Fark Gets Patent Troll To Settle For Nothing... Did Reddit Pay Up?

from the don't-feed-the-trolls dept

Last summer we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous patent troll, named Gooseberry Natural Resources LLC, who holds a ridiculously broad patent (6,370,535) that it claimed covered the basic concept of generating a press release online, which it then used to sue a bunch of companies who had been in business since way before the patent was issued. At the beginning of this year, we noted that Gooseberry tried to expand the definition of what the patent covered, and sued a bunch of tech sites you probably read, including Fark, Reddit, Slashdot, TechCrunch and Digg. As we noted at the time, as with most patent trolls, Gooseberry was just a shell company, and the real owners of the patent were a secret. Tragically, even with the combined investigative power of those sites, no one was able to piece together who really owns that patent.

In February, Drew from Fark explained why patent trolling is so incredibly detrimental. Unlike most other bogus lawsuits, you can't just point out that the patent has absolutely nothing to do with your business and get the case dismissed. You basically have to go to court and spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to fight it. This is what makes patent trolling so successful. It's cheaper to just pay up. In fact, patent trolls totally rely on this, because going to court is expensive for them too -- and they almost always lose. So they have just as much incentive to avoid court as the folks being sued, in many cases.

So it's awesome to hear that Drew stared down Gooseberry and got them to agree to "settle" for absolutely nothing. Even more amazing is that he convinced them to wipe out the "standard" NDA on a patent troll settlement. Almost every settlement includes an ironclad non-disclosure agreement which says you can't say what the amount of the settlement was. This means that even if you pay nothing, they still tell the world that you "settled" and imply it was for millions and talk up how this proves their patent is valid. Not in this case:

Their patent had nothing to do with Fark. The patent troll realized we were going to fight them instead of settle, so they asked for our best offer. I said how about you get nothing and drop the lawsuit? They accepted.

Normally, we wouldn't be able to talk about any of the details. Terms of patent lawsuit settlements are usually bound by ironclad nondisclosure agreements. NDAs allow patent trolls to extract maximum settlements from each entity they've filed lawsuits against - as a result no one knows who paid what. In the last round of settlement negotiations we asked to strike the NDA provision. They agreed (and to the attorneys out there reading this, I'm as baffled as you are).

Striking the NDA was crucial because I wanted to be able to tell everyone what really happened: we didn't pay them a single dime

Unfortunately, Drew also notes that Conde Nast (the owners of Reddit) also "settled" this week, which probably means they paid something (not much), though I wonder if they were able to ditch the NDA as well. It sounds like TechCrunch/AOL is still fighting this (and hopefully will be emboldened by Drew talking publicly about getting them to back down). Still, the bigger point is how much of a toll this kind of thing takes on businesses. Fark is quite successful, but this kind of thing could have destroyed it. As someone who is too often threatened by completely bogus lawsuit threats, I certainly can understand the emotional impact these things can take on someone, which Drew discusses as well:

At any rate, this bullshiat is finally over. It was a nightmare. Imagine someone breaking into your home, then being forced to sit on the couch while their lawyers file motions over how much stuff they can take. My wife Heather said my first draft of this post sounded too angry, probably due to the fact that every third word was an f-bomb (among other things I paraphrased our best one-time settlement offer as "how about jack sh*t and go f*ck yourself", which may be a more accurate depiction of how I really felt at the time). I won't lie though, I was angry and I am still. Too much money was wasted on this, too many sleepless nights, too many hours away from running Fark, and all this because someone else decided that suing companies for bearing a vague resemblance to their patent (patents they don't even appear to use themselves) is a good business model. We're short a full-time employee thanks to these douchebags.

People who cheer on trolls and bogus lawsuits have no idea what a massive emotional impact such bogus lawsuits have on legitimate businesses. Kudos to Drew for not just standing up to one and winning in pretty much every conceivable way, but also being willing to express just what kind of emotional impact these kinds of bullshit lawsuits have on people.

Filed Under: drew curtis, fark, patents, press releases, reddit
Companies: aol, conde nast, digg, fark, gooseberry natural resources, reddit, slashdot, techcrunch

Reddit, Digg, Fark, Slashdot, TechCrunch & Others Sued Over Ridiculous 'Online Press Release' Patent

from the like-that-will-work dept

Last summer, you may recall, we wrote about the ridiculous situation of a company called "Gooseberry Natural Resources LLC," which held a ridiculous broad patent (6,370,535) that it claimed covered the basic concept of generating a press release online. The company had sued a bunch of (usually small) online press release services -- some of whom were really struggling to fight the lawsuit. And, to make matters worse, it was not clear who really owned the patent, as there appeared to be a series of shell companies to hide the actual patent holder.

Apparently whoever is behind Gooseberry got tired of simply trying to demand cash from mom-and-pop press release services, and has now decided to sue a bunch of online services, Digg, Reddit, Fark, TechCrunch, and others. What do any of those companies have to do with generating press releases online? You've got me. Of course, some of those sites are pretty good at teaming up and doing good deeds. So, perhaps the Reddit crew might be able to figure out who really holds this patent?

The whole thing looks pretty ridiculous. For example, this is the section on how it claims Reddit violates the patent:

Plaintiff is informed and believes that Advance owns, operates, advertises, controls, sells, and otherwise provides hardware, software and websites for "news and press release services" including via the reddit.com website ("the Advance system", available at www.reddit.com). Upon information and belief, Advance has infringed and continues to infringe one or more claims of the '535 patent by making, using, providing, offering to sell, and selling (directly or through intermediaries), in this district and elsewhere in the United States, systems and methods for entering and providing structured news and press releases. More particularly, Plaintiff is informed and believes that Advance has and/or require and/or directs users to access and/or interact with a system that receives and stores separately specified portions of a new or press release and that assembles a news or press release in a predetermined format.

This is basically the same basic language used against all the sites sued. It's basically a ridiculous attack on lots of well-known tech blogs and news aggregator sites, claiming they somehow infringe on this ridiculous patent. I find it especially amusing that they've included Slashdot in this attack, seeing as Slashdot's system (which really hasn't changed that much over the years) predates the patent filing by a few years. Seems like the prior art on this one is likely to be pretty strong. Of course, fighting a patent infringement lawsuit, no matter how bogus, can be quite expensive. Hopefully these sites are willing to team up and pool resources. Thankfully, most of the sites involved are owned by much larger companies who can (and hopefully will) fight this.

Filed Under: news, patents, press releases, websites
Companies: digg, fark, reddit, slashdot, techcrunch

The Atlantic Mocks Digg For Having BP As A Sponsor... In An Article Sponsored By Exxon

from the pot,-kettle dept

There was some attention last week, to the fact that Digg had apparently allowed BP to step in as a sponsor on the site -- and I do admit that, at a first pass, the image presented does not look good: The article uses this example to suggest just how desperate Digg has become in the wake of its redesign, which resulted in many users revolting or going elsewhere. However, Chas Edwards from Digg, actually makes a pretty good point in responding to the article, in noting, first that the BP catastrophe is horrifying:

The deaths, the images of oil-soaked birds, and the enormous environmental and economic tragedy they symbolize, are deeply painful. For people above a certain age, they likely trigger traumatic memories of another gigantic and horrifying oil spill, when the captain and crew of the Exxon Valdez tanker crashed in waters off Alaska and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the ocean.

However, he then notes that the very same Atlantic article which mocks Digg for taking money from BP... happens to have been sponsored by Exxon: Edwards points out that there are always issues in ad-supported media, but the mocking tone was unnecessary and somewhat hypocritical given The Atlantic's own sponsorship practices.

At times, we've had the same sort of debate here. Do we take advertising money from companies we disagree with over certain things? There's one argument that says that you should never agree to allow advertising from a company you disagree with. The flip-side might be that if a company you don't like wants to give it's money to you, perhaps you can put their money to much better use. In the end, I tend to view it in the same manner as I view censorship of unpopular speech: I'd rather let everything be out in the open, clearly stated, rather than trying to suppress views.

When I was in Germany recently, speaking at an event, a German guy in the audience got up and read aloud a comment on Techdirt that said less-than-nice things about Germans, and demanded to know why I had not deleted the comment (noting that, under German law, I was legally responsible for those comments). Beyond the ridiculousness of German law that puts the liability on third parties for others' speech, I noted that free speech means allowing free speech for all -- and if that includes ignorant speech, it's better to let that ignorance out into the open where it can be countered and responded to, rather than trying to hide it and delete it. I said that blocking or simply deleting such speech only reinforces the ideas of those who make such speech that they're saying something so "truthful" the world can't bear to hear it. I don't think that pushes the conversation forward.

Now, obviously, advertising is not the same kind of "speech" as discussed in the paragraph above, but there is something to be said for allowing companies to advertise in an open manner, and allowing the discussion to then occur, even about that advertising -- something Digg tends to encourage openly. It's been said that the best response to speech you don't like isn't censorship, but more speech -- and I would argue that applies to advertising as well. Now, I'm sure some will cynically say that, of course anyone who accepts advertising will want to accept whatever ads they can to make money. But I think that sites like Digg, which have been pretty careful not to go down the road of really annoying advertising, show that they won't just do anything for money.

Plenty of newspapers who covered the BP oil spill -- including the NY Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal -- all accepted advertising from BP in the wake of the spill. I didn't see any sanctimonious articles condemning any of them for doing so. It may be tempting, at a gut level, to suggest this is somehow "wrong," but I think I'd rather BP was out there trying to talk to people -- and letting the people talk back -- than being told it can't spend its money that way at all.

Filed Under: advertising, conflicts, ethics
Companies: bp, digg, exxonmobil, the atlantic

Folks Can Digg Shoes For Needy Kids

from the looooots-of-shoes dept

With an offer that reminds me of the OLPC "give 1, get 1" promotion (but hopefully without the delivery complaints), Digg is selling a Digg-branded shoe, made by TOMS Shoes. For those who haven't seen its commercials, TOMS Shoes has the catchy promise (called One for One) that for every pair of shoes it sells, it gives away a pair of new shoes to needy kids in developing countries.



This bit of marketing is brilliant because it ties together a nice "reason to buy" story with a physical good (the shoes), and the whole story promotes both Digg and TOMS Shoes. Eventually, I assume Digg and TOMS could also easily create a Threadless-like store for more custom shoes (instead of T-shirt designs). The current shoe design was created by a Digg employee, but it seems possible that Digg users could submit shoe designs of their own. And apparently, TOMS shoes sells T-shirts, too, so Digg users may get to Digg/Bury some T-Shirt designs someday as well.

Filed Under: branding, marketing, reason to buy, shoes
Companies: digg, toms

The US Marines And The Mormons Are Buying Votes On Digg?

from the say-what-now? dept

The LA Times has a short story on one of a bunch of companies that claims to be able to let you buy votes on Digg (as well as some other sites, but Digg is apparently the main attraction). There have been a bunch of such companies over the years, but what caught my eye was the claim in the article that among the customers of this particular company were the US Marines, the Mormon Church and the Korean Dept. of Tourism. Perhaps I don't follow the Digg spamming world that closely, but I'd mainly assumed that it was focused on random publications or no-name companies incorrectly believing that getting onto the front page of Digg would boost the company into the big time. But the US Marines and the Mormon Church? That seems really odd. Oh, and as for the claims that if you get on the front page of Digg it can send tens of thousands of visitors to your site in a matter of hours... don't buy into the hype. Over the past few years we've been on Digg's front page a bunch of times and it certainly drives a nice stream of traffic, but never more than a few thousand visitors (sometimes significantly less). It's always nice when one of our stories makes it, but I can't see how the amount of traffic Digg drives could possibly be worth the rates this company supposedly charges.

Filed Under: buying votes, gaming, mormon church, spam, us marines
Companies: digg

Digg And Others Sued For Infringing Infamous Computer Solitaire Patent

from the aren't-patents-great? dept

The Patent Troll Tracker is back from holiday vacation and he's got quite a post listing out a bunch of interesting (i.e., depressing) lawsuits involving questionable patents and even more questionable patent holders. In one case, the Troll Tracker even manages to track down a bizarre set of circumstances making it look like an associate at a well known IP law firm spent millions of dollars scooping up a bunch of patents for himself.

However, perhaps the most interesting is the third case discussed by the Troll Tracker. It involves the somewhat infamous patents of Sheldon Goldberg, which got plenty of attention back in 2004 when he started claiming that computer solitaire was covered by his patents. The two key patents are for a network gaming system and a method for playing games on a network.

It appears that after years of threats about these patents, Goldberg has now actually started filing lawsuits -- and some of the targets are a bit surprising. The one that stood out was Digg, as you don't often see companies like Digg involved in patent infringement suits (and, as far as I can tell, the news that Digg was being sued for patent infringement hasn't been mentioned anywhere else). Others sued over those same patents include some of the "usual targets" such as Google, AOL and Yahoo. However, it also includes a variety of media properties both big and small -- including the NY Times, The Washington Post, CNET, Tribune Interactive and (another slightly odd one) eBaum's World. While the patents themselves seem quite questionable, it's even harder to understand how these sites could possibly be violating those patents. Either way, perhaps the fact that Digg is now on the receiving end of a silly patent infringement lawsuit, it'll get more of the Digg crowd even more interested in the massive problems with the patent system. Update: Since a few people asked, the story is on Digg itself now.

Filed Under: patents, solitaire
Companies: aol, cnet, digg, google, ign, ny times, yahoo, youtube

Why A Mainstream Digg Wouldn't Dumb Down The News

from the check-your-assumptions dept

A recent study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that there is very little overlap between the front-page stories selected by traditional editors, social news sites and Yahoo News user recommendations. There is an interesting interpretation of this study from Nicholas Carr basically stating that if crowd-edited news were to take over the distribution of news, it will accelerate the "dumbing-down" of news.

This extrapolation might seem logical but it is done with a few assumptions that are highly debatable to the point of being downright unlikely. First, it assumes that social news sites are promoting mainstream news today, and uses the overlap with mainstream news as a metric to measure whether stories are dumb. Digg and Reddit might be aspiring to become more mainstream but this is not the case today. These sites are still largely serving a homogeneous technology-oriented user base, a niche community where stories about the iPhone are perfectly informative, interesting (and not dumb) to the community (which is kind of the point of a community news site). Second, it assumes that the social news community (the crowd) will stay constant as social news sites evolve to "take over" mainstream news dissemination. It is more likely that as Digg and Reddit (or new entrants) evolve beyond their niche focus, they will gain critical mass in a more diverse demographic and in turn, this diversity will influence and change the nature of their front-pages. Finally, Carr assumes that the editors of mainstream news sources get to define what's "smart news." There is no reason to believe that's true. This certainly doesn't guarantee that social news sites will work for a mass audience beyond the core crowds, but there's nothing in the current results to suggest that any of Carr's assumptions are accurate or that social news dumbs down anything. In fact, given how promiscuous people are with their news sources, the idea that a single source would help dumb down the news seems fairly ridiculous.

Filed Under: journalism, social news
Companies: digg, reddit