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The Patent Protection Racket by Joel Spolsky | 191 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Off Topic Thread, But Not Totally
Authored by: joef on Tuesday, April 02 2013 @ 02:26 PM EDT
Or, maybe it should be a Newspicks item: LINK.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Prenda Principles choose "Five"
Authored by: DieterWasDriving on Tuesday, April 02 2013 @ 03:11 PM EDT

If you have been following the Prenda Law soap opera, there was a shockingly
short episode today.

For a second time, the main players were ordered to show up in a L.A. courtroom
and explain themselves. This time they did show, and all plead the fifth.

Since there was already indications and evidence that they were committing
"a fraud upon the court", I think we can take the following as true:

Prenda devised a scheme to extort money by claiming that people were downloading
porn, and threatening to file lawsuits with their name unless they paid money.

To run this scheme, the law firm set up several shell corporations. Some were
located overseas, both as a tax dodge and to hide the true control.

The shell corporations supposedly purchased rights to a handful of obscure porn
movies. (There is no contract or money trail, and sometimes claim to have paid
$0.)

Soon after the shell corporations were set up, the movies were seeded to a
torrent through the same anonymizer service that the Prenda lawyers previously
and subsequently used.

From Prenda lawyers own statements, their efforts resulted in millions of
dollars in settlement fees.

Several previous cases have had judges that refused to allow discovery on the
true owners behind the shell corporation.

A recent case did allow a deposition, and the Prenda lawyer being deposed was
evasive, inconsistent and flatly refused to answer most questions about the
shell corporations.

The judge started smelling something rotten.

Hilarity ensued.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The Patent Protection Racket by Joel Spolsky
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 02 2013 @ 06:40 PM EDT
It’s a great business model.

Step one: buy a software patent. There are millions of them, and they’re all quite vague and impossible to understand.

Step two: FedEx a carefully crafted letter to a few thousand small software companies, iPhone app developers, and Internet startups. This is where it gets a tiny bit tricky, because the recipients of the letter need to think that it’s a threat to sue if they don’t pay up, but in court, the letter has to look like an invitation to license some exciting new technology. In other words it has to be just on this side of extortion.

Step three: wait patiently while a few thousand small software companies call their lawyers, and learn that it’s probably better just to pay off the troll, because even beginning to fight the thing using the legal system is going to cost a million dollars.

Step four: Profit!

Joel on Software

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

‘Tantalizing’ new study reveals hints in mystery of dark matter
Authored by: JamesK on Wednesday, April 03 2013 @ 12:02 PM EDT
Samuel Ting's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer data gives hints but no conclusive proof of dark matter, the next big mystery in physics

Maybe they'll finally find Blepp's suitcase. ;-)

---
The following program contains immature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • OnSwipe - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 03 2013 @ 01:19 PM EDT
Canada - The great copyright battle: UBC’s bold stand against Access Copyright
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 03 2013 @ 12:29 PM EDT
Geist, the legal commentator, speculated that universities had long treated the relatively affordable Access Copyright licences as a type of insurance policy. With students footing the bill through coursepacks and tuition, the licence was a small cost to pay for protection against a litigious organization like Access Copyright. But when Access Copyright sought to massively change the terms of its agreement with universities, charging the schools exponentially more in fees, administrators started to more carefully examine whether they needed the licences.

“I think if I’d looked at it in detail six years ago, I would have come to the same conclusion,” Farrar admitted. “But it took Access Copyright trying to redefine their rights and really raise the cost of [the deal] to force me to do that.”

Armed with the example of their peers in higher education, the recent Supreme Court cases and Bill C-11, the universities that did renew licences with Access Copyright may not keep them for long.

“My sense is many of the institutions that signed on will seek to leave Access Copyright at their earliest opportunity,” Geist said.

Arno Rosenfeld, The Ubyssey

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Help Desk Comic - Inconvenient Cross Reference
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 03 2013 @ 01:14 PM EDT

Enjoy. Preferably with beverages...

Help Desk

Wayne
http://madhatter.ca

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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