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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Thu, May 16th 2002 8:37am





Patent Blackmail

from the there-should-be-a-law... dept

There should be a law against filing frivolous patent suits. That's the only way we're ever going to stop things like the following ridiculous set of patent lawsuits. There's a company that owns a few patents that they claim shows they own ecommerce. If you sell anything on the web, they feel you owe them a licensing fee. They're looking for $30,000. They handpicked 11 different small e-commerce sites to go after first. This is, of course, a form of blackmail. For most companies to fight this in court, it will cost them more than $30,000. So, the "smart" thing for a small company to do is to just settle - and this lawyer will go on threatening more companies and raking in the money. Luckily, some people realize the fight is worth it, and are taking the company on - but it's not likely to stop them from doing the same exact thing again with some other ridiculous patents.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    How would a law help?

    identicon
    2Lazy2Register, May 16th, 2002 @ 10:27am

    You'd still have to hire a lawyer to go in front of a judge to determine whether the suit was frivolous or malicious, so you would still incur a cost, and if the decision went against you you'd be right back where you started. I don't know what the answer to this is, but more laws never seem to actually help all that much.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    And for my next patent...

    identicon
    LittleW0lf, May 16th, 2002 @ 3:07pm

    I believe I am going to patent the process of turning on a computer. All I need to use is very vague and very "glitzy" words and push it through the patent office. Then every time someone turns on a computer, I charge them a licensing fee. Of course, I will not require a licensing fee for machines with open-source operating systems on them, and will negotiate simple licensing agreements (read "free, but limited") with home users, non-for-profit and educational institutions (except those set up by Microsoft, i.e. BSA, etc.) Then I'll patent the process of turning off a computer. Oh, and I noticed the man on top hasn't patented breathing oxygen, so I'll patent it too, and then give away the licenses to everyone except lawyers, who will have to pay $0.001 per breath.

    I mean, while the government is giving away stupid patents, we might as well monopolize on them for our favor.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Re: And for my next patent...

    identicon
    TheCaptain, May 17th, 2002 @ 7:06am

    I'll do you one better, I'll patent the business plan of creating a company that makes money by acquiring questionable patents then suing everyone for gobs of money....Then I'll use the patent to sue these guys...

    Heehee...would this be ironic recursion?

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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