Daniel Nazer:EFF is a digital rights organization, and we're doing a lot of work with patents at the moment
Engine advocacy has a new executive director @juliepsamuels
Jon Zieger:I'm the mark Cuban chair to eliminate stupid patents
Kate Doerksen:I'm the chief counsel for stripe
Peter C Pappas:I run a startup doing visualization
Daniel Nazer:I used to work for the patent office causing these problems, now I work with engine
Adi Kamdar:A patent troll typically buys patents and uses lawyers on contingency to extract money from productive companies
The poor quality of patents has thrown fuel on the fire of patent trolling
There is a patent on filming a yoga class, for example
There are about 10000 patents on basic e-commerce and they are lurking everywhere
Findthebest was sued by a troll for $50000, publicized the settlement amount, and won. Cost $300,000
Daniel Nazer:Startups are between a rock and a hard place - they can't afford litigation fees
Jon Zieger:We had a startup sued in East Texas and the preliminary phase will cost $25_50,000
Daniel Nazer:Stripe is a larger startup, we do have attorneys, but we haven't had any claims to date
The government granted monopoly in patents s applied to software does not promote invention or discovery
It takes money from people who do invent and give it to those who file lawsuits
In a world where technology and software is iterating in real time, patents are outmoded
Kate Doerksen:60% of trolls are software patents. If you Jackie hardware it gets over 80%
Adi Kamdar:2 or 3 years ago we looked at augmented reality, and ditto had something different
Most augmented reality patents were filed in 2001when they would grant anything
We had a patent asserted against us for "putting one thing on another thing" - compositing
A few weeks later 1 800 contacts decided to sue us and bought a patent to do so
You can't raise vc money if you have patent lawsuits pending against you
So we went to indiegogo and raised money to fight the patents
A bug patent troll told me there was an arbitrage opportunity - he'd fight them for equity in the biz
The deal was sell the company for less than money invested or do the deal with the troll, so I did it
Today the uspto rejected all the claims in their patent, but this is still going on
I think the system is fundamentally flawed, and I hope my story can change things
Peter C Pappas:There is the troll problem, and the software patent problem of broad vague patents
Do we need to think about the bigger problem of software patents
Daniel Nazer:Software payers are the poster child for broad ambiguous patents, but buddies
Clearly many of these software and business model patches a should not have been issued they're extortion
The claims are broad and vague and the infringement is not even clear
The patent office doesn't do this in a vacuum, they rely on the courts to and they have been lax on specificity
The patent reform act makes it easier to challenge new patents prospectively, but not existing bad patents
Peter C Pappas:The innovation act passed the house 325 to 90. It has fee shifting and specificity of claims
Innovation act also lowers discovery cost, and helps end users get out of claims
There is a troll suing cafes and hotels for providing wifi. That's extortion
The Senate had some bills floating around that affect add storing add
There was a provision in the last law enabling overturning patents more easily, but financial only
Kate Doerksen:We need to expand patent review to get rid of these bad patents that are sold to trolls
The proceedings that the pto have just initiated are revoking lots of patents
The Federal circuit chief judge is calling the pto a killing field of property rights
Jon Zieger:We filed a reexamine, our litigation was stayed, we crowd sourced prior art and revoked their claims
Kate Doerksen:Patents are like the weather, bad, benign, indifferent. They are orthogonal to innovation
For most companies, a patent won't cause them to succeed. Some defense against practicing entities
There is a shortage of engineer horsepower. Should they be spending time with lawyers or coding?
Peter C Pappas:I'm obviously pretty negative on the topic. Before patents issue your really vulnerable even if you file
Maybe I should have raised money faster, but it's really risky
Daniel Nazer:There are industries where patents provide some value, but patent thickets impede innovation
The patent process is attacked in favor of some claims being issued
There is no advocate for the consumer, just the patent lawyer and the examiner
There is not a common lexicon in software like there is in Pharma
Patient trolls have nothing to lose, it's a shakedown, they don't pay attorneys fees
Adi Kamdar:There are sins options for patenting ethically, like twitters IPA and defensive patents
If you have a personal story, call your senator. Call Diane Feinstein
There are several cases pending in the Supreme Court, one of which may strike down over abstract patents
Daniel Nazer:Soon we'll have a site fixpatents.org and fixpatents.org to help you take action
I want to turn this to you guys to fix patents
Adi Kamdar:There are provisions to force the underlying company behind the shells to join he sit
Peter C Pappas:The pto makes money when it grans patents. Does it have a perverse incentive?
Daniel Nazer:The patent office gets fees for examining and for maintenance fees, the fees may drop off
I don't think there is a financial interest in granting patents, but as Kagan says they're "patent happy'
There is an element of regulatory capture, there is a presumption of validity. The system is stacked
Kate Doerksen:The pto had only seen a constituency of applicants only, that is slowly changing
If the pto puts out requests for comments, and comments so it is not only IBM and Qualcomm
Wild tangent is an even stupider patent than cls - we wanted a better precedent
The wild Tangent patent is showing an ad before showing the content "on the Internet" it's clearly obvious
Kevin Marks:Would we have launched outside us jurisdiction? My team is Russian. We did consider at Petersburg
Adi Kamdar:No engineer looks at the pto for ideas. Pto should search w3c, IETF, and open source first for prior art
Let's create a process that supports science rather than history