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The Patent Scam Intro

Austin Meyer6 HN recommenders · 2016–2022
464K views · commentary · evergreen · Uploaded 2016-06-14

Austin Meyer, developer of the X-Plane flight simulator, explains how he was sued by a patent troll over a trivial claim about an app's license server. He walks through how the shell-company litigation works and why ignoring the suit makes things worse.

HN commenters pass it around as an eye-opening first-hand account of patent trolling and the Texas courts that favor it.

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8 comments from Hacker News

@rdtsc2016 · in “Trollala – Fight patent trolls by banding together confidentially”

This is great. Would like to see more of these kinds of efforts. Just watched The Patent Scam video by Austin Meyer (developer of X-Plane flight sim who was sued by patent trolls). [VIDEO] That kind of stuff makes my blood boil.

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@roflchoppa2016 · in “Apple loses patent retrial to the litigious VirnetX, ordered to pay $300M”

So there is a judge out there, and his son is a practicing lawyer who reps. PT and PT victims. Basically legal racketeering. It would be interesting to see emails dumped from these guys, and how much corruption is taking place. [VIDEO] its like 5 min in.

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@clamprecht2017 · in “Supreme Court Considers Why Patent Trolls Favor Texas Courts”

This video from Austin Meyer (creator of X-Plane) is pretty eye-opening: [VIDEO] Apparently there are TWO judges in the district, BOTH of whose own sons are lawyers in the same district. And BOTH sons handle a lot of the patent litigation, in front of their own fathers, the judges. Pretty incredible. Watch the video starting at about 5 minutes to see it.

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@dangerlibrary2017 · in “U.S. top court tightens patent suit rules in blow to ‘patent trolls’”

For anyone looking for an ~20 minute intro to why this is a big deal and the impact it has on small tech companies: [VIDEO] tl;dw: There are some over-broad patents on usage of very common technologies ( using wifi or selling on the google play store are two egregious examples) that are being used as a bludgeon against small and medium sized firms that can't afford to defend themselves. It costs about $3 million to defend against such a suit, and the Eastern district is known for refusing to force plaintiffs to pay defendant's attorney's fees even if the suit is ultimately dropped.

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@Cypher2018 · in “China Claims More Patents Than Any Country. Most Are Worthless”

All patents should be worthless, the fact that trolls can come after anyone for uploading an app to google play store for fees and win because of some obscure patent is ridiculous. [VIDEO]

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@rixrax2019 · in “Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls”

URL: [VIDEO] (Austin Myers) URL: [LINK] (John Olivier) Above two YouTube videos I’ve been passing around in regard to sometimes peculiar nature of patents law in US and in particular that of eastern district of TX.

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@zubspace2021 · in “Do patents kill innovation? The US patent office is asking”

Just watched this video [1] by someone who got sued because his "android app uses a license server". Those patent troll shell companies sue one victim after another and forward the incoming money to other companies. So there's no use in going after them directly. The victim can negotiate better terms if he signs a non-disclosure agreement. The patent trolls are protected by politicians, judges and lawyers. [1] [VIDEO]

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@deepsun2022 · in “X-Plane 12 Early Access”

I don't know much about both, but xplane is developed by private developer, he even made video how he fought against patent trolls: [VIDEO]

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