I'm not sure that "some obscure patent matter" qualifies as a criticism of the patent's validity. This is an obscure patent, and I have no idea if it is valid or not.

That being said, I have had personal involvement in a patent lawsuit. Without giving details - as it is still an ongoing matter - this patent was a "method" patent written in a manner so vague that it could cover virtually anything.

And that is the major problem I have with the American patent system.

It is as if I thought to myself "Wow. It'd be great if there was an automatic bread-buttering machine", and so I wrote a patent saying "a machine that dips a buttering device into butter and then spreads it on bread."

The problem is, this vague and detail-less patent can then be potentially used against some ACTUAL ENTREPRENEUR who makes grilled cheese sandwiches using a device he ACTUALLY BUILT HIMSELF that simply holds the bread in place while he puts cheese on it himself. I'm not lying.

Sure, it sounds like the two processes are completely different, but since the patent is sufficiently vague, these patent trolls can then go an sue this poor guy and basically say to him "Give us $100K or you are going to spend three times as much in a courtroom."

You might now say, "Well, how come he can't get that thrown out of court since the two processes are so different and that patent is so vague?"

Because the legal system currently has a policy of "if it passed the standards of the Patent Office, then the onus of proving it actually isn't a valid patent is on the defendant". Furthermore, the specifics of the patent (ie. butter) don't have to be identical. So according to the patent laws, a patent describing an automatic buttering machine might actually also apply to a bread-holding device used for grilled cheese sandwiches. As far as the law is concerned, that is something for a jury to decide.

Which basically means that ANY activity involving anything remotely similar to a patent is fair game, and since it is fair game, there is a very small chance of recovering court costs.

And with no legal recourse allowing the victim to recover court costs, he has no choice but to either cough up the extortion settlement offer, or face HUGE court fees which could put him out of business. An honest man, being victimized by unscrupulous lawyers and a system that encourages it to happen. There is no other way to describe it.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have any problem with valid patents, and I 100% agree that valid patent holders need to be protected. But there needs to be better definition inside of those patents.

But sometime in the last 20 years, the Patent office lost its way and started rubber stamping these "method" patents which cover nothing more than a concept. And now that the Internet has arrived, all of these concepts are coming home to roost.

It's like domain squatting. If you got in on the business early enough, you could have patented concepts like "a computer system that stores time-based events" and then sued Microsoft for all of its revenue coming from Outlook.

As for the specific patent being described in this story, I have no idea whether or not this patent is really applicable and valid or not. But I will say that the methods being used by the plaintiffs (only suing companies that will have a hard time mounting a defense) reeks of the presence of trolls looking for easy targets who will settle quickly and cough up a lot of money.

And they aren't done.

From what I see - and I haven't seen a lot - this patent might be be applied against virtually any gaming site that allows people to download the game and play. They aren't going after the casual gaming sites, yet. Instead they are going after the easy marks. But once they are done, I would be very concerned if I was a site like World Gaming or Pogo. They could be next.