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Written by Brandon Shalton reprint from 2003
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Attention Patent Holders If you have a patent and are thinking about coming into the adult industry to "convince" people to license your patent, I have some observations and comments for you (for those that are satire-challenged, this is a satire):
You don't have to be right. Take advantage of Patent and Civil Law where they are guilty until proven innocent.... and as you know, only a court will be able to make that decision. 2) There is no community. Don't worry about the big players looking out for the smaller players.. just get sweetheart deals with them so you can parade their name around town. You can make so much more money by getting a mass number of webmasters to pay you a smaller amount, then to get a few big players to pay you a large amount. 3) Don't try to go after large mainstream companies or universities, you will only get yourself in to a huge court battle with people who have deeper pockets. Pick on the targets that make enough money to pay for a nice car and a nice house and who spend their time on GFY posting how great they are. 4) Don't charge alot of money or do any percentages of GROSS revenue.. That's just a bad idea.. make the fee structure simple like if you make less than $300K/year, the fee for the license is like $1000. Over $300K, charge $2000. $1000 is cheaper than 3-5 hours of attorney time and a low enough threshold that they will just pay you the money to be done with it. Think about it.. 10,000 websites giving you $1,000/year = $10M/year all for doing nothing but sending out information/infringement packets. You already know how to do spam, just print it this time and mail it. I bet you will see higher then 1:500 conversions. 5) Don't worry about people like me who are trying to bring awareness to patent abuse. While I am trying to help defend people's right to do business, free of any bad patent (a bad patent is one where the idea or invention was in use before the patent), I am being criticized and bashed for my efforts. Don't worry about my Fight the Patent Foundation idea, webmasters didn't feel the need for it. Anyone who tries to get webmasters to contribute to a fund to band together gets seen as some kind of "scam artist" or a fraud. Even organizations that have been setup by fellow webmasters like IMPA have trouble getting webmasters to donate/become members. By making a sweetheart deal with some big players, you could actually get people who admire those companies to actually bash anyone who tries to fight against your patent. Some of these people will have good credibility with the webmasters that others will automatically think that they must be right, so they too should take up the bashing. It's a brilliant strategy to help silence and defeat any effort that tries to go against you. 6) Don't worry about the 11 defendants that are standing up to Acacia... they will get burnt out financially from the expenses of their defense. They will also be jaded by the lack of industry support and will most likely not be standing up to fight against the next attack. Think about it.. paying like $15K-$50K each for defense, could pay your $1,000 license easily, for 15-50 years! 7) Go after everyone up the chain from web designers, web hosts, webmasters, content producers, domain registrars, etc. Target everyone.... you never know what will stick til you throw it on the wall. Even send out letters to webmasters who are in no way infringing on your INTERPRETED patent... they may just pay you anyways. 8) Don't bother thinking that I might want to join your company (had one company already ask). While I am very technically skilled with some business savvy, I would rather give up all my technological innovations, turn my computer off, disconnect from the internet, and go do some woodworking, rather than see patent abuse stifle innovation and financially drain companies. 9) The webmasters won't read this whole post, it's way too long for them.. anything longer than a 1 sentence jab is too much for them, so don't worry about me posting this in a public forum, they won't be reading it. 10) Use Affiliate progams as easy ways of getting mailing addresses of people to target. Maybe offer some stock to these companies. I know you think that's harsh, why bite the hand that feeds you? If you can get them sweetheart deal, maybe give them some stock, and keep it all confidential, then it's all good. Sure, it may suck that the people who helped make them successful get hit with the license. They know it takes money to make money, so this low-cost patent license is just another cost of doing business. If they can't afford the $1,000/year, then they just aren't doing something right. Afterall, the sponsor worked so hard to build up their business, they know what it takes. Summary: You have picked a great target in selecting the Adult Industry.. Berman from Acacia said it best, they are "low hanging fruit". Just follow along with the Acacia news, study their methods and you will have a blueprint for your own plans. The only problem that I think you may have, is that other people already have similar ideas of targeting webmasters for patents. If too many patent licenses come out at the same time, you could end up really pissing people off, and then they would join together (when that happens, i'll be long gone after my fingers have gone stiff from all the emails and posts trying to get support, from my voice going scratchy in all the phone calls in helping to bring awareness, and by the bruises I take for being bashed in defending people's rights). Better that you join forces with the other patent players (just don't make it public because that could be an antitust issue) and schedule/time your efforts. Maybe like 1 per quarter.. spread out the schedule so you put things in rotation and then you won't hurt your individual efforts in leeching money from these hard working webmasters. Just when their wound starts to heal from the previous patent attack, you hit them with another.
This is a satirical post. If you did not laugh at the end, then you would have realized that "truth is said in jest". Everyone of these points you can see is going on right now (minus some stuff I made up for this fictional story).
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