It doesn't matter where you're located. What matters where you want to do business.
I feel like there are options here that may not have been tried. Presumably a patent troll could try to tell your payment service and US based servers not to do business with you, but I haven't heard of that either, aside from credit card companies blocking Wikileaks and the US govt seizing servers suspected of hosting illegal stuff. I forgot why the US govt seized servers in VA a few years back but the point is that is pretty unusual too and I wonder how far a patent troll would go or how difficult it would be for them to get through all that.
The only way China blocks Facebook, for example, is through a massive firewall, and their businesses generally don't accept any foreign credit cards. The US seems unlikely to put in a huge firewall or modify DNSs to go after small businesses for patent trolls..
Most companies though prefer to settle out of court because the court is quite a gambling, that's why we do not hear it more often.
Companies that settle out of court are, from what I have read, small to medium sized US based companies that can face legal action if they do nothing.
What I am talking about is a small company that is foreign based in a place that does not comply with US patents. Has there been one that has ignored US patents and been shut down by having their domain blocked or their US payments disallowed?
Try to get bigger though or get a investment round, and troll will come after you.
It is not a coincidence that the company in the article's got trolls about the same time it's got an investment.
Only if you're a hardware startup.
If you're doing software as a service and you can deal with latency issues, you can operate many places where US patent law doesn't apply to you or to your customers. Canada and Mexico have high speed connections to the USA and Germany or Korea aren't so slow either.
Example:
http://www.ca.com/ca/en/news/Press-Releases/na/2013/CA-Techn...
"... seeking ... an injunction against AppDynamics prohibiting the infringement of CA Technologies patents"
In case CA wins, the court will prohibit AppDynamics to sell any product that violate CA's patents.
Yes, one may host the company in Canada. How to sell to US customers though? VISA, MC and AMEX all have US presence and will comply with the court order (CA's lawyers will undoubtfully provide a copy). Paypal and other various Stripes are just facades to the very same VISA et all.
Without ability to charge for the product, where the business is going to be?
Getting an injunction against a company outside the USA for software running outside the USA is not within the claimed jurisdiction of US patent laws.
Now, step two: US trolls will not sue a company doing business outside of US; too much trouble. But any company doing business in US is a subject to local laws, and most SaaS companies want to work on US market simply because it is the biggest one.
"Doing business in US" means, among other things, having US customers and using US payment processors.
http://www.nestmann.com/nevis-llcs/
Edit: I see you're from Bolivia. A Panama corporation might be a better choice for you. They'd have to first hire a translator to sue you : )
Why would they do that? o_O
They will file at their local US court. You're free to sell to Nevis all that you want -- but do not come with your product into US until the US litigation is won.
The problem with a US based LLC is that you open up free access to thousands of patent trolls waiting to eat your hard earned money. This isn't a problem if you can afford a decent Lawyer for $5000-15000, but for businesses like mine, which are bootstrapped, it's totally unaffordable.
Well funded startups usually have a separate legal department to resolve these issues, but when you're running a startup totally from your own pocket, it becomes extremely hard and annoying. I was wondering for a solution until a very good friend of mine suggested me something nice.
If you set up a company somewhere in India (or some other popular, Start-up friendly developing country), these patent trolls have little access to you in terms of licensing, etc. Usually a patent troll will send you a legal letter threatening you about violation of some kind of absurd technology patent, etc. But, when you start up elsewhere, these become nulled[1]. Meaning, they can't touch you. Worse-case scenario, even if someone DID sue you, the lawyers are really cheap in such developing countries. We're talking about price ranges of $50-1000. And for $500 bucks you can get some really nice lawyers to get the job done.
There's also a LOT of start-up friendly exemptions for companies in such developing countries simply because they don't have enough of them and they want more people to start up.
So, even though these countries are often referred to as 'third worlds', they are really good places to start up. If you know of anyone wanting to start up from those countries, you should probably team up with them as their co-founder and that should be good enough.
Of course, all this assuming that you aren't interested in seeking funding and you want a bootstrapped start up. But then, if you are seeking funding, you'll probably have enough cash to afford a $5000 lawyer anyway.
One potential issue you may find running a startup from a developing country is the access to decent payment gateways. But then, if you don't mind sharing an extra 1% with the gateway provider, you can probably use someone like skrill.