Congress: Stop Trying to Limit EFF’s Ability to Challenge Patents

Re:Congress: Stop Trying to Limit EFF’s Ability to Challenge... by trjordan on Friday April 24, 2015 @12:54PM (#9434512)

This is a legitimate discussion.

Another story on the front page right now talks about a class-action lawsuit against Google for age discrimination. The person that's put up to it has a pretty flimsy case, it appears ("they didn't like me after my phone screen! Age discrimination!"), but the class action may uncover something more real. Finding somebody who has a real complaint seems before starting litigation seems like a good solution, because it ensures that at least one person was harmed. On the other hand, the EFF has a good point here: most of the people harmed by this aren't going to spend the money to deal with it.

I like the idea of EFF pushing back against unfair patents, but I don't like the idea of ambitious lawyers building spurious class-action lawsuits. I'll admit that I'm not fully informed about either of these cases, but there is real value in putting up barriers to spurious cases that cost real money.

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Re:Congress: Stop Trying to Limit EFF’s Ability to Challenge... by ScottBurson on Friday April 24, 2015 @01:36PM (#9434806)

I think you need to understand the situation a little better. EFF is not suing the patent holder; the patent holder has nothing to lose in these actions except a valid patent, and EFF has nothing to gain except insofar as invalidating the patent is in the public interest. The analogy to a class action lawsuit is not a good one.

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