Hmm, I'm been unable to respond because I get a "you're submitting too fast" error. Maybe I tripped some sort of flame detector. To avoid multiple replies, I'm consolidating responses into one mega-reply.

davesims:

> The word ['claims'] appears exactly once...

Yes, I worded my argument poorly. The word "claims" does occur, but it's not in the context of a patent's claims, but rather the claims made by a plaintiff. They discuss multiple patents in the episode, but not once do they talk about any patent's claims, and no discussion of a patent can begin without the claims. In fact, the journalists seem to make the very common mistake of interpreting a patent's scope based on what the abstract and other sections mention.

> TAL never claimed otherwise.

Oh, they very much insinuated it by emphasizing how difficult it was to verify instances of inventors getting paid.

Also, yes, the inventor was a schmuck, but that should have no bearing on IV or other trolls who claim to help inventors. The vast majority of inventors don't try to rip off their co-inventors. (Glass half-full: because most people are decent human beings. Cynically: incorrect inventorship, as in this case, can automatically invalidate a patent. If you search askpatents.com, you'll see this issue come up a few times.)

nickff:

> Bread refreshing method US 6080436 A

The main claim in that patent, as pointed out by belorn, requires a temperature of 2500 F to 4500 F. Toasters typically operate at temperatures at 310 F. I don't know what you get at 2500 - 4500 F, but it's not toast. The thing is, you don't even need to be a patent lawyer or an engineer to fact-check this little but.

> The engineers understand how patents work...

This, in my experience with multiple online forums and countless personal interactions over the course of 7 years, is rarely true. Pretty much nobody, especially the tech media making the most noise about patents, even knows what claims are.

I agree that patentese seems esoteric at first glance. But that is because it has this particular structure for legal and historic reasons. It's easy enough to learn, though. If you've had to debug C++ STL compile errors, patentese is a breeze. This was the intent behind my Blub/Haskell comparison: complaining about something wihout understanding it is really not contributing much to the discussion.

reitzensteinm: > Lodsys

In my eyes, Lodsys is clearly a bad actor. They are preying on solo developers who have no way to afford any kind of defense. Many trolls exploit the extreme cost asymmetries of mounting a legal defense, but by targeting such small players, Lodsys is taking it to new lows. In that sense I find IV to be more palatable because at least they pick on "someone their own size". (Lodsys has been linked to IV, but until some time ago, Lodsys had a page on their site explicitly disavowing any relation to IV. No idea why it's been taken down.)

Also, a general note about TFA: I don't see what's so landmark about this trial. Generally, trials are "landmark" if they break new ground, and while interesting because the defendant is formidable, this is a pretty run-of-the-mill lawsuit of IV vs another tech giant.