from Hacker News

Another Patent Troll Slain. You Are Now Free to Rotate Your Smartphone

by VanL on 9/22/14, 2:47 PM with 41 comments

• by crhulls on 9/23/14, 12:48 AM

  Startups can pool together to fight these guys. My company, Life360 got sued after raising $50m. They thought this meant we had money to write checks from, but instead we decided to use it to fight.

  We're basically being sued for allowing you to click a marker on a map initiating a phone call.

  This obviously should never have been patented, so we are doing all the legal defense work and sharing it with the startup community.

  See www.stopagis.com if you want to see how we really pissed off our troll.

  And public shaming also works, the CEO of our troll didn't own his domain, so we bought it and drive traffic to the site whenever people search for his name (Malcolm Beyer www.malcolmbeyer.com). They don't like that we "aren't playing by the rules".

• by r00fus on 9/22/14, 10:28 PM

  "Rotatable sued us and immediately asked for $75,000 to go away. We refused. And we fought. It’s Rackspace policy to not pay off patent trolls, even if it costs us more to fight. Eventually Rotatable offered to just walk away – but we refused again. Just as we promised last year, we challenged the patent and the USPTO invalidated it.

  This means that Rackspace will not pay one penny to this troll, nor will Apple, Netflix, Electronic Arts, Target, Whole Foods or any of the other companies sued by Rotatable for how they use screen rotation technology in their apps."

  It surprises me why there aren't joint defense funding efforts in place to put these industry pests to bed... Clearly Apple, Google and Microsoft would have been next on Rotatable's target list if Rackspace had caved - and like weeding, rooting them out early will prevent infestations.

  Is it because the big corps perhaps view the trolls as worth their pain - what function could they serve?

• by jmedwards on 9/23/14, 7:32 AM

  Rotatable sued us and immediately asked for $75,000 to go away. We refused. And we fought. It’s Rackspace policy to not pay off patent trolls, even if it costs us more to fight. Eventually Rotatable offered to just walk away – but we refused again. Just as we promised last year, we challenged the patent and the USPTO invalidated it.

  This is an excellent strategy and will pay dividends to RackSpace in the long term: what minor patent trolls will touch them now?

• by ps4fanboy on 9/22/14, 10:30 PM

  This has really bought rack space a lot of good will in my mind. Everytime I read an article like this I find myself wanting to do business with them more and more.

• by luxstyle on 9/22/14, 10:42 PM

  Why do trolls still try to sue Rackspace? They publicly proclaim their anti-troll policy. If 88% of these cases kill the troll when they go through the courts fully, I would stay well away from them if I was a patent troll.

• by arbuge on 9/22/14, 10:13 PM

  >> We are still fighting some of the trolls that have come after us and we expect to win those cases too. Without changes in the law we believe that the only way to end the plague of patent trolls is by fighting every troll that comes at us – and we encourage all others to do the same.

  Needless to say, Rackspace can afford this strategy whereas smaller companies, who have no full-time attorneys on staff and little funds to retain outside counsel, generally cannot. A change in the law is needed to legislate patent trolls out of existence is still needed, basically yesterday.

• by shittyanalogy on 9/23/14, 11:53 AM

  This is fun and all but calling the patent troll slain is a bit optimistic. Most likely "Rotatable Technologies" was specifically created to sue companies for this patent so they could simply go out of business if things got too rough. The larger patent troll, I'm sure, considers this loss a normal part of doing business and will continue with other patents. This does not get any better simply because one patent was invalidated.

  We need legislative change, not to fight fire with fire. Public perception of these companies being trolls and detrimental to innovation is important but this is not a victory. It is simply not a loss and still an enormous waste of resources. We need patent reform.

• by dthunt on 9/23/14, 1:36 AM

  I am a strong advocate of the following principle:

  Defeat your enemies.

  Rackspace deserves some big props, here. More should follow their example.

• by tempodox on 9/23/14, 9:27 AM

  Nice going, and a service to the community. Thanks!