Hi Hacker News!<p>Patents were created to promote innovation, but as the whole industry agrees now, they're actually hurting innovators.
Patent trolls are using them to sue the hell out of startups and innovators — more than $29bn/year are wasted on patent trolls, not to mention the $21bn on VC investment also wasted on them.<p>We want to change this trend by empowering companies to invalidate patents that threaten them and the whole ecosystem.<p>Everyone can create a campaign against a patent, and then interested companies can back it. With the raised amount, we reward people for contributing prior art — which is any evidence that a patent was not novel. Then we file a reexamination before the patent office.<p>Patent office/lawyer fees + prior art rewards should be minimum $20k, which is extremely small for anything regarding IP litigation. The process takes ~6 months.<p>We chose patent '435 because it affects the whole ecosystem - everyone customizes online content with some user's preferences.<p>Let's kill stupid patents together! Feedback and personal experiences are super welcome. Thanks!
Pretty neat that you have Lee Cheng as an advisor, who is hero in the battle against trolls.<p>But from the Bio's, it doesn't look like anyone on the team is a lawyer. What sort of track record do you have invalidating patents?