374
Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public! (blog.cloudflare.com)
submitted 4 months ago by toothbrush to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] Buffalox@lemmy.world 177 points 4 months ago

This is absolutely awesome: 👍😎

Project Jengo is Cloudflare’s effort to fight back against patent trolls by flipping the incentive structure that has encouraged the growth of patent trolls who extract settlements out of companies using frivolous lawsuits. We do this by asking the public to help identify prior art that can invalidate any of the patents that a troll holds, not just the ones that are asserted against Cloudflare.

Emphasis by me.

[-] Kethal@lemmy.world 62 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

CloudFlare makes more than a billion dollars a year in revenue. The work done for this project is probably worth millions to them and they paid out $100,000. That sounds like bullshit to me. Let corporations hire lawyers instead of doing their work for a pittance.

[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 4 months ago

They should have increased the payout. It should have been a percentage of what CF would have paid had they paid the troll.

I don't expect attorneys to be experts in technical work. Even those who are won't have the same experience as the literal millions of techies out there who know really obscure technology.

[-] FatCrab@lemmy.one 3 points 3 months ago

I've worked on processing submissions for this project. Honestly, it probably ends up just costing them more to do this program, which is mostly just a paid PR activity. The overwhelming majority of submissions, and I mean like 99%, are either not prior art in the sense of patent law or were already retrieved by the law firm on the case.

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

It's like an IRL DDOS

[-] linearchaos@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

And it's less annoying than a stadium full of people with vuvuzelas.

[-] grandma@sh.itjust.works 105 points 4 months ago

Patents shouldn't be valid for more than 5 years imo. If you can't make a large enough profit from your idea in 5 years maybe it wasn't that good or original.

[-] Buffalox@lemmy.world 102 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The original idea with patents is to help protect small inventors from being run over by bigger corporations.
But the result is more often the opposite, where small inventors that have a genuinely profitable novel product, is quickly forced to bankruptcy by frivolous patent suits, even when the new product is patented, and when bankrupt bought for peanuts by the bigger corp.

The other main basis for patents is that the technology should not be lost, in case of the inventors death.
But the way tech works today, that is no-longer relevant.

5 year patent would absolutely be better than what we have IMO.

[-] lunarul@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago

Same for copyright law. The point was to give creators a few years to profit from their work before it goes into public domain.

[-] tibi@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

Also the patent office needs to employ actual specialists and reject the bullshit patents, like rounded rectangles.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago

Or things Nintendo does

[-] Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Exactly, and Christ the Apple vs Samsung on Samsung copying the iPad "design" was ridiculous!
I don't know if that was what you meant, but that's what I immediately thought of.

[-] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 33 points 3 months ago

Disagree. Look at Sawstop. It took years to even get to the patent filing phase. Then he tried to get companies to adopt it. They didn't. So he spent years building a company and manufacturing base to support it. By the time he finally got things into stores and had a chance to pay back his investment the patent would have expired under your idea. There would have been zero incentive to do all that investment and the technology would have never become available.

Your five year rule would harm anyone not already extremely wealthy. It would further incentivize corporations to maintain control over markets. It would also create a situation where companies would be trying to recoup all their investment costs in that 5 year period which would result in extremely high prices. Like the pharma companies on steroids charging a 5000% markup.

[-] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 months ago

How's about a patent that expires 5 years after its first use by a billion+ dollar company? 5 years after it is used in more than 10,000 products? 5 years after its licensing has yielded over $1M in profit? 5 years after spending over $100k on advertising? 5 years after your first major court settlement?

I think there are ways to protect individual innovators but also lessen patent abuse

[-] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

The more fine-tooth details you put in it the easier it is to exploit or get exceptions. It's how you have a tax code where 10% tells you what to pay and 90% tells you how not to pay it.

But the only thing I would change would be a software patents should be dramatically shorter than hardware patents given the life cycle of software.

[-] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

So I'd never heard of sawstop so I looked it up.

Why couldn't he get anyone interested in using that? It's brilliant.

[-] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

If one company took it up it would have created a war in the industry. Everyone decided to play it safe with business as usual. Because companies don't care about anything other than profit.

[-] just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago

Technically there is no incentive for me to get out of my bed but i still do.

[-] lud@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago

Lucky you that there is someone providing for you.

[-] gencha@lemm.ee 11 points 4 months ago

The quality of an invention has nothing to do with profitability. People actively fight competing products and ideas. A good invention is worth nothing unless you whore it out to existing industry

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 months ago

Instead of a flat five years across the board, length of time could be variable based on assets and political connectedness

[-] MenacingPerson@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago

....and thereby including potentially even more corruption in that process. Who decides what patent lives for how long?

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

I was channeling what Disney might suggest 😉

[-] MenacingPerson@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

Woah. I misinterpreted your (in hindsight) obvious sarcasm

[-] piecat@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Maybe make it based on sales. $X, Y sales, or Z years, whichever comes first.

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 69 points 4 months ago

Sweeeeeet.

[-] LesserAbe@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago

Very satisfying

[-] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

And on that day, their hearts grew three times their sizes.

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

Their doctors found this alarming

[-] linearchaos@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

I'm just picturing a new version of the Grinch who stole Christmas where he's clutching his chest in pain.

this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
374 points (100.0% liked)

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