.

None of these jobs was in SV, or even in the US.

I note the story about IBM's threats (above); so my limited view is that aggressive behaviour between companies occurs across the range of scale.

Incidentally: it doesn't make you seem weak and defenceless that you seek a collaborator in fighting a patent troll. The trolls are backed by venture capital; you are a sole trader. That you are considering defying them is courageous.

[gamblor956]

It appears that you're both being downvoted for taking the exceptional case (Microsoft in the 1980s) and applying it to all businesses today.

Even taking into account the different business culture of the 1980s, Microsoft's early ruthlessness is well known precisely because it was not the norm then, and certainly not the norm now.