Fig. 1 from patent no. 8,286,236

Apparently the advent of 3D printing technology is scary enough that before we're even able to print out a new pair of shoes, patent trolls Intellectual Ventures have secured a patent that might prevent the use of 3D printing technology for making really fun stuff like cars, or zeppelins.

MIT's Technology Review blog has taken a look at the patent and finds that it is a weirdly comprehensive attempt to enforce digital rights management (DRM) for items no one ever knew might need such protection:

The patent isn't limited to 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing. It also covers using digital files in extrusion, ejection, stamping, die casting, printing, painting, and tattooing and with materials that include "skin, textiles, edible substances, paper, and silicon printing."

As the MIT blog points out, Intellectual Ventures, which is run by Microsoft's former Chief Technical Officer Nathan Myhrvold, couldn't have better timing, since MakerBot has already opened their magical, SoHo-based "real-life portal" for people ready to jump into the brave new world of 3D printing.

If Mr. Myhrvold and his company have their way, a trip to the Nolita MakerBot to get a shiny new skin may be out of the question.

Isn't everyone at Oktoberfest, anyway? (Photo: flickr.com/maggiejane)

The government of Germany is urging citizens to stop using Internet Explorer--at least until a security hole you could drive a Volkswagen through is fixed. But who goes back to IE once they've switched, even for a couple of days? [Reuters]

If you must patent troll, it's important to get a few basic technological details correct. GitHub and Rackspace are different entities. [Wired]

It's official--tech companies including Amazon, Yahoo, and Facebook are joining forces to form The Internet Association, their very own lobbying shop. [TNW]

Do not shell out $1,600 on eBay just to have the iPhone 5 a few days early. That would make you a chump. [CNET]

A visit to the Ace Hotel: "'I’m just trying to figure out who those people are and do they have jobs,' said Chip Morrow, a lawyer from Memphis, staying at the hotel while trying a prescription drug case. 'I mean, I see laptops everywhere but I can’t figure out what everybody’s doing.'" [Marketplace]

Seriously, do not fuck with startups.

Seems like just about everyone's had it up to here with patent trolls, up to and including certain members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ars Technica reports that Oregonian Democrat Peter DeFazio has introduced a bill torturously named "Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes" Act, designed to put a stop to the most blatant instances.

You can call it the SHEILD Act. No, it does not come with either Samuel L. Jackson or an Agent Coulson. Sorry.

The concept is pretty simple (and the bill itself mercifully brief). Any company that files an infringement suit that the court determines is basically B.S. would be on the hook for the defendants' legal fees. In legalese:

"in an action disputing the validity or alleging the infringement of a computer hardware or software patent, upon making a determination that the party alleging the infringement of the patent did not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding, the court may award the recovery of full costs to the prevailing party, including reasonable attorney’s fees, other than the United States.

That would probably inspire some long, hard thought about whether that complaint is really legal.

In his statement introducing the bill, Mr. DeFazio sounds downright miffed at the existence of trolls:

"Patent trolls don't create new technology and they don't create American jobs," DeFazio said in a news release. "They pad their pockets by buying patents on products they didn't create and then suing the innovators who did the hard work and created the product."

Interestingly, as Ars points out, while the Act is limited to computer hardware and software patents, it doesn't seem to be limited to the most egregious offenders, the "non-practicing entities" that file suit based on technologies they aren't even using. We can't help but wonder how such a law would influence, let's say, the brutal battle currently raging between Apple and Samsung.

(Illustration by David Saracino / New York Observer.)

Patent trolls--or, as a new study drolly dubs them, "non-practicing entities"--have a business model that's simple, elegant, and dastardly: Buy broad patents and start suing companies that could conceivably be infringing upon them. And the costs are adding up to a nice chunk of change: Two researchers estimate the costs at no fewer than $29 billion, reports Ars Technica.

Plus, that's just direct costs for things like lawyer bills and licensing fees. A previous study by the same pair put indirect costs at the stratospheric tab of $83 billion.

As Ars points out, the sample size for this particular study was rather small, with just 82 respondents out of 250 surveyed. (Come on, doesn't anyone want to bitch about patent trolls?) But those 82 companies had to deal with no fewer than 1,184 lawsuits, which comes out to something like 14 lawsuits per company per year. That sounds like a whole of billable hours to us.

But the lawsuits weren't entirely evenly spread out: 59 percent of the suits were against small and medium-sized businesses with a median revenue around $10.8 million. That doesn't leave much financial cushion for dealing with legalities.

However, it's also worth mentioning that the data comes via RPX Corporation, which exists largely to provide a shield against trollery. The company acquires patents, then licenses them to members for an annual fee--meaning the group surveyed may very well be fighting off a greater number of suits.

The authors suggest a taxonomy of trolls:

"There are really two different worlds of trolls out there," says Meurer. "There's a talent in finding good patents, finding good targets, and matching the two. Just like the very best financiers go to Wall Street and get paid tons of money, I think the 'big game hunter' trolls also have a rare talent."

Now, who does that sound like? Oh, right: ambulance chasers.

(Photo: ThielFellowship.org)

App engineers are just like the original sheet music creators...or something. [Wall Street Journal]

San Francisco-based flirting app Skout shut down its forum for 13-17 year olds following a spate of child rapes linked to the app. Question: How did anyone think a location-based flirting app for 13 year olds was a good idea in the first place? [The New York Times]

Patent trolls had an app removed from the iTunes store. Seems like a pretty typical move--except that the app was a speech-to-text tool used by a mute little girl to communicate with her parents. Good going, assholes. [Hacker News]

But here's an app you won't miss: RIP Ping. [AllThingsD]

Meet your 2012 Thiel Fellows. These kids are probably too smart for their own good. [VentureBeat]

Hey Birchbox subscribers, don't feel bad if you get some men's products in your package this month. It's just a teaser for Birchbox Man and is in no way shape or form a cruel reminder that you're single. [TechCrunch]

And who cares if you're single anyway? Etsy is making a major effort to hire more female engineers. Perhaps Hacker School is more your style? [AllThingsD]

image from David_Saracino

Man, is there anything worse than getting mugged on payday? Just last week, Etsy announced a $40 million Series F with investors including Union Square Ventures and Accel Partners, a round that'll help the company go global. But Unified Messaging Solutions--a subsidiary of the patent pitbulls over at Acacia Research Corporation--has other plans. GigaOm reports that firm has just filed a lawsuit accusing Etsy of infringing its patents on “methods for storing, delivering and managing messages.”

Sure it has, Unified Messaging Solutions. Sure it has.

But lest any artisanal bonnet-makers get the wrong idea about their beloved indie marketplace, there probably isn't much substance to this suit. Tenuous charges of patent infringement are turning into a tech company rite of passage, and the organization behind the suit has already sued Facebook, Google, and a whole mess of other companies.

The suit says that Unified Messaging Solutions is seeking "injunctive relief as well as damages." We'd bet an Eduardo Saverin-sized fortune they'd be willing to take a nice, fat settlement, though. Speculates GigaOm:

Unified Messaging Solutions likely decided to sue Etsy this month because the hand craft site now has investor money it can extract. Trolls typically try to force a settlement and then use the money to file new lawsuits against other targets. A recent academic study estimates patent trolls have cost the economy half a trillion dollars since 1990.

GigaOm also draws attention to perhaps the most entertaining example of questionable litigating since My Cousin Vinny: The plaintiff's lawyers forgot at least once to fill Etsy's name in the provided blank.

Adding insult to injury, Etsy also just got certified as a B Corporation, making official a commitment to good works. Where's the love, karma?

We've reached out to Etsy for comment and will update if we hear anything more.

Emoticons, making the world a better place one ^_^ at a time. (fotopia.com)

Say the term "patent" aloud, and the guttural "ughs" erupting from the throats of open source fans everywhere will keel you over sideways. Say the term "patent troll," and you'll automatically feel their collective scorn tunneling deep into your heart. But open source lovers do have a point.

Patent trolls--people who buy up patents for absurdly broad ideas and then sue companies who infringe upon them--are the kind of people who stifle innovation and inhibit the tech industry from properly exploring its creative side. They also claim to own things that should belong to the general public--like emoticons, for instance.

Varia Holdings, a parent company of Varia Mobil, is suing Samsung and Reasearch in Motion for creating a button that makes it easy for users to choose emoticons from a menu. The patent claims that "few email or instant messaging applications offer any assistance to a user to enter and use emoticons in their communications."

Yes, you read that right: apparently Varia thinks it owns emoticons. Does that mean we're going to get sued for textually rendering the current face we're making? 'Cuz it's this one: o_O

To be fair, the patent is for the emoticon button, not emoticons themselves, which Despair Inc. jokingly tried to patent back in 2001. But how are we ever supposed to express our inner feelings online if we're threatened with legal action every time we text a smiley face?

Unfortunately, emoticons aren't the only things big companies are trying to own. Today, Sci Tech Watch pointed to a note published by a Zazzle artist who says Summit Entertainment won't let her sell an image because she posted it on the same day Twilight: New Moon came out.

Zazzle told Kelly Howlett, the artist, "Your product has been removed from Zazzle’s Marketplace due to an infringement claim by Summit Entertainment. This may be due to the actual design of the product, description, search tags or character names that references the Twilight Saga which is owned by Summit Entertainment."

Turns out the day she published her sketch is the same day as New Moon's release date, 11/20/09. The date got appended as a tag, and Summit used these grounds to remove Ms. Howlett's drawing from Zazzle.

Thankfully, Zazzle eventually put the image back up, since it clearly has nothing to do with Twilight.

It's a shame that companies waste so much time trying to make money off of old technologies instead of actually creating new ones. But that's the way of the patent troll, and until open sourcing code and ideas becomes a larger business practice, it's unlikely to stop any time soon. Whatever the case, Varia Holdings better keep its hands off of our emoticons. >:(

"I want a piece of myself." Image by David Saracino

If there was ever a question about the absurdity of Intellectual Ventures and the patent protection racket it's running, the recent news that IV is suing Motorola Mobility, over patents related to Google's Android OS, settles things once and for all.

From FOSS Patents:

Intellectual Ventures, the world's largest non-practicing entity (holding more than 35,000 patents and pending patent applications), announced the filing of a federal lawsuit (in the District of Delaware) against Motorola Mobility. It also published the complaint.

The press release and the complaint say that IV approached MMI to negotiate a license deal, but decided to sue because of MMI's continued refusal to take a license on unspecified terms that IV would consider "reasonable". According to the complaint, those discussions started in January 2011. IV asks the court for damages and an injunction.

While this looks like the umpteenth NPE lawsuit against an Android device maker, this is remarkable and adds to existing intellectual property concerns related to Android. Intellectual Ventures isn't just another NPE. Intellectual Ventures has received funding from Google itself, and is now suing Google's most expensive acquisition target ever for the infringement of patents, some of which are software patents that read on Google's Android, or at least on MMI's extensions running on top of Android. In other words, Google does not even protect Android device makers against NPEs it invests in.

The one reasonable claim to existence that IV had was that it acted as a patent pool that protected its members from frivolous lawsuits. But this suit puts the lie to even that flimsy facade. Google funds IV, but if it doesn't agree to pay extra licensing fees, it finds itself the target of a lawsuit, which, let's not forget, comes from a company with no business  model outside collecting patents, receiving tithes from big tech companies, and suing for infringement.

For a deep dive into the absurd world of patent trolls, check out our feature on IQ Biometrix.

Let me introduce you to my lobbyist. Image by David Saracino

President Obama signed a bill on Friday that was supposed to be a sweeping reform of America's badly broken patent system. But the legislation that went into effect won't do much to change the landscape, currently dominated by large corporations and IP hoarding patent trolls. In fact, the new law will make life much harder for the startups and universities who generate so much innovation.

"For the little guys, the young companies and the universities, this is a sea change, probably the biggest shift in 100 years," James Mullen, a patent partner at Morrison and Foerster told Betabeat by phone. "The law now honors first to file, instead of first to invent." That means the race will be won not by the creators, but by the lawyers, and the patent trolls that can afford to hire swarms of them to file patents.

The bill does try to cut back on bad patents by creating a post grant review, a nine month window in which a weak or repetitive patent can be challenged. But again, this favors larger, more established firms, who have the resources to scan through hundreds of new filings and keep tabs on all their competitors.

And the overworked patent office won't be getting any relief thanks to this new bill. "The original legislation would have provided the patent office with all its user fees. Over the years the patent office has had hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that it generates directed away from their office and into the general coffers. When people say this bill has been watered down, this is the portion that best fits that description," said Mr. Mullen.

In 2010, according to USTPO, $200 million in fees collected were diverted away from the patent office. In 2011 this number is expected to grow to $300 million.

There is a nice round-up of the major changes in the new law on Chris Dixon's blog. Mr. Dixon, who has been fierce critic of the current patent system, also felt this new legislation would favor coporations over startups. "My (non-expert) analysis:  seems to me this doesn’t fix any of the very serious problems in our current patent system," he wrote. "First-to-file seems to reward companies with the resources to file many patents.  The post grant review seems to imply you should to monitor every patent issued and challenge them within 9 months. I don’t see how any organization without massive resources could do this."

Showing off a patent, probably.

Ever since Jay Walker founded Walker Digital in 1994, the company has made its fortune by spinning ideas like Priceline out into companies. But in a profile today, the Wall Street Journal reports that Mr. Walker's new money-making strategy seems to be filing lawsuits.

Last year, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company put its patent portfolio up for auction. But although a bid was made for $135 million for ideas like "managing identities and connecting with friends online" (circa 1996) it didn't meet Mr. Walker's minimum.

So instead, he resorted to  teaming up with IP Navigation Group, which describes itself as a "patent monetization" firm. As FOSS Patents recently pointed out, others describe the IP Navigation Group and its affiliates a little differently. Law.com, for example, says owner Erich Spangenberg runs one of the  "largest, and most litigious, patent-holding companies" and recommends a "sue first, ask questions later" approach.

That might explain why after tapping IP Navigation, Walker Digital has already made $25 million from filing about 30 lawsuits targeting hundreds of companies, including Amazon, Zynga, Google, and NewsCorp for violating one or more of the companies 400 or so patents, reports the Journal. Some sound laughable. Walker Digital sued Microsoft and Yahoo for auction systems placing ads against Internet search results. It also sued News Corp for an infringement related to social-networking for its MySpace subsidiary.

But Mr. Walker defends himself against the trolling accusation, telling the paper, "Not only are we not a troll, but the people who want to label me are often the same ones that want to use our property and not pay." With the 20-year lifespan for patents, Mr. Walker says they could expire while being exploited by other companies.

The aggressive change in direction for Walker Digital puts a depressing new spin on the white hot patent wars, as Mr. Walker has long been respected as an "ideas man." In fact a 1999 article in Forbes wondered if Mr. Walker wasn't "an Edison for a New Age." As an entrepreneur, detractors argue, he should know the difference between having an idea and the work the companies he's suing have done to see them to fruition. You know the system's broken if you're feeling litigation sympathy pangs for the likes of Google and NewsCorp.