Patent troll getting rich suing small photographic companies

[groundloop]

http://www.diyphotography.net/are-patents-like-the-three-this-photographer-holds-harmful-or-ultimately-helpful-for-our-industry/


https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/cost-defending-against-troll-more-just-bridge-toll


In 2006 Peter Wolf, doing business as PhotoCrazy, was granted 3 patents for taking photos at a sporting event, uploading them to a server, sorting them by participant number, name, or time, and offering them for sale. Since then he's been making a living by suing legitimate photography businesses for infringing on these patents which should have never been granted due to their obviousness and prior art.

Does this sound like a novel invention worthy of a patent?

" A process providing event photographs of a sporting event for inspection, selection and distribution via a computer network, comprising the steps of:

taking photographs of at least one participant of a sporting event along at least one point of a course or field thereof;

associating identifying data with each photograph taken, wherein the identifying data is selected from at least one of: a number corresponding to a number worn by a participant, a participant's name, a code acquired from a component worn by a participant, and a date and time, including hour and minute the photograph was taken;

informing the sporting participants of the identifying data;

transferring the photographs to a computer network server;

cataloging each of the photographs in a web-site server according to the identifying data;

accessing the server at a location other than the sporting event and searching for a photograph of a particular sporting event participant utilizing the identifying data; and

displaying the photograph of the sporting event participant for inspection and ordering."

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Patent trolls are a fact of life and pop up in all fields...

I don't know if the answer is legislation (yeah, right) or reforms in the Patent Office.

[newthinking]

2. One answer is to get back to faster patent expiration

Expire patents like these in 7 years.

[flamin lib]

3. Or you can do what DU did and counter sue the bastards into bankruptcy. nt

[groundloop]

4. Thus far the people he's gone after have found it cheaper to cave

There's one company that's fighting it, so far they haven't chosen to pay up. I also found where they're accepting donations to help with the fight: http://www.endpatentabuse.com/

I noticed that Peter Wolfs' 3 patents for this have been filed at 5 year intervals. Each one, when you get down to the details, is little changed from the previous. It sounds like he's doing the same thing as many pharmaceutical companies when they slightly change a formulation for a certain medicine and re-patent it so they can keep raking in money for many more years.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. That "cheaper to cave" mentality

has created a monster. I remember many years ago when an employee claimed an injury that never happened. All he wanted was $20,000, and the insurance company said they were just going to pay. Later found out that this was the sixth time this person had done this. This was the first time I had heard of pay offs for smaller claims because it would "cost less" than fighting it. Well, is it still costing less when so many people have learned how to make money this way? If they knew that every time they filed a lawsuit that they would be dragged through the courts, they would not feel that this was a lucrative "profession".

The good news is that these workers' comp scams became harder in Texas where they set up a source for employers to check a prospective employee for claims---only reported if they have had three or more. Hopefully, the laws will catch up to abuses like the one you describe. And I hope that the one company who is standing up to him will win.