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Kim Dotcom to Google, Twitter, Facebook: I Own Security Patent, Work With Me
- genwin 13y agoWhat a twist! There seems to be a lot of related prior art referenced by the patent. I thought patents were valid only for the country that issued them. How is this a worldwide patent? Trade agreements?
- nolok 13y agoPatent link: https://www.google.com/patents/US6078908 https://www.google.com/patents/US6078908 Granted in 1998 and referenced by pretty much every tech giant. Ought to be interesting.
- jacques_chester 13y agoI read it yesterday. The patent refers to authorisation, not authentication. They are different. The usage described is distinct from 2-factor authentication as practiced by Google et al. IMO he's just grandstanding and will be rightly ignored. IANAL, TINLA.
- bsenftner 13y agoStarting to love this guy
- MrUnknown 13y agoWhy? Do you favor extortion?
- feralmoan 13y agoHe's a smart guy, you'd think he'd try to broker these deals through more discrete channels if he were actually serious. All this theatre ensures the companies Kim's trying to court won't touch him with anything like a $50m pole. He's fun to watch but a bit of a trainwreck.
- C1D 13y agoIf a company does actually help his legal battle the US gov won't be happy. I hope he does get help with his legal problems and I want to see how this whole thing plays out. It's likely that companies like FB, google and twitter will ignore him so I want to see how he's going to respond to that.
- famousactress 13y agoOn the other hand, this sort of high-profile strong arming could be helpful in changing opinions about software patents. Someone using software patents to blackmail companies into pouring money into a case against the US govt might be exactly what we need to change the opinions of some congresspeople...
- aolol 13y agoIt's interesting because this is the type of patent system abuse that we often rally so hard against. Now that the objective is somehow more 'noble' will we ignore that this approach is still fundamentally opposed to the prevailing opinion on the patent system and those who abuse it?
- icebraining 13y agoBut let's be careful and not attribute opinions from different individuals as incoherence by the whole community. Not everyone here agrees with the prevailing opinion on the patent system.
- betterunix 13y agoI think this is more a case of "give them a taste of their own medicine," or at least that Kim Dotcom wants it to be viewed that way. [Edit: OR maybe not, should have read the entire article first...]
- notatoad 13y agoI think this is very, very clearly abuse of the patent system, and kim dotcom knows this. every time there's a highly-public and totally absurd abuse of the patent system it erodes the system a little bit more. I would never suspect apple or oracle of attempting to erode the patent system by bringing absurd lawsuits, but it certainly sounds like the sort of thing that kim dotcom might do. I won't be so quick to judge him, given his stance on IP in general. of course, i could be wrong and maybe he's just a massive hypocrite.
- will_brown 13y ago>I would never suspect apple or oracle of attempting to erode the patent system by bringing absurd lawsuits, but it certainly sounds like the sort of thing that kim dotcom might do. What about Apple patenting the rectangular electronic device(see here: http://www.google.com/patents/USD504889 http://www.google.com/patents/USD504889) and suing Samsung for $2.5 billion dollars with the majority of the claim for producing rectangular phones/tablets (see here: http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/08/03/apple-vs-samsung-who-owns-the-rectangle/ http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/08/03/apple-vs-samsung-who-...)
- staticfish 13y agoYou must be joking, right?
- aidos 13y agoSo I guess this wouldn't cover, for example, Google Authenticator (what I think of as 2-factor auth)? There's no transport mechanism and the agreement is via a shared secret so it's seems like a different kettle of fish. Then again, I'm no expert on security so don't take my word for that....
- adventured 13y ago$50 million in legal bills? Not a chance that's accurate.
- xlevus 13y agoIt's Kim DotCom. He's both figuratively and literally larger than life.
- betterunix 13y agoActually, that's only 50x more than a person would need to spend to defend a federal criminal suit in the US. It is a big number, but not completely outlandish, especially for someone the government has it in for.
- josefresco 13y agoDo you speak with any experience or have any information that might be able to back your claim? I'm not saying you're wrong, just want to see an informed discussion.
- genwin 13y agoProbably includes a public relations team, campaign contributions and other favors in kind. Given the about-face by the NZ gov't (in a short time too) I can believe $50 million.
- mtgx 13y agoAaron Swartz needed a few million dollar for his defense (probably the main cause of suicide). I don't think $50 million for someone like Kim who was probably at the top of the list of the Obama administration along with Osama Bin Laden, is that outrageous.
- cunac 13y agoI don't see how this is valid patent. He just changed delivery method from mail; as described in prior art section; to more modern (SMS etc..) but he didn't invent any new process. Why change of delivery medium would be sufficient to grant patent?
- genwin 13y agoThe patent clerk has about 7 hours on average to examine prior art. The clerk may not be technologically savvy.
- dspillett 13y agoYou might be right for how the system is supposed to judge validity, but how many patents have been successfully used and abuse that are nothing more than "<insert_old_idea_here> over the Internet"?
- footoverhand 13y agoPerhaps he missed the memo which clearly states that patent's are used to protect multinational corporations and governments, not individuals or small corporations.
- huhtenberg 13y agoThat's some quality trolling. It can't be anything else, he's not an idiot. I may not like his business ventures or his personality, but I just cannot not respect him for having a backbone and a pair of balls to keep pushing this thing forward. They did him wrong and he doesn't let go. This is really impressive.
- nolok 13y agoHad trouble getting your last paragraph right, double negative makes it harder to read. Agreed with what you said though, he knows there is no trial possible over it.
- nevir 13y agoWhere was he years ago when this sort of 2-factor auth was starting to get popular? Don't you have to actively defend your patent? Sitting on it for 15 years and then deciding to sue on a whim can't look good in a court's eyes...
- rlpb 13y ago> Don't you have to actively defend your patent? No, you don't. You may be thinking of trademarks, which you do have to defend or license to avoid dilution. You may say that this is a problem with the patent system. But here on HN, we already know how broken the patent system is, don't we?
- lquist 13y agoBlackmail. Pure and simple.
- mpobrien 13y agoBut isn't suing to enforce his patent rights also an expensive legal battle that he would need to somehow fund? I don't see how this threat could be seen as effective.
- genwin 13y agoSome other group who buys the patent from him, paying his bills and then some, would sue to enforce the patent rights.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoLet's see if he even manages to sue the tech giants, let alone what the judge rulings will be like when the patent owner is an individual instead of a tech giant.
- genwin 13y agoI could see a company or investor group buying this patent from him at $50M+. It's worth more even at a penny per authentication.
- youngerdryas 13y agoHN becomes a bag full of stupid when fetishizing Kim Dotclown.
- GoofballJones 13y ago“I never sued them. I believe in sharing knowledge & ideas for the good of society. But I might sue them now cause of what the U.S. did to me". So in other words, you believe in the "good of society", but now that you have legal fees, screw society?
- guelo 13y agoThe smart threat would be to put the patent up for auction. The fear of the trolls getting the patent would bring the big guys to the table.
- resu_nimda 13y agoAt the end of the article: “Want to buy the worldwide license to my two-factor-authentication patent? (13 countries incl. US & China) Email: twitter@kim.com,” he concludes. edit: I may be wrong, is buying "the worldwide license" different from buying the patent?
- danielsamuels 13y agoYes, license would be allowing Google etc to use the method described in the patent (and potentially making money from it), buying the patent would give Google etc the ownership rights and allow them to license it out themselves.
- smnrchrds 13y agoI guess he means he will license his patents more than one company. In contrast, if he sells all the patent rights, he can't sell them to anyone else and those who want to acquire a license should negotiate with the buyer.
- onemorepassword 13y agoIf people would actually read what he writes on twitter instead of the sensationalist blog posts derived only from those tweets, they would get a much more nuanced picture.
- addlepate 13y agoThis guy is such a clown, and I am really tired of internet people lionizing him because they think copyright infringement is super-cool and patents are super-dumb, or whatever.
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- n00b101 13y agoThe patent system is so horribly broken. Let me get this straight ... something as simple as 2-factor authentication can be patented in the US and enforced world-wide? Let's say I'm running a start-up or a small business and I need secure, remote access ... my go-to solution would be to use 2-factor authentication ... but I have to worry about getting sued or finding funds for paying extortion money just to apply an idea that's about as dead-simple as passwords? How is this a good thing for inventors?
- homosaur 13y agoWe've well established at this point that the archaic US Patent System and software patents in general are not good for inventors, consumers, or the economy in general. They are good for lobbyists and entrenched megacorporations, however, which means we can ignore all that and it's good for the public. Now go take your medicine, slave.
- dreamdu5t 13y agoIt is not well established or popular opinion. I work at a startup and many of my co-workers support patents, copyright, and intellectual property while simultaneously decrying patents like this.
- dsl 13y agoThe people who don't like software patents, are the people who don't have any good ones.
- alipang 13y agoI don't find it helpful to mix in copyright/intellectual property into this discussion as there is no reason why you can't support these while not supporting the patenting of ideas. Personally I don't regard two-step authentication, or software patents in general as a kind of "invention", and don't find they should be patentable, much like "prime numbers" or "the periodic table".
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- kbenson 13y agoIf you look at the SecurID wikipedia[1] page, in the references you can find a paper discussing two factor authorization in 1996[1]. Also, it's not defining two factor authentication, it assumes the reader knows what it is. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID [2]: http://www.homeport.org/~adam/dimacs.html http://www.homeport.org/~adam/dimacs.html
- 1337biz 13y agoI just wish Kim would start something like Startup Chile for New Zealand - but only for privacy and security related startups. He would have the right swagger to make this thing successful and (at least over the more recent past) a credible track record for standing up for what he believes in.
- lignuist 13y agoThis guy is in the wrong business. He should run a tv show, because he is so entertaining.