It’s hard to fault anyone for just wanting a problem like this to go away. It’s harder still to say that anyone has a duty to go to court at tremendous risk and expense. That said..
If I understand correctly, Adam Carolla has been raising funds and support for his cause on the grounds that he’s fighting this on behalf of himself and others. If people wanted to donate to keep the podcast alive (perfectly reasonable), it would shave been cheaper to settle earlier or pay a licensing fee.
It feels a little off. OTOH, this is scary stuff. I probably would have done the same.
He absolutely had a duty to keep fighting them because the money raised was by people who wanted just that; to fight until the bitter end. Instead he settled and thanks to all of donations and other podcasts chipping in to push money his way; he got off free and clear and with nothing to gain for other podcasters. This will come back to bite Carolla in the ass big time. I've been listening to him since Loveline and have been using his amazon link for months...
Anybody who expected him to risk $1.5M of his own money needs to re-evaluate their own expectations. He fought as hard as he could, given the resources he had available. The community didn't give him the resources to fight an open-ended battle, so he had to settle with what he could.
It is an unfortunate turn of events, but the battle is still being fought.
I'll bet you anything he spent every last penny given for patent defense, as well as a good chunk of his own money (not to mention time!), just to get the result you see in this article. No one's been ripped off or had their money spent on anything other than patent defense, and I bet the coffers are empty. You have no reason to feel taken advantage of.
I don't think people wanted him to fight to the bitter end and lose! PersonalAudio most likely isn't going to get one cent of what they set out to get (including what you and everyone else contributed). So in my mind, this is a pretty good result.
So what happens to the raised $500k? People were donating money to protect the podcast community with Adam's case being the proxy battle. Adam settling wasn't in their best interest.
Yes. Think of it this way at $2000 USD an hour ( cheap for a top law firm with the relevant expertise ) $600K USD is only 300 hours of representation. Figure roughly 10 hours a week and suddenly 6 months of negotiations looks damn near impossible for anyone less than a multinational.
Patents are one of the few areas of the law where it's cheaper to attack than defend. And at present they are the greatest threat to the most dynamic sectors of an otherwise sclerotic economy.
Any politician that is not actively pushing to reform the patent issuance and defense process is blasting the seed corn with a blowtorch. Burning the future.
you can hire a very very good patent litigator for $700 an hour. Some big names charge as much as $1000 but I know of no one who charges anything close to $2000. my rate as a fifth year associate at a 'top' firm varies a little by case and client but is generally around $500.
I was thinking that, and the $2k/hour does seem high on the estimate side, but consider how many people may have been on the case.
A colleague was telling me a story of using an area firm to collect a debt, and complained about the billing. Their attorneys were >$200/hour, and they'd often do 'status update' phone calls with more than one attorney on the line. My colleague just grimaced on these calls doing mental accounting of ... "well, that was a $600 call.... there was an $800 call, etc".
If there were, say, 3 people doing some work at... $250/hr, $600k can still go pretty fast (definitely less than 6 months of part time work).
Because legal talent has a power distribution. Here are words litigants will hear: "get the best attorney you can afford, this isn't an area where you want to cut costs. A great attorney can save you money." Get the picture?
The huge oversupply of lawyers is coming from lower-tier law schools.
> The huge oversupply of lawyers is coming from lower-tier law schools.
Is there a relationship/correlation between a lawyer's capability and the school they come from? I'm sure informally it's something people assume but I have no practical experience dealing with or knowing about the quality of lawyers' work.
In my experience, there's only a weak correlation. You're much better off looking at their repeat clients. If they serve sophisticated parties on a repeat basis, it's about the best indicator you'll get.
It is driving legal costs down for the simple tasks.
The average salary for a lawyer in the UK is well below the national average salary. For the average UK lawyer, starting at the floor at McDonalds and working your way up is more profitable when factoring in the cost of law school.
But when you're facing a lawsuit, people tend to not look for "the cheapest that'll do", but "the best you can afford". If supply increases and prices drop, then that means you hire a better lawyer, not a cheaper one, and the worse ones end up doing simpler tasks.
It is. Just not on stated rates. Clients negotiate for lower budgets/rates more successfully now that a few years ago. Many firms keep their nominal rates high to maintain the appearance of demand and prestige.
The patent-game fundamentally changed last year. New administrative law procedures are killing patents with about an 85% kill rate for 1/5 the cost of district court trials. It's the biggest patent law story right now. Many highly-regarded plaintiff's firms have stopped taking contingency patent cases in recent months as a result of the stats we're seeing. http://www.insidecounsel.com/2014/03/19/patent-owners-beware...
It will probably be refunded minus any cost of merchandise and legal fees accrued thus far, or hopefully rolled into a defense fund for future lawsuits.
What if he had fought and won, but couldn't recover his expenses? I think he was estimating them to be in the range of $1.5M. Sure it would have helped everyone else, but that's a lot of money (and time) to risk when the other side is willing to walk away.
I was hoping the EFF would let its readers make up their mind on Adam Carolla, instead of praising him. This did, after all, accomplish nothing, except setting a negative precedent for crowdfunded action against patents.
in regard to crowdfunding actions by individuals instead of established organizations like EFF. He just screwed that up for everyone else. He said over and over on his podcasts and on other podcasts he would not settle, even as late as a week ago before he took vacation. And he kept pushing people to use the Amazon link to boost the balance so the fight could continue and finish them. Unless we are missing something from this settlement, I think he will loose a lot of the good will he developed with other podcasters and those listeners he would not otherwise have had on his side.
According to the article, Corolla can't comment until September 30th. He seems to have been pretty good about being open and explaining his actions so far. So I might suggest holding tight and waiting until we hear his side of the story until passing judgment.
he may have gotten a deal that includes other podcasters ... at the very least he fought the troll until it gave up and made statements suggesting it wouldn't sue other podcasters ... I'm inclined to give the guy the benefit of the doubt for now ... huge risks and expense with continuing litigation after a walk-away deal has been offered
I come away from this article with the singular thought:
*The justice system is broken.*
The patent troll problem would simply evaporate if the justice system worked properly - if, for example, the vast majority of the trial was conducted online with the aid of computers. If all of the mechanical work could be automated, motions filed in real time, the mechanics of the trial enforced perfectly and without delay...
(Fixing the justice system would also fix two other problematic areas: the criminal justice system that relies on prosecutorial over-reach, and improved consumer protection.)
(Upvoted. Seems like something worth further discussion amongst people that know the field.)
Other than tradition/inertia, are there reasons that trials are held in particular rooms and the ways they are? Could there be an electronic equivalent involving securely identified participants?
This is something I would love (lurve!) to tackle, because justice is a vitally important part of any society, and it's a place where "productivity improvements" could be vast (perhaps 100x faster trials?).
The way I'd move into this would be to get some experience with real trials and/or private arbitration. It would be ideal to get a JD and actually practice law, but that's probably not necessary. Arbitration is a good place to start because it's relatively unregulated and easy to introduce new models of interaction and judgement, and there's a strong cost minimization incentive anyway.
I'd work on it but I've got other fish to fry at the moment. Maybe next year!
> if, for example, the vast majority of the trial was conducted online with the aid of computers. If all of the mechanical work could be automated, motions filed in real time, the mechanics of the trial enforced perfectly and without delay...
What problem do you think this would solve?
It seems like you think that "mechanical work" is what is holding up motions, the conduct of the trial and enforcement.
But from what I can gather, what takes time is the human effort to make the arguments.
The vast majority of time and effort is spent, essentially, building an ad hoc model of the world, filtering the past through 'discovery'; but you end up going back and forth to this ponderously slow phase, each time the court loses context and spends time to regain it. It's slow, messy, and error prone. With better tools, you could get an OOM (or two) better, I'd guess.
After all, a trial is just a program that outputs a single bit. (Yes, I'm aware that damages take more than a bit, but to a first-order the output is a bit.)
He's also in litigation with his ex-business partner Ronnie. He never mentions it, but fighting on two fronts has to take a toll. While I'm a bit disappointed he did not fight this until the bitter end, I'm glad he used his platform to educate the masses about the problem of patent trolls. Good for him.
I'm a little surprised he settled --- he was pretty adamant (no pun intended) about fighting and invalidating the patent on the podcast. Guess it was too expensive after all.
The main goal was to make sure the industry survived and couldn't be bullied any longer. Even though it's a settlement, it sounds like he may have gotten that, which would be a big win for all the other (smaller) podcasters.
If Personal Audio has already publicly stated they are willing to just walk away why keep this confidential? Only reason I can think of is they've actually offered something of value (such as paying Carolla's attorney fees).
Carolla should donate that $500k to the EFF or similar anti-patent troll organization. He raised that money to fight the case. If he settled, he should pass the $$$ forward to the next defendant that wants to pick up the torch.
Someone should really get to trolls on shakedown grounds using some anti racketeering laws. They are nothing but racketeers, but somehow the legal system prevents from using those laws against them.
Why do these articles make it seem like the patent trolls don't spend any money bringing these suits? I'm assuming they have just as many legal fees to take care of as Carolla does.
The only good side to this is these companies finally understand the ROI on cases like these are prohibitive to the company bringing them.
Despite Coralla settling, I'm pretty sure Personal Audio lost money in this mess.
Patent trolls usually have lawyers working on contingency fee basis. The lawyers take most of the risk ... the troll has very few costs. In comparison the defendants usually rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in discovery costs (because, unlike shell company trolls, they have lots of records).
I am pretty sure part of the whole patent trolling business model is the asymmetric costs. The plantiff's costs are amortized over a number of suits; the the defendant's costs are not.
Could Carolla publish the findings of his attorneys’ discovery work, so that future defendants can use it? If so, that would serve as a pretty good deterrent to future litigation. Right?
The patent troll gets to pick and choose "soft targets" (or what they believe to be soft targets). They then get to pick and choose who they escalate against, and how. If they're good at what they do, they'll already have booked serious revenue before their first case even goes to trial.
A trial represents a huge risk for them - their patent could get invalidated, for example - so it will often make sense to settle even at a loss if an opponent will clearly put up a too risky, expensive fight compared to the potential return.
Nobody seems to mention that these guys aren't patent trolls. It might be a stupid patent, you might think patent law needs an overhaul (I'm with you on both counts) but PA are the people who "invented" the patented material. A patent troll is an organisation who buys up patents other people are granted for the purpose of suing people.
I don't think that is true. After all Intellectual Ventures has a lab and sponsors the "inventing" behind their patents, but Nathan Myhrvold is still the king of patent trolls.
Now all Adam Carolla needs to do is return the donated money, since he didn't do what he said he was going to do with it.
As great as i think it is to donate money to a legal defense fund for a wealthy celebrity, so that they don't have to use their own money to dodge dubious licensing fees, maybe that money could have gone further if it had been donated to a different cause? Instead a few wealthy patent lawyers just lined their pockets with donated money then fled the scene.
If I understand correctly, Adam Carolla has been raising funds and support for his cause on the grounds that he’s fighting this on behalf of himself and others. If people wanted to donate to keep the podcast alive (perfectly reasonable), it would shave been cheaper to settle earlier or pay a licensing fee.
It feels a little off. OTOH, this is scary stuff. I probably would have done the same.