[treeman79]

Had a professor who wat was at big company. Forget which. IBM came in with a list of patents that were being violated. Professor went through the list and managed to document fully how each one didn’t apply to company. One of which was for pythagorean theorem.

They had another meeting to go over it with IBM to show results. Not impressed IBM said fine you don’t violate those. We have a hundred thousand more patents.

Are you buying a license for these, or should we go find more that you “violate”

Company purchased a license.

This was 20 years ago.

[jjeaff]

That is basically just a rephrasing of, "This is an awfully nice store you got here. Would be a shame if something were to happen to it."

[mywittyname]

I've always wondered if sublicensing was a way to get around this. Instead of owning the core technology itself, set up an offshore holding company to own the technology rights, then "license" them out. The main company probably can't be sued since they have a legal contract for the tech and if they go after the holding company, fine, the parent company can then "license" tech from another, similar holding company.

[shmerl]

If you compare patents to weapons, the above is like privateering. For big companies there is also MAD analogy.

[mywittyname]

So I think what I'm talking about his more of a decoy than a privateer. I think of privateering as plausible deniability in attacking someone.

Whereas, what I'm suggesting is more structuring a business such that they can't be sued for patent infringement since they don't own the technology that is allegedly infringing. So if your company receives a cease-and-desist letter, your lawyers can respond with a contract from Core Technology LLC granting you license to use the technology as you deem if, and that the Patent Troll needs to contact Core Technology LLC if they have patent issues.

In the mean time, you can stop licensing from Core Technology LLC and instead move to a new vendor, Core Technology II LLC, who offers an improved product anyway.

The goal being to make it not worth pursuing your business.

[pbhjpbhj]

Yeah, that's not how that works, sorry.

You don't have to "own" tech in order to infringe a patent. Making a product that includes the technology protected by the patent, or selling it without there being a license (eg you buy it offshore where they're not covered by a particular patent, but you sell it where there is a patent covering that tech).

None of that matters in USA, as the threat of a lawsuit is threat of massive costs; ostensibly it doesn't matter that the court would award costs of a few $thousand against you if the lawyers to get you through the case cost $100,000s.

This is my personal opinion and not legal advice.

[ldargin]

I read that story quite some time ago. The company was Sun Microsystems.

Edit: A link to that story: https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html

[treeman79]

Oh nice. I was thinking sun. But wasn’t sure.

[ddlsmurf]

Why wouldn't they just go "fine, let's deal with your next batch in court, good luck keeping them" ?

[ta1234567890]

Because it was probably more expensive (and risky) to go to court and spend a ton of money on lawyers than just pay the license and be done with it.

[ddlsmurf]

But if the licence is that cheap, they're showing their hand, the difference between a protection scheme and IP protection here is incredibly murky. Even if you didn't aim to help others not be bullied around, going for a settlement seems the smarter option.

[ta1234567890]

You are right and it probably wasn’t cheap, but at least comparable to the cost of going to court. If you have two options that cost around the same, but one will give you an immediate out, it’s likely you want to take the immediate out rather than taking additional risk for a what if.

On a side note, I know someone who’s company got sued, then when the lawyers came to the table to negotiate, they showed him a list of other companies that had previously settled with them and the amounts they had settled for. He said the lawyers had clearly done their homework in terms of estimating how much it would cost the company to go to court and the proposed settlement amount was within 10-15% of that estimate. He decided to settle.