TROLL SLAYER Google grabs $1.3 MEEELLION in patent counter-suit Google will pocket a tidy $1.3m in fees after prevailing in a case against a patent holding firm that turned on its customers. A US District Court has ruled that Beneficial Innovations will have to cover the Chocolate Factory's legal costs after the company lost a jury case earlier this year. Google successfully argued that …
Oh, Keef, you must be new here. This bastion of IT news reporting is rife with poorly written copy. From missing prepositions, to typos create neologisms, to statements that are false and clearly copied from an unchecked source, you'll fnd it all here on The Register.
And it is never corrected by the editor / copy editor.
This place is more like a forum where "wannabee" journos post their reports in the hope that they will be talent-spotted . That's the only reason I visit here. It's certainly not for for the IT 'news'.
This place is more like a forum where "wannabee" journos post their reports in the hope that they will be talent-spotted . That's the only reason I visit here.
That very imprecise writing. Do you visit because "the place is full of wannabe journos", because you want to see if any of them "will be talent spotted" or both?
Pot, kettle etc :)
Not 'oops' at all.
I do not profess to make a living from journalism.
Nor do I have an editor whose job it is to ensure that that copy is correct - grammatically and factually.
Pay me, and I will ensure my writing is unambiguous, grammatically correct, and fully fact-checked.
Pay me, and I will ensure my writing is unambiguous, grammatically correct, and fully fact-checked.
You've never really written anything for a living, have you? :)
Murphy's law (which isn't, but I digress) is in full effect here. You will only discover errors after you press "send" or about 50ns after your ability to correct something expires.
"the court did decided"
Is this some arcane legal phrase?
Welcome to The Register, a place populated by normal human being who on occasion make mistakes too - the same as you would before you had your first coffee of the day. As a matter of fact, mistakes even happen with the high brow crowd - even BBC news occasionally drops the ball, and corrects that later (if the article changes materially they create a new one, but leave the old one usually online which can get very confusing for people that have preserved the older link - been there).
The gallant way to address things like that is to use the button under every article that will send an email to the people who can rectify the offending part. It means comments can continue to focus on contents, not spelink, or the general offbeat but slightly related banter that makes El Reg interesting.
It would be nice if the trolls lost their nice cosy names after any lost case with the new name being chosen to complete their humiliation. For example, Shyster and Crook Inc, even better if they all had the same handle as in Shyster and Crook Inc. 1, Shyster & Crook Inc. 2 etc.
Google are a profit maximising enterprise just like many organisations.
However, they appear to want to win by open competition and do quite a lot to make life easier for others that fancy their chances in open competition, for example Google shields open source cloud tech from patent trolls" versus "Really? Apple's lawsuit against Google is REVIVED"
Is Google my friend? Who knows. Luckily they seem to be my enemy's enemy.
No they aren't and this isn't the big win El Reg and the anti-troll crusaders are trying to make it out to be.
The story and the comments to date are glossing over the fact that the reason Google won the award has nothing to do with the native justice system and everything to do with the CONTRACT Google signed with the alleged patent troll. Which means whether or not the patents are actually valid, Google decided to pay for them. In the process of paying for them, they also insisted that their clients also be indemnified against suit. Since BI then sued their clients, they were in breach of contract. And the contract specified that Google was entitled to attorneys' fees, but only attorneys' fees, hence the denial of the expert witness costs.
Oh, I don't know. You seem to be saying that the central issue of patent exhaustion - whether the patentor was entitled to go after Google's customers despite a licence granted to Google - wasn't decided.
But it was, years ago, in a different case where Lodsys went after Apple's developers for violating a patent despite the fact that Apple had already a licence to that patent from the previous owner (Intellectual Ventures). That set the relevant precedent. I think Apple won in the sense that the judge ruled Apple had legal standing to fight on behalf of its developers and customers. Contract wasn't an issue there. The reason Google took the contract legal option was that it gave them remedies not otherwise available - another stick to beat the trolls with.
Now that's a big win.
Every time I hear people complaining about 'trolls' my blood boils!!!
The whole idea that patent owners MUST actually produce something or else loose their claim is ludicrous !!! They are really nothing more or less than venture capitalists. They are prepared to pay an inventor for his idea then turn it in to cash... or not... their choice.
If I come up with an idea, patent it but then can't afford to manufacture it (since the cost of patenting it wiped me out) this does not mean that then anyone can suddenly decide to steal the idea and make their own, just because I didn't. If then I decide to sell the idea to someone/anyone to make cash on the idea I came up with and patented, then that is my prerogative. What the new owners do with the patent is entirely their prerogative. If they choose to sit on it and wait for someone to willfully copy the idea in the belief that "well hell... the real owner isn't using the idea so I will" they can do that.
The REAL issue is crap patents.
Now, having said all this, this current article is even more messed up since it is nothing at all to do with patent violation and all about contract violation, as mentioned previously.
The whole idea that patent owners MUST actually produce something or else loose their claim is ludicrous
Yes, as some of us have pointed out more than once. Doesn't help, though.
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