The IRS is not supposed to call you. If they do and ask for any personal information it is against the law.

Typical anti-patent propaganda. It is amazing how you always hear about the supposed bad actors, but you never hear about the inventions stolen by large companies, which happens all the time. Or how big companies purposely do not undertake a search of patents to determine if they are using someone else property.

Maybe this will help you understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bxcc3SM...

I don't know. I think buying patents from inventors that don't want to take them to market or have no interest in business and then capitalizing them is a valid business. Are they abused. Yes, but it's the screwup in the legal system that allows that, not necessarily patents. But I also think that the sheer numbers of IT patents in the last 30 or so years has opened the field to abuses. But I still think, straighten out the legal system first. Leave patents to incentivize inventors.

This is how I view the case I linked to as well.

The difference between us is that, having spent decades in the software industry, I know that huge numbers of patents which have no business to be issued are issued anyway. Thus, I expect anyone claiming to collect on patent rights -- especially if he didn't make the invention himself and doesn't produce a product other than litigation -- to bear the burden of proof that his patent (1) is valid and (2) is broad enough that the defendant has actually infringed.

Doesn't it.

Why do you say its arbitrary?

Indeed!

Thats not a proper down-vote. +1

Why do you pretend that property rights are about scarcity - which makes them arbitrary?

Why do you pretend that an arbitrarily granted monopoly privilege is a legitimate property right?

You have no idea from this biased description. Yes there are legal bullies and some of them use patent law. However, this is a problem with the legal system generally and has nothing to do with patents. It is done by ambulance chasers, securities lawyers, anti-smoking lawyers, and more importantly by government attorneys in the EPA, IRS, SEC, etc. Why is it you don't focus on them and instead focus on a legitimate property right?

OK, here's a typical fact from EFF:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/03/st...

Go ahead. Tell us with a straight face that this company deserves the payments it bullies other companies into making.

Oh, its much more than just a 'cottage industry'.

No argument, the patent system is just a small piece of a dysfunctional legal system that has been warped to encourage legal action.After my adventures, I will never sue anyone else, if I have any other possible alternative. Total waste of time huge money and lots of effort, and then the court can give you a bizarre verdict (In my case, after 3 years of stalling and lying, the neighbor ran out of options and ended up in Court. What should have been a 2-3 day trial turned into 6 days over 3 months. In the end, after 8 witnesses and 50 exhibits the judge ruled there was no nuisance, but gave us 138K in damages for lost value. If there was no nuisance why would there be lost value? Bottom line was County did not want a precedent set and have 500 more lawsuits filed for the same thing) Just because I am ornery and hate to let evil go unpunished I am still chasing the goober, we did get him 3 years in prison, for felony animal abuse, and I am getting his BK denied so we can chase him for another 20 years if needed. Just because I am pissed off and tire of people getting away because none of the systems work. Indeed the legal system has been hijacked and is now a cottage industry, used by those with power and money to make things as they want them to be. Don't like a law? Just ignore it, the courts will see to it it takes a century to get into court.

Txs for the clarification. I kept trying to think that it had to do with the patent application somehow and the infringement kept blanking for some reason.

This quote is also not quite true

"There was one particular thing that kept coming back, and it was the attorneys for Life360 who kept saying, one single player had to perform all the acts," said Coombs. "We just weren't convinced Life360 did that."

You can be guilty of contributory infringement. Think of a near beer potion with a packet of yeast that says don't mix these.

It does appear the Kenyon attorney may have been a dick.

Life360 the company complaining about patent trolls has filed for three patents http://www.freepatentsonline.com/result.....

The question is whether Life360 really is interested in an honest patent system or they want a head they win, tails they lose, like Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.

Here is an example of the illogical analysis of patents ""We're getting sued for having markers on a map showing where people are and allowing communication between them," he told one reporter shortly after he was sued, adding that he could "show them a Star Trek episode from the 1960s" that had a similar system." This does not represent prior art, because it was not implementable - it was fantasy.

thanks. much more balanced article. 2 good people can disagree. Even the jury deliberated for 5 hours, so it was not like it was slam dunk. Notice how the company who initiated the suit was a small software company with 12 employees.

You have a good point nick, but as the hallings point out, its not just the patent system--its the entire legal system including the criminal and even traffic court system as well.

There has to be some way to bring the legal system as a whole back to it's intended functions, but to a large extent those within that system have taken over the legislative and even a good chunk of the bureaucratic systems as well.

No axe, no dog, just an abhorrence on the way things have decayed as AR prophesied. I, too, have seen numerous articles where the patent trolls have indeed struck claiming that they need license money for something simply because it is on the planet earth. Huge sums are spent to keep a whole herd of otherwise useless people employed just filing and fighting such garbage. I would like to know the percentage of cases that are related to "patent infringement". It's symptomatic of the whole sickness we call a "legal system".

ask k if he has an axe to grind or a dog in the fight.
I tangled with him on this some time ago.

And copyright trolls can do the same thing...
Go to http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/wha... and look at the photoshopped picture at the top.

Notice that it has NO copyright watermark, while the two 'halves' it was made from do.

I put the false one on my website and got an email from a law firm in NY demanding hundreds of dollars versus a 'we'll take you for every penny you're worth' lawsuit if I didn't pay up.

Startled, frightened and new to the game, I paid up. About a year later, they wrote again on the same subject, LONG after I'd removed the offensive photo, and I immediately wrote back that if they were trying to hit me again, I WOULD see them in court!

They replied that the second attack was in error and that the 'original issue had been closed.'

Now, keep in mind that I made NO income or royalty from the photoshopped picture and I had copied the picture down from Snopes . com, which posts THEIR copy of it without watermark either.

The link to the 'artist' is available, and I put it on my site's page where the photo had appeared... at http://www.plusaf.com/no-its-not/_no-its... scroll down about half the page to see where the photo had been....

I offered to pay them any and all profits I'd made from the existence of that photo on my website, but they weren't interested in a check for fucking Zero Dollars.

Life in the good old USA...