https://act.eff.org/action/stop-patent-trolls-support-the-in...
I've read this kind of sentences plenty of time and it always puzzled me. I don't know how the American Justice system works, but I wonder: how one trial could be that expensive to deter companies to take another company in court ?
As far as I know, trials in France can cost dozens/hundreds thousands Euros, I wonder how expensive they can get in the US.
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_f...
All lawsuits are different, and simply being named as a defendant does not trigger any enormous payments beyond a lawyer's retainer. I suppose huge cases can call for such a retainer, but those surely are exceptional.
Or do you mean attorney fees, because going in a court without one would be practically a suicide?
For real ? Why ?
If BofA has 100 lawyers on a case, and you have one lawyer, what kind of advantages does BofA have?
What kind of trouble can they cause that company? How does not having a lot of lawyers make it dangerous?
Seems like in a court room only one lawyers runs the show mostly anyway.
imho, it's not the number of lawyers, but that you get involved in court cases at all. If you're a small, independent developer lonewolfing it, you can't even afford to hire a lawyer, let alone retain one on staff. A settlement, where you get a relatively favourable outcome compared to paying the court costs, is probably tantalizingly good.
i want to see the losing party pay in civil suits!
Big companies have virtually unlimited legal resources. Small companies don't -- lawyer time is very expensive for them. Anecdotally, it seems to cost around $5 million to mount a defense against a big public company in court.
BigCo's lawyers will file every type of complaint, motion, appeal, request, notice, stay and postponement possible in hopes of starving you out. You have to pay your lawyers for all the hours they spend just responding to frivolous and/or repetitious crap, which will end up being in the man-weeks before your first court date. You have to pay your lawyers to do all the pre-trial research, negotiation and strategizing, which costs will end up being in the man-months by the time you get to an actual court.
Once you finally do get to court, BigCo's $1000/hr law firm will mount very aggressive and convoluted legal arguments and attempt to mint new legal theories, because a) it greatly increases the complexity of the case, which means you're more likely to run out of money and concede to their client; b) their client doesn't care how much money the law firm is going to bill them, so the law firm is going to have a heyday and squeeze out every billable hour possible; and c) if the new legal theory actually works by some fluke of luck, both the firm and the attorneys directly involved in the case will get a big boost to their industry starpower. What does all this mean for the little guy that's being brought to court? It means your defense is going to cost you a lot of money.
There's also the possibility that the court will grant an injunction against your behavior while the issue pends, and if that affects the wrong thing, it's possible that your entire revenue stream will be destroyed and you'll either have to pivot on a moment's notice or just give up. Since these cases usually take years to see all the way through, you'll be out of business for quite a while, even if the court ultimately vindicates your position. Small companies can't afford to go without their revenue for years at a time.
For an example, refer to the case of Uzi Nissan, an IT technician who operated a computer repair business under his own name before Datsun rebranded to Nissan Motor. Nissan Motor drug him through an unsuccessful 9 year, $3 million saga to attempt to wrest the domain name from him. At the end of it, Nissan Motor was ordered to reimburse Mr. Nissan only $52k in legal fees, of the over $3 million Mr. Nissan was forced to spend, and Nissan Motor began pursuing a frivolous trademark filing so they could make a second attempt to steal the domain by use of legal force. [0]
Anyway, businesses can't be represented by an entrepreneur in court, they have to be represented by a member of the bar. If you can't afford to regularly refresh a 6-figure retainer as your lawyers fend off the vultures, you're basically SOL. You have to comply, or be sued. If you get sued and proceed without retaining good counsel, it's likely that you'll end up more FUBAR'd than you would've been if you had just complied with whatever the demand was in the first place. Compare Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc., where the entrepreneur had issues keeping counsel on board and ended up being held personally liable for $3 million in damages.
As such, if any big corp is able to identify things they don't like before those things have begun to generate dozens of millions in annual revenues (enough to semi-comfortably fork over $500k-$1m/yr for legal defense), they can pretty successfully sue them out of existence. This happens regularly, you just don't hear about it that often.
Of course, it's frustrating to see the aspects of this situation that are (practically) unsolvable. But one item jumped out that I'd be interested in knowing more about:
> Nissan Motor was ordered to reimburse Mr. Nissan only $52k in legal fees, of the over $3 million Mr. Nissan was forced to spend
What are the reasons for that disparity? Would fixing the way we calculate those legal fees help to fix these kinds of abuses?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_f...
I understand that the American legal system is a bit unique when it comes to lawsuits, but I'm hampered by not understanding exactly how, and what the positives and negatives of that are.
As I'm thinking about it, one of the other big benefits is at-risk speculation. Say I'm a small fish with a few hardware patents and I'm pretty sure Honeywell is infringing on them.
Currently, I need to ask my good-for-what-I-can-afford attorney to have a look at it, then debate whether I have the cash on hand to take the suit, and figure out the economics of sustaining my business while I try to seek damages from Honeywell's wanton disregard for my IP. I have to do all this because I'll likely have to pay as I go unless I have a slam-dunk case, and even then, a lot of my winnings would go to the attorney if they'd foregone payment until verdict.
In a loser pays system, there's a greater guarantee of payment if they win -- so it can be beneficial when the possible case looks good on the surface, to do some at risk research to determine its real viability. I can take that case, then, to a larger or more experienced firm because the economics of the win are advantageous to them. Hypothetically, it could help in that second way to level the pitch for the "underdog."
As well, knowing I can take my case (or defense) to a larger firm who would be better protected from loss in an at-risk or deferred payment agreement, means that larger corporations will necessarily be dissuaded from the more frivolous or speculative suits they're wont to bring. Even for corporations with large litigation coffers, running a negative balance sheet will get a firm or legal team replaced.
Another detail is the 'loser pays' principle[1], which (barely) exist in the US, but is prevalent in almost all other civilized countries.
It's solve purpose is to dampen the effect of frivolous lawsuits, by making the instigator pay for the whole carouse (wasting other peoples time and wasting the legal system's time).
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_f...
I mean, BigCo sues you. They threaten you they have 100 attorneys they can get off the leash. Even if they're most obviously in the wrongs, you'll have to get somewhat matching manpower to thwart the pressure. And even if you win and BigCo pays for all of the mess, you need a very large sum of money while this isn't over. So, a barrier for justice is still there. (Not to say the only real winning side here are attorneys, because they're practically fed a giant amount of money.)
And then there's a fear of "and what if I lose"...
Which is not necessarily remote. In Ticketmaster v. RMG, the smaller company, which extracted non-copyrightable data from Ticketmaster's site, lost because the Court ruled that the momentary existence of a web page in RAM constituted an unauthorized copy. The real-world analog is claiming that an illegal copy is made every time a copyrighted work reflects against your retina. The only explanation for that kind of ruling is simple technological ignorance, but it's what we have to deal with.
While the American system has safeguards in place to prevent it, you do have to ask yourself how badly a particular judge is going to want to offend a massive company that could potentially make him tons of money if they believe he's a reliable ally; if not through explicit corruption and bribery, through the possibility of a post-retirement relationship as a "legal consultant" or similar. What benefit does the judge get by favoring a tiny company that's probably not going to be around for more than a few years anyway v. favoring a megacorp that has practically infinite money to burn? Whatever the deterrents are, we do have to recognize that the natural incentive is to favor the larger company, and remain cognizant of that.
We've seen a minor version of this happen with the Eastern District of Texas, which has become the go-to jurisdiction for patent trolls because they believe that judges that sit there are more sympathetic to their cases than other judges may be. The incentive exists for the circuit to encourage a "specialist" reputation, because they collect more filing fees that way, and the judges get more attention, which is a very valuable currency indeed.
- An attorney doesn't need to be afraid of not getting paid if they're supporting the side that is 'objectively right'. Obviously, most cases aren't crystal clear from the outset, but some are.
- The cost of bullying goes up in the cases where the bully loses.
But you are right, there are also instances where it wouldn't help much. This isn't a silver bullet, but there are good reasons why almost all other modern countries has adapted this principle.
I think it's a hard problem to reorganize the system to prevent big corporate bullying. I think any potential solution would be pretty sweeping.
One idea would be to require MegaCorp (defined maybe as $100m+ annual revenue) to pay the legal fees of the small defendant (defined maybe as <= $20m annual revenue). MegaCorp would have to bear this cost even if they won, meaning they could only sue little guys if it was really worth it. MegaCorp would pay the same amount they pay their attorneys into a trust managed by the court, which would allow the small defendant to select his own lawyers. This would ensure that both sides have equally-adequate representation.
A second solution is to lower the cost of litigation in general, which would be accomplished by de-formalization of the system and greater local sovereignty. Why does it have to take 10 years and $5 million to have a dispute settled? Companies are already trying to make something like this the de facto legal system by forcing arbitration against their helpless victims; arbitration might not be bad in theory, but under the current practice, it's an unnerving prospect, since you're going into a black hole.
Beyond the contractual method of handling attorneys fees, civil procedure rules deal with this situation: if a settlement offer of X is rejected, and the rejecting party ultimately wins an award of X-1, then they have to pay all of your legal fees. [0]
"I know what you're facing, Jeff. And, I think I know how you're feeling. In the Navy I flew A-6's off carriers. In combat, events have a duration of seconds, sometimes minutes. But what you're going through goes on day in and day out. Whether you're ready for it or not, week in, week out. Month after month after month. Whether you're up or whether you're down. You're assaulted psychologically. You're assaulted financially, which is its own special kind of violence because it's directed at your kids. What school can you afford? How will that affect their lives? You're asking yourself, "Will that limit what they may become?" You feel your whole family's future's compromised, held hostage. I do know how it is."
Not to mention:
"You fought for me? You manipulated me! Into where I am now - staring at the Brown & Williamson building, it's all dark except for the tenth floor. That's the legal department, that's where they fuck with my life!"
a bigger business can be more resilient than a smaller business
=> any reason you can't have an account with both?
This is because Bank of America charges a $5 for non-customers to cash checks issued by customers, and California Labor Code Section 212 requires that paychecks be "payable in cash, on demand, without discount".
Overdraft fees have been opt-in since 2010 in the United States [1]. If you have a checking account opened before 2010 that opted you in without consent, you can contact them and opt-out.
Absolutely no one should be subject to overdraft fees in 2015 unless they have specifically opted in.
[1] http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/2009111...
See https://www.bankofamerica.com/content/documents/deposits/ser... for an explanation of their practices.
We're adults. If you don't understand that you'll be charged a fee for spending more than you have in your chequing account, maybe personal finance isn't for you.
Both times were when moving. Most people do not enjoy moving. It's tiring. There are a lot of moving parts. Two of these times, I had forgotten to move money from my savings account to the checking account to cover the check for the deposit. This drained my checking account. However, my credit union will waive overdraft fees if the attached savings account has the available funds to cover the transaction. I feel like this is a very reasonable option to give customers instead of slapping on $35 fees immediately, because overdraft fees add up quickly.
In my example, say that I overdrew my account for the deposit, went to get gas, then ran inside the gas station for a snack. That's three transactions totaling an additional $105. Not because I'm bad at personal finance - I know how much money I had, but because in the whirlwind of activity, I forgot to move funds from one account to the next.
This isn't to say that banks should never get paid for covering your mistakes. They are not in the business of handing out free money, and it's very myopic to think there should never be overdraft penalties under any circumstances. I like to think of the way my credit union does it as a compromise between the two extremes.
When I tried to find out the reason why, they literally said "we don't have to provide a reason". Keep in mind I've had these checking accounts for 15 years.
So yeah, Fuck Bank of America!
Then they reminded us that they do not have have to provide a reason, a month after they sent the letter, and of course after we called them.
Let's say I patent one of these myself and BofA develops anything with cryptocurrency. I can go to them and say they are violating my patent and they can either pay me $75,000 or we can go to court. Going to court costs them more than $75k, so they would settle.
It is much cheaper to file the bogus patent yourself upfront then to be extorted later. Challenging a bullshit patent is often far more expensive than settling, but exceedingly more expensive than a patent application.
So no, they likely won't sue anyone else.
Both they and patent trolls can file bogus patents covering the same ideas. The system is that bad. The patent office just grants and assumes the courts will sort it all out.
Having patents is zero defense against trolls. Trolls make nothing and have nothing to cross license or lose. It is only a defense against another company that is patenting and making things in you industry.
(I don't base this on any particular courtroom experience with this, though, so maybe I'm totally wrong.)
Rightly said, patent trolls just seeks for the opportunities to exploit a company's portfolio and gain some settlement bucks from them.
However I am a little confused about how patenting bitcoins is going to affect us/industry/other banks? if they are not going to sue anyone.
No, it's much cheaper to publish your idea in sufficient detail where a) it can be easily found by examiner searches and b) a clear priority date can be established. With the advent of Google, even something as simple as a blog post can count, though establishing the date could be trickier.
See:
http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/83/how-to-make-an...
I'd love some proof that examiners actually search outside the USPTO database, not references to their guidelines etc that imply they should, actual proof they do.
But yes, NPL is rarer than patent prior art citations ("Determinants of Patent Quality" by Bhaven Sampat is one study that has some numbers). This is primarily because patents are already authored, classified and organized in a way that examiners can easily search, so they typically find the necessary "ammo" they need to make a rejection more quickly there.
At least the legal system seems to have moved towards more heavily punishing blatant trolls more recently. I would hate to see what trolls get their claws sunk into if blockchain tech is heavily adopted for financial transactions.
Source for wifi trolling
http://www.essentialpatentblog.com/2013/04/innovative-wirele...
This is not rooting for the banks, but it is also not rooting for bitcoin either, where for it not for the criminals latching on to Bitcoin at such an early stage, it would not have gained the media hysteria it has in recent years.
Go elsewhere, or store your money under your mattress if that's more convenient for you. Who makes you bank with them?
>$35.00 overdraft fees?
It's a short term loan, albeit an expensive one. Should it be free? Perhaps thy should just NSF the payment? They can if you tell them to.
There is the greater issue, to be sure of managing finances, but charging this fee on -electronic- transactions is highway robbery. Just say "DECLINED" and go on your way.
Oh, and for shits and giggles - Declined? Your friendly helpful cashier may say "Oh, it didn't go through" and swipe your card again. Ding. Now you have SEVENTY dollars in NSF fees.
Good luck getting that fee dropped too. "One courtesy fee reversal per customer per year".
See https://www.bankofamerica.com/content/documents/deposits/ser... for an explanation
I don't understand why they are patenting this stuff, It will never hold up and they will never sue anyone