Ask HN: Obfuscation techniques against patent trolls

I'm building a product, and plan on launching in about a month.

What are some prominent software concepts that patent trolls target? For example, somewhat recently many companies were sued by Guyzar for "keeping user sessions after a user has logged in", which would basically effect all known sites that use some form of authentication. (https://theamericangenius.com/business-news/guyzar-llc-trolling/).

I thought about renaming my authentication end-point from /api/oauth/v2 to /api/a2, or something cryptic.

Obviously, I need authentication. And I'm using OAuth. Do you see obfuscation as suitable obstacles to patent trolls, for small companies and startups?

What other concepts do patent trolls target, and how would you obfuscate them in your code to make it less obvious to the trolling lawyers?

1 comment

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JPLeRouzic 9y ago ↗

I wrote a dozen patents and I can assure you that obsfucation is certainly not the solution to your problem. Think of a patent as a recipe in law language, it makes statements about processes that are observable and quite factual. Big companies use patent pools to protect themselves against trolling ... by other big companies. Obviously other people cannot rely on patent pools, but there are other solutions, here are three of them:

* Use a patent that was placed in public domain (either it is old or the user did not pay the annual fee).

* Use a patent that a big company offers for free (like Tesla)

* Use an external service that may use patents, if it gets sued it is its problem, not yours.

Best luck!