[tcptomato]

Sorry, but what you say doesn't make any sense. You think that YouTube and Netflix will just sit by as precedent is decided next to them? And the right owners having already won in court would just ignore the biggest "offenders"?

[threeseed]

Google and Netflix would have no choice but to sit by as you can't force yourself to be sued.

You can try and invalidate the patent but in a situation like this where the patent holders are serious companies and legitimate innovators it's unlikely to get you far.

And yes it is very common to bully lots of smaller players rather than get into an expensive protracted lawsuit with a large one.

[dtech]

> Google and Netflix would have no choice but to sit by

In a lot of jurisdictions a 3rd party can join a lawsuit, it's called an intervention [1].

I'm not fully aware on US law, but e.g. in NL all large internet providers joined a lawsuit as defendants when a copyright enforcer wanted 1 to block The Pirate Bay.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervention_(law)

[eesmith]

Google and Netflix can help fund your legal defense. That's neither standing by nor being sued.

[threeseed]

> Google and Netflix can help fund your legal defense

I am not aware of this being the case for either company.

[eesmith]

You were talking about a future hypothetical, not a current or historical event.

[mschuster91]

First you bully enough small-scale offenders who don't fight back to establish precedence and only then you go after the big fishes.

This is why grassroots-scale efforts to defend against patent trolls are so important - you absolutely have to prevent precedence case building for patent trolls or it becomes so much harder down the road.