Oh definitely the first two, we're doing this on re-launch after the meta campaign. But I don't follow re: the domain names. Do you mean we should partner with a domain registrar to give out freebies to our users?
That's very interesting. I think this assumes that companies will be asking their crowd to do for them what they do for a living. But we are focusing on customer development (e.g. surveys, interview), and business development (introductions, and social media shares). These are useful, simple things that startups need and are fairly fungible in terms of time-value. For less fungible work, like what you do for a living, those will likely be limited to instances when the company is hiring. In this way, they can distribute one project to all the people who pledge time to that tier and interview the best result(s). Everyone else gets a reward. Also, the site will be gamified in that for every hour you pledge, you'll be given an hour. In other words, if you pledge 100 hours to take surveys and do social media shares, you'll be able to run your own campaign and raise 100 hours for your project for free.
Thank you very much. These are great points and exactly what we set out to solve when we undertook the project. We will definitely put a time limit on when pledged time can be claimed (likely 3 months after campaign closes). Aside from doing work for simple rewards, rewards for pledged time will include cash and equity. So building a profile of some free work could lead to pay work pretty quickly.
That's a fair point and something we're working on. We are using 1-hour blocks for pledges. People have been quantifying and qualifying work in 1-hour blocks for a while and are used it we think. But we will continue to refine that. Thank you.
Indeed. In fact, filing an inter-partes review, something our partner Hard-IP is very good at, is significantly cheaper than litigation in federal court. Also, with a large enough joint defense group, we may be able to negotiate arbitration or mediation (we would recommend baseball style mediation).
That's an interesting idea. But it doesn't quite translate because each individual copyright infringement case has its own facts, you either did it or not. With patent infringement, the validity of the patent affects every potential plaintiff the same way. But it's something to consider in the future. Thanks.
It's good to leave that option open, where possible. We would not want anyone to abandon it. For instance, if an IPR fails to invalidate a patent, the fight becomes much harder. And not all demand letters are unfair assertions of patent rights, some are legitimate. It's important to find out what other similarly situated businesses plan to do, but that doesn't mean you won't end up settling.
This is true. During the early days, we will also have to charge a small monthly fee for members during the pendency of their fight. We hope to remove the fee later, if possible.