> "In the end, Sable agreed to pay Cloudflare $225,000, grant Cloudflare a royalty-free license to its entire patent portfolio, and to dedicate its patents to the public, ensuring that Sable can never again assert them against another company,"
Holy cow, that’s incredible. Cloudflare has single-handedly shut down one of the biggest tech patent trolls. I don’t know how they possibly got Sable to agree to those terms, but kudos to Cloudflare counsel.
My understanding is that it comes from the top, kudos to CF counsel for sure, but also Matthew Prince who has a storied career of fucking with bad actors. Thanks Matthew!
Sable was on the hook for costs after losing. I imagine this settlement was a fraction of what they owed. If there is truly justice in this world, Sable principals will have to go out of pocket for tax liabilities and costs associated with shutting it down.
So it was not justice - just predatory capitalism finding out that there is always a bigger fish. Cloudflare wasn’t doing that from goodness of their heart, they were protecting their own profits.
Beating a patent troll in court is predatory capitalism? I think you’re forgetting Sable was the aggressor (aka the Plaintiff), and they lost their suit in a court of law. Nobody is obligated to roll over and show their bellies if they can win against an unjust lawsuit.
Next you’ll be calling someone shooting a burglar ‘predatory capitalism’ because hey, a house is capital and they were protecting it! And they totally could have let the burglar with a gun leave peacefully, or something.
From the Cloudflare version: "Sable IP is merely a shell entity formed to monetize (make money from) an ancient patent portfolio acquired by Sable Networks from Caspian Networks in 2006. Caspian Networks was a router company that went out of business nearly 20 years ago"
... if the patent portfolio is 20 years old, they must all be right at the end of their lifetime (the one in the lawsuit expired a year ago). Probably not worth it for Sable to keep them.
Sabre was a charming little Santa Clara network company, decades ago.
But some incompetent entrepreneurs and a shabby LA law firm tried to win at a patent trolling. The outcome is hilarious only because I am not paying Cloudflare's lawyers.
This typo is especially confusing because Sabre is a different, well-known, often-discussed, company that holds lots of patents around airline scheduling.
Downvoting (and the consequent CSS dimming) is one way to deprioritize a conversation-derailing comment. Even if the derailment was an accident. No personal antipathy is necessarily required or implied.
It's just a news story reporting on the cloudflare announcement. It brings nothing new to the story. It's a dupe. No need to split the discussion up, of which there is plenty, days ago, over there. No need to make us see the story over and over again on different links. Share the link over there in the discussion if it adds anything. OP is wasting our time, as per.
Weird that nobody in comments is mentioning that this is also a PR win.
It does a few things:
1. Makes it far less likely they get sued for patents
2. Gives them phenomenal leverage in any other type of lawsuit where they are defending - "if you think we're bluffing that we will take this all the way..."
3. It's a great PR win, winning coverage and widespread respect. I am absolutely certain it was worth the money for this alone
But this establishes a visible precedent that corporate counsel can use as inspiration for future litigate-vs-capitulate decisions.
Cloudflare cannot solve the problem for everyone (that would require new legislation), but they did achieve a big win here. Hopefully it will begin a pattern.
Patent trolls are looking for easy money, this instance may have cost them a lot of money, but future patent trolls are much more likely to not go after them and go for the targets that just rolled over and payed sable.
They also can claim a clear moral victory of doing the right thing and stopping sable from continuing to harass companies doing actual work.
This is like hitting back a bully in highschool: you will probably lose the fight, and even if you win you'll get good bruises. But in the long term you win, because now everybody knows you will hit back.
I never understood this “common wisdom” about bullies being actually wimps who won’t touch you after you hit back once. It has never rung true to me. It paints all bullies with a broad brush and tells kids to take their chances physically engaging a larger kid acting like a psychopath.
Bullies may either have psychological issues, abuse issues at home with their family, or they may be in a gang. “Standing up to a bully” in junior high or high school may get you jumped by the whole gang, maybe even stabbed. The bully may harbor a grudge and make sure to make an example of you.
More broadly, this idea countries have that “this time we’ll retaliate and hit them so hard, they won’t retaliate and hit us back anymore” is what leads to endless escalation in wars.
There are better ways to deal with bullies than “standing up to them” as an individual.
I was bullied by 3 separate bullies in my school years, every time it ended when I reached some deep rage in me and hit back.
One time I've thrown the bully down the stairs, other time I've hit him with a chair and the last time it was when the bully stole my phone, started going through the photos my girlfriend sent me and commenting them inappropriately - I've smashed his face so hard, the glasses flew like 4 meters away. I was short and overweight, they've never expected the amounts of power I could generate when in rage mode.
So from my limited, anegdotal experience - it works. It also shows other people that they can stand up to the bully and the bully is not some all-powerful being that has to define their present and future.
Yeah, but if you're a bully, you've probably been in multiple fights. You sometimes relish fighting. Sometimes you have a "pain wish". And if you're part of a gang, it might turn out badly for the person who fights, because they will later gang up on this person outside of school, and they don't have any honor to fight fairly 1on1:
> Wouldn't it be better to just tell your parents and involve the authorities at the school or police?
If it worked then great, many kids find that it doesn’t work. No strategy solves all conflicts. Posturing as if you’re going to resort to violence can definitely backfire, but when backed up by a history of violence it’s far from useless.
It’s not just about you - if a bully starts to believe that others will fight back, and if other bullied see that they can stand up to the bully, and especially if others support those that stand up, it changes the calculus and bullying is less worth it.
You have to hurt the bully enough to dissuade further action, not simply stand up to them. I had a couple bullies in high school, and in the rare times I was forced into a fight, I made sure they were unable to get up without help. That puts fear into them, knowing they're not able to easily win, and that you're willing to really hurt them.
> this idea countries have that “this time we’ll retaliate and hit them so hard, they won’t retaliate and hit us back anymore” is what leads to endless escalation in wars.
So much historical evidence points to the contrary. A decisive defeat of the enemy brings a lasting piece. Insufficient use of force (nowadays often due to humanitarian concerns) leads to a simmering conflict that costs more lives in the long run.
I did. I played basketball in the downstairs playground at 14. I had gone to college at 14 and was also a pianist so I had the nickname “Mozart”. So I was pretty unusual to the high school guys. Also I wasn’t the best at aiming the ball at the net LOL.
Anyway, there was a guy who was a big “fan” of WWE wrestling, kept calling out the catchphrases from the show and often bullying me physically. I didn’t really fight back or escalate.
Once I got my knees banged up somewhere else, and he had pushed me to the floor, and they started bleeding again. My mom went over to where he had lived and talked to his dad. His dad begged my mom not to get the police involved because his son had already been in trouble multiple times. He prevailed on his son (I guess threatening him to leave me the f alone) and I hardly saw him since.
Going back several years, when I had just moved to the neighborhood and I was 8, there was a 10-year old kid who kept bullying everyone. Sort of whipping people with chains or whatever, I don’t quite remember. Anyway in 6th grade I got caught trying to steal a small vial of white-out from a store (back then it was a useful commodity LOL) and they kept me in the back office while they called my parents. The guy took my picture and said he’ll tell the school. He said, “you’re surprisingly calm, this kid was bawling his eyes out”. I look and it’s a picture of the bully guy LOL. He’s totally lost it on that photo.
After my mom picked me up, I stayed up that whole night worrying what they will tell me in school. Then it turned out they had never been told.
I guess the commin thread of all these stories is that we all exist in a system and many people dread being punished by that system far more than they are worried about violence. The kids got into fights constantly. Fighting back against an older kid would not have likely done anything to “change their mind”, if anything it would have activated a “revenge” mindset and they’d call their “friends”.
Its true, the only real winners is the lawyers. No change has been made to the legal process. No change in laws either. If another judge happens to cite this particular case in other situations, then only maybe its a win, but unlikely considering this doesn't set grounds for really anything from the little attention I've paid to this lawsuit.
I can agree with disproportionate responses to people or things I don't like, and if you have the means to do so should try it at least once to screw with someone who has been a thorn in your side. If this is one of those situations, bravo.
I would still be wary of calling this a win as you say.
It is ABSOLUTELY A win against patent trolls, and frankly if it cost a lot, that's an even more powerful deterrent because it shows exactly how far companies will go to fight patent trolls. Patent trolls ONLY make money if they can extract money instead of litigating. If companies are willing to spend multiples of licensing fees to defeat the trolls in court, there's no way to win for the troll.
> "In the end, Sable agreed to pay Cloudflare $225,000, grant Cloudflare a royalty-free license to its entire patent portfolio, and to dedicate its patents to the public, ensuring that Sable can never again assert them against another company,"
Holy cow, that’s incredible. Cloudflare has single-handedly shut down one of the biggest tech patent trolls. I don’t know how they possibly got Sable to agree to those terms, but kudos to Cloudflare counsel.
My understanding is that it comes from the top, kudos to CF counsel for sure, but also Matthew Prince who has a storied career of fucking with bad actors. Thanks Matthew!
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/cloudflare-s-matthew-pri...
Sable was on the hook for costs after losing. I imagine this settlement was a fraction of what they owed. If there is truly justice in this world, Sable principals will have to go out of pocket for tax liabilities and costs associated with shutting it down.
So it was not justice - just predatory capitalism finding out that there is always a bigger fish. Cloudflare wasn’t doing that from goodness of their heart, they were protecting their own profits.
I'm sure it would have been cheaper (in the short term) for cloudflare to have just paid off the troll, like everyone else does
It's absolutely a public service for them to have fought them
Beating a patent troll in court is predatory capitalism? I think you’re forgetting Sable was the aggressor (aka the Plaintiff), and they lost their suit in a court of law. Nobody is obligated to roll over and show their bellies if they can win against an unjust lawsuit.
patents are granted by the government. hardly seems like a problem with capitalism.
Newsflash: Property rights (including imaginary property i.e. artificial monopolies) are all granted and enforced by the government. As is currency.
Bwahaha, seriously?
Next you’ll be calling someone shooting a burglar ‘predatory capitalism’ because hey, a house is capital and they were protecting it! And they totally could have let the burglar with a gun leave peacefully, or something.
Not sure whether I understood the following :
If Sable dedicates their patents to the public, what does it mean for CF to be granted a "royalty-free license to its entire patent portfolio"?
I imagine if later they try to renege on that public grant, CloudFlare is still shielded.
Good spot, smart comment. Didn't occur to me but ofc you're right.
Still feels good to see the troll fall
From the Cloudflare version: "Sable IP is merely a shell entity formed to monetize (make money from) an ancient patent portfolio acquired by Sable Networks from Caspian Networks in 2006. Caspian Networks was a router company that went out of business nearly 20 years ago"
... if the patent portfolio is 20 years old, they must all be right at the end of their lifetime (the one in the lawsuit expired a year ago). Probably not worth it for Sable to keep them.
Maybe they had compromising info on their directors.
Sabre was a charming little Santa Clara network company, decades ago.
But some incompetent entrepreneurs and a shabby LA law firm tried to win at a patent trolling. The outcome is hilarious only because I am not paying Cloudflare's lawyers.
Sabre or Sable?
Sabre is the company in Office which buys Dundler Mufflin
Thanks for the context, not sure why people downvoting you.
Because it's "Sable" not "Sabre" (That's why I downvoted.)
I regret my typo, which remains.
it's always morally correct to downvote anyone who makes a typo, is that your position?
No…not all typos are the same.
The nature of typo (messing up the name of the patent troll) is what made the reply very important.
This typo is especially confusing because Sabre is a different, well-known, often-discussed, company that holds lots of patents around airline scheduling.
Downvoting (and the consequent CSS dimming) is one way to deprioritize a conversation-derailing comment. Even if the derailment was an accident. No personal antipathy is necessarily required or implied.
Discussion on the Cloudflare announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41730415
Thanks! Macro-expanded:
Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41730415 - Oct 2024 (409 comments)
Others?
No. There are no others. It's too recent. Because it's a DUPE.
It's not actually a dupe, it's a related submission.
Thanks for your diligence.
It's just a news story reporting on the cloudflare announcement. It brings nothing new to the story. It's a dupe. No need to split the discussion up, of which there is plenty, days ago, over there. No need to make us see the story over and over again on different links. Share the link over there in the discussion if it adds anything. OP is wasting our time, as per.
Weird that nobody in comments is mentioning that this is also a PR win.
It does a few things: 1. Makes it far less likely they get sued for patents
2. Gives them phenomenal leverage in any other type of lawsuit where they are defending - "if you think we're bluffing that we will take this all the way..."
3. It's a great PR win, winning coverage and widespread respect. I am absolutely certain it was worth the money for this alone
Although this is a dupe of a ~1500pt previous discussion, I'd love to see these news on HN front page for several days. It's so delighting to read
One step short of "and the directors of Sable will be paraded around in public in gimp suits"
Remember, this doesn't mean that you, the small guy, must not patent anything, on the contrary.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41730415
I can't help but worry that the people behind Sable will just go and start another shell company and once again engage in this bad behavior.
Yes, that seems likely -- and business-expedient.
But this establishes a visible precedent that corporate counsel can use as inspiration for future litigate-vs-capitulate decisions.
Cloudflare cannot solve the problem for everyone (that would require new legislation), but they did achieve a big win here. Hopefully it will begin a pattern.
Indeed. Some people are unlikely to stop unless they're in prison.
It likely cost CF millions in legal fees. It's not exactly a win in the fight against patent trolls.
Patent trolls are looking for easy money, this instance may have cost them a lot of money, but future patent trolls are much more likely to not go after them and go for the targets that just rolled over and payed sable.
They also can claim a clear moral victory of doing the right thing and stopping sable from continuing to harass companies doing actual work.
This is like hitting back a bully in highschool: you will probably lose the fight, and even if you win you'll get good bruises. But in the long term you win, because now everybody knows you will hit back.
I never understood this “common wisdom” about bullies being actually wimps who won’t touch you after you hit back once. It has never rung true to me. It paints all bullies with a broad brush and tells kids to take their chances physically engaging a larger kid acting like a psychopath.
Bullies may either have psychological issues, abuse issues at home with their family, or they may be in a gang. “Standing up to a bully” in junior high or high school may get you jumped by the whole gang, maybe even stabbed. The bully may harbor a grudge and make sure to make an example of you.
More broadly, this idea countries have that “this time we’ll retaliate and hit them so hard, they won’t retaliate and hit us back anymore” is what leads to endless escalation in wars.
There are better ways to deal with bullies than “standing up to them” as an individual.
I was bullied by 3 separate bullies in my school years, every time it ended when I reached some deep rage in me and hit back.
One time I've thrown the bully down the stairs, other time I've hit him with a chair and the last time it was when the bully stole my phone, started going through the photos my girlfriend sent me and commenting them inappropriately - I've smashed his face so hard, the glasses flew like 4 meters away. I was short and overweight, they've never expected the amounts of power I could generate when in rage mode.
So from my limited, anegdotal experience - it works. It also shows other people that they can stand up to the bully and the bully is not some all-powerful being that has to define their present and future.
Pain sucks, as long as you can cause meaningful harm there’s other targets. Violence isn’t guaranteed to solve the issue, but it’s a proven strategy.
Countries operate on a different scale. The people in charge are rarely the ones suffering in wars which completely changes the calculus.
Yeah, but if you're a bully, you've probably been in multiple fights. You sometimes relish fighting. Sometimes you have a "pain wish". And if you're part of a gang, it might turn out badly for the person who fights, because they will later gang up on this person outside of school, and they don't have any honor to fight fairly 1on1:
https://nypost.com/2023/12/13/news/student-hospitalized-afte...
https://mustreadalaska.com/watch-video-clark-middle-school-s...
https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/lxxbjv/my_12...
And also, you can get in trouble yourself for fighting, especially if you're a male and the bully is a female that's in a group that "picks on" you:
https://utahparentcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/EleE...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7646992
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647094
Wouldn't it be better to just tell your parents and involve the authorities at the school or police?
> Wouldn't it be better to just tell your parents and involve the authorities at the school or police?
If it worked then great, many kids find that it doesn’t work. No strategy solves all conflicts. Posturing as if you’re going to resort to violence can definitely backfire, but when backed up by a history of violence it’s far from useless.
It’s not just about you - if a bully starts to believe that others will fight back, and if other bullied see that they can stand up to the bully, and especially if others support those that stand up, it changes the calculus and bullying is less worth it.
That seems like a more defensible idea, but it is significantly different from the original idea.
You have to hurt the bully enough to dissuade further action, not simply stand up to them. I had a couple bullies in high school, and in the rare times I was forced into a fight, I made sure they were unable to get up without help. That puts fear into them, knowing they're not able to easily win, and that you're willing to really hurt them.
> this idea countries have that “this time we’ll retaliate and hit them so hard, they won’t retaliate and hit us back anymore” is what leads to endless escalation in wars.
So much historical evidence points to the contrary. A decisive defeat of the enemy brings a lasting piece. Insufficient use of force (nowadays often due to humanitarian concerns) leads to a simmering conflict that costs more lives in the long run.
There is a third option
It is called using third party arbitration and enforcement.
It is a game theory approach with a bit of social signalling thrown.
you've never had to deal with a bully?
I did. I played basketball in the downstairs playground at 14. I had gone to college at 14 and was also a pianist so I had the nickname “Mozart”. So I was pretty unusual to the high school guys. Also I wasn’t the best at aiming the ball at the net LOL.
Anyway, there was a guy who was a big “fan” of WWE wrestling, kept calling out the catchphrases from the show and often bullying me physically. I didn’t really fight back or escalate.
Once I got my knees banged up somewhere else, and he had pushed me to the floor, and they started bleeding again. My mom went over to where he had lived and talked to his dad. His dad begged my mom not to get the police involved because his son had already been in trouble multiple times. He prevailed on his son (I guess threatening him to leave me the f alone) and I hardly saw him since.
Going back several years, when I had just moved to the neighborhood and I was 8, there was a 10-year old kid who kept bullying everyone. Sort of whipping people with chains or whatever, I don’t quite remember. Anyway in 6th grade I got caught trying to steal a small vial of white-out from a store (back then it was a useful commodity LOL) and they kept me in the back office while they called my parents. The guy took my picture and said he’ll tell the school. He said, “you’re surprisingly calm, this kid was bawling his eyes out”. I look and it’s a picture of the bully guy LOL. He’s totally lost it on that photo.
After my mom picked me up, I stayed up that whole night worrying what they will tell me in school. Then it turned out they had never been told.
I guess the commin thread of all these stories is that we all exist in a system and many people dread being punished by that system far more than they are worried about violence. The kids got into fights constantly. Fighting back against an older kid would not have likely done anything to “change their mind”, if anything it would have activated a “revenge” mindset and they’d call their “friends”.
Patent trolls now know that if you sue Cloudflare, there's a good chance they'll shut down your company.
It's an expensive win, but how is it not a win? A troll is dead.
Its true, the only real winners is the lawyers. No change has been made to the legal process. No change in laws either. If another judge happens to cite this particular case in other situations, then only maybe its a win, but unlikely considering this doesn't set grounds for really anything from the little attention I've paid to this lawsuit.
I can agree with disproportionate responses to people or things I don't like, and if you have the means to do so should try it at least once to screw with someone who has been a thorn in your side. If this is one of those situations, bravo.
I would still be wary of calling this a win as you say.
Yes it is.
It converts a regular rent payment into a one time fee, and scares the crap out of anyone thinking to do something similar.
It is ABSOLUTELY A win against patent trolls, and frankly if it cost a lot, that's an even more powerful deterrent because it shows exactly how far companies will go to fight patent trolls. Patent trolls ONLY make money if they can extract money instead of litigating. If companies are willing to spend multiples of licensing fees to defeat the trolls in court, there's no way to win for the troll.