Crowdfunding campaign against US patent on personalized content (opens in new tab)

I completely agree with you, but there is way too much lobbying power protecting the status quo in the patent arena.

Not even a letter to Congress signed by very important SV players did anything... [1]

At Unpatent we believe that big changes can be made using technology when legislation is clearly falling behind.

[1]: http://www.unitedforpatentreform.com

I think everyone agrees with you on that. However, I think most people (here) also understand that doing that will take some political heavy lifting. Something on the order of the affordable healthcare act.

If you figure out a way to fix the patent system so no more stupid patents can be registered I'd be all ears :-)

Nobody knows how long it will take and what it will take to fix the broken patent system. Meanwhile, real businesses are getting extorted.

The cost of unpatenting seems a lot lower than the gross extortion amount. And long-term it just might work as deterrent against patent trolls. Without politicians getting involved.

If we lived in a world where the government moves at a decent pace, that'd be an option. As we do not, you can either complain for decades or try to do something that actually fixes the bug.

I agree.

Donating here feels like funding the 'stupid patent' system.

That is something we have definitely thought about, but when making the numbers with the actual probability of being sued (more like 1% each year if you are a mid-sized VC funded startup) and the average lawsuit cost of going to court against the troll ($3M over 2 years, in case the case goes to the end), it is very dangerous to setup without a proper actuarial model, charging $500/month to some companies might be too risky.

What we are focused on right now is on diminishing patent portfolios so the lawsuit probability goes down. We have a lot of things in the pipeline that will make it easier for companies to be protected using Unpatent, that don't necessarily involve backing individual campaigns.

If you have no insurance, nobody will have a large incentive to sue you, specifically. If you have insurance, suddenly there’s a big reason to single you out for a lawsuit, since the insurance company is liable to pay if you lose.

What we love about the crowdfunding is that it raises awareness about the issue. You have to actively back the campaign. But we're thinking about other, more passive methods as well.

Funding an attack on a patent is also a great way to solicit counter attacks. Patent trolls like to sue.

That's it! You nailed it

Apple is one of the companies that fill more stupid (obvious) patents in the world...

They have a freaking patent on converting different data types, patent US7886264B1 [1]

Even though Apple has never acted as a patent troll, it doesn't mean their patent portfolio isn't potentially harmful and it could be used as such some time soon to maximize profits.

It wouldn't be the first time a once very successful company makes good profits by charging licensing fees on things way far away of their product line. I'm looking at you Microsoft... [2]

[1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7886264B1 [2]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-...

The U.S. Patent Office will grant a patent for basically anything. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100819/12015210689.shtml

This patent is almost surely invalid under Alice v. CLS Bank, but nevertheless, the patent office granted it so the troll is using to extort companies.

"The patent has just expired, but the troll still has 6 years to ask anyone for the licensing fees or the damages that they incurred during the term of the patent — which is 20 years."

A lot of patents affect a huge, broad space different that the one they are supposed to cover. These guys filed the first application in '96, then started other broader applications linking that first application so it counts as its priority date.

If i read this correctly, this should expire in 4 years anyway, I know it's a lot of time in tech, but might be around the same time that trial completes?

Thanks Billy!

Thanks a lot!

We spend the crowdfunded money on the ex parte reexam PTO fees + lawyer fees (for preparing the filing) + rewarding the prior art searchers. As we're doing an ex parte, it's pretty cheap compared to an inter partes. The IPR one would be >$100k, while ex parte's minimum costs are about $16k. Ex parte has less success probabilities than an inter parte, but the fact that it's so cheap helps scaling the process so we can get rid of stupid patents at a good pace :)

We're pretty open about that and gathering feedback to build a timeline that makes sense. We are thinking about moving between stages only if they're successful instead of just looking at some arbitrary number of days.