Silicon Valley (2014–…): Season 4, Episode 7 - The Patent Troll - full transcript

That's a good one, Richard.
No, but seriously, what brings you in today?
No, I am... I am serious. I would like a... an STD check.
What, did you graze your penis against a toilet seat?
No. I... I had sex.
Sex with what? Female.
A female what?
A female human.
And I-I don't know this woman very well, and we didn't use a condom.
Now, listen, Richard, I wouldn't worry so much.
People don't really get STDs anymore.
We'll get your tests back soon, and I would tell you
not to have sex before then, but let's face it...
Lightning ain't gonna strike twice, is it?
It's possible.
Huh? It's possible.
No.
Hey, here's something strange.
Would you mind hopping up on that scale for a sec?
Okay, why? Am I gaining weight?
I have been working like crazy, eating like crap.
I haven't been exercising at all, really, so...
Yeah, look at that.
You are an inch shorter
than you were this time last year.
You're shrinking, my friend.
How is that possible?
Well, you just told me. It's your unhealthy lifestyle, Richard.
It's a loss of mineral bone density.
So, what do I do? I'm gonna put you on calcium supplements,
and I'm gonna have you come back in about three weeks.
I'll see you then... or whatever's left of you.
So, Erlich, good news:
Keenan Feldspar signed his term sheet,
and we are now officially negotiating the finer points of his deal.
Fantastic! Well, now the real work begins.
To that end, we would like to clarify our arrangement with you.
We feel that a generous finder's fee
will be more than satisfactory.
This meeting is over.
This is very generous, but I... I was under the impression
that, um, I was going to be hired here,
and I've actually told quite a few people that I was hired,
so if I wasn't, then it would look like I was fired.
That is fine.
No. Laurie...
I will not allow you to make the same mistake
that Uber, Palantir, Zenefits,
and, in my earlier years, Chipotle
made by not hiring me.
All right, don't hire me.
But can you hack this finder's fee into 52 installments,
paid weekly over the course of the next year?
You mean... a salary?
Those are your words, not mine.
The finder's fee and...
10,000 to go away?
You know, looking around at Bream-Hall,
I see a lot of the same:
the same gender... Both partners happen to be female, Erlich.
Great catch. What's your point?
There is a grotesque gender imbalance
in the VC field right now. I can help you navigate the toxicity
of this male culture which is encroaching on our feminist island.
I mean, for instance, there's something called mansplaining?
Have you heard about this? We know what mansplaining is.
Mansplaining is when a man will condescendingly explain
something to a woman that she already knows.
Mr. Bachman, we have work to do.
All right. Laurie...
half the finder's fee for me to stay.
I don't think that you'll find an associate, um...
with my track record at a better price.
It's my final offer. Take it or leave it.
I need this.
Fine. You may start Monday.
Okay. Ooh, this Monday?
That's fine. Of course.
♪ ♪
What's that?
SonicWall SonicPoint ACe...
paired with the TZ600.
Top-of-the-line firewall protection,
built-in intrusion prevention, SSL decryption and inspection,
application control, and content filtering.
Saying new router would be so much quicker.
Dinesh, the one good thing that came out of you slapping your body
against that cyberterrorist in a vulgar parody of the act of love
is that we finally have a network with real security value.
Why would we need it? Mia is in a federal facility
with no access to the Internet.
Right, and she has never shown a proclivity for getting around infrastructure.
Did you see this? We've only been live for two weeks,
and we just cracked the top 500 in the Hooli app store.
Oh, look at that. Ranked 499.
Of utilities. Yeah, subgroup mobile, subgroup storage.
True, but overall, we're firmly in the top 30,000 Hooli phone apps.
I mean, we may not be a global epidemic yet,
but... we've leapt from bat saliva to humans
and... and we've just killed our first few villagers.
♪ ♪
This warm. This warm.
This warm.
This warm. I get it, Jian-Yang!
The refrigerator is broken.
The ice cream is melting.
Let me guess. Is it because it's warm?
Yes. Fine, I'll call the repairman,
and he'll come here and fix it posthaste.
No, I want a new fridge, a smarter fridge...
like this.
Fourteen thousand dollars for a smart fridge?
Unlike you, I now work for a living.
I'm not gonna drop that kind of dough on a fridge.
I ordered it already. I buy it for myself.
Then why are you talking to me about it?
To make you feel bad,
because you are fat and poor.
- Go for Erlich. - E. Bachman! E. Chen.
Got your message.
Bream-Hall, huh?
Yes, starting today.
I hope that this doesn't create any tension between us,
us now being competitors and all.
Hey. None-zo.
Hey, while I have you, some of the boys are part
of the ownership group of the Warriors.
We have an extra spot on the floor at Oracle Arena. You a hoops guy?
Oops, sorry, you broke up. Could you, uh, could you say that again?
We have an extra spot on the floor tonight
at Oracle Arena. You a hoops guy?
What red-blooded American male in the VC boys' club isn't?
Okay. Cool. I'll text you the deets.
Later, man.
Well, boys, I've been in the VC game for just one day,
and already I have floor seats to watch the Warriors.
But you hate basketball. I'll concede that spending all my time
inside of a house with you scrawny code jockeys,
the Incredible Shrinking Hendricks,
and whatever the fuck Jared is here...
may have blunted my conventional masculinity
a hair, but it's always been there.
Uh-huh. Well, try and get a selfie with Steph Curry.
I will, assuming she's there.
Hey, Jared, um, look at this e-mail here.
Uh, "Dear Richard, I recently became aware of your Space Saver app.
"I think your app may infringe upon my own patented technology.
"If your schedule permits, I would love to discuss this with you as soon as possible.
Sincerely, Stewart Burke."
I thought we handled that patent stuff. We own it, right?
Yeah. I'll... I'll send him a harshly worded cease-and-desist letter.
Actually, uh...
his work address is some house in Mountain View.
He's probably just working out of his garage, just like us.
Why don't I go over there, walk him through the app,
you know, coder to coder. I'm sure it'll be fine.
You've got a big heart.
Or maybe it just seems big 'cause the rest of him is shrinking.
♪ ♪
Hi. Richard Hendricks. We exchanged e-mails?
No. Are... are you Stewart Burke?
No. I'm sorry. Does Stewart Burke live here?
Yeah.
Okay. Is he in? Can I speak with him?
Grandpa! Some guy's here!
My grandson is the software expert.
I couldn't tell a computer from a toaster.
Oh. So, you're not a coder?
Oh no, not at all. I am an attorney.
I started out in the medical field,
then in the auto industry, and then the music business.
Did you represent all these people?
No, I sued them.
Look, that's me with Stevie Wonder.
He never saw it coming.
You get it? Uh, yes, because he's blind.
Right.
I'm sorry. I don't know what this... has to do with...
You see this? This is a song I bought at a copyright auction.
It's an old mariachi number
that had cost me practically nothing
and so far has bought me two houses
and put my village idiot grandson through six years of Emerson.
Oh. All that from "Cancion de Amores"?
Was it a popular song? No. I used the copyright on this song
to sue writers of all kinds of songs.
Anyway, the writers usually settle, pay me off,
or give me a chunk of their song.
Thanks to "Cancion de Amores" here,
I now own 10 percent of Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine."
Mmm. It's a classic!
And when it runs next month
on Mazda's new Super Bowl spot, I print money.
But sadly, all the good music copyrights are gone.
That is... so sad. And that's why I moved into tech.
And now, I sue people like you.
♪ ♪
What?
So, he's a patent troll?
Yep, as like in buy a ton of super-broad IP
from failed startups at auction,
and then threaten litigation against accused infringers,
i.e., you.
So, uh, how much is Burke asking for?
Twenty thousand dollars.
Ah, you're getting off easy.
Well, no. Look, his patent covers...
"storage of media files on a network."
I mean, that cannot be enforceable.
It's probably not...
but to find out, you're gonna have to fight him in court.
For a good litigator, we're talking at least...
a couple hundred grand.
Just pay him the 20 grand, Richard.
I could get creative and take some money out of the Melcher deal.
- There you go. - No, we need that money.
This is a shakedown. He's a crook.
And right when our app was getting off the ground.
That's how he found you.
Guys just landed on the app store
top 500 list, right? Yeah.
So, Burke starts at the bottom of those lists
and works his way up.
The more settlements he gets, the stronger his case.
The higher you are on the list, the more money he asks for.
It's like... It's like limp biscuit.
He sued those guys too? Not the band.
The thing the band is named after.
Limp biscuit's an old frat ritual,
where all the brothers race to stroke one out onto a biscuit,
and then the last guy to nut has to eat it.
Right. Sometimes it's a Wheat Thin.
Look, Richie, I get it.
It's embarrassing to pull your pud
in front of the whole pledge class.
Just pay the guy.
Or...
maybe... we convince the entire pledge class
to not play the game at all in the first place.
If only.
♪ ♪
This must be the new fridge.
You like this? Look, it has a screen
so you can see all the food that's inside.
Mm-hmm. Kind of like that one?
This one has an app,
so you can actually watch the food on your phone.
All it needs to do is keep my fucking beer cold.
Hmm. You're running low on beer.
Fuck you.
Whoops! Did you forget to scan that bar code?
Yes, I did... on purpose.
Ah! There we go.
It's bad enough it has to talk.
Does it need fake vocal ticks like, "ah"?
Well, it just makes it sound more human.
Humans are shit. This thing is addressing problems that don't exist.
It's solutionism at its worst.
We are dumbing down machines that are inherently superior.
Whatever. You gave your server a human name.
You named it Anton.
Yeah, but Anton doesn't call me anything.
He grimly does his work, then he sits motionless
till it's time to work again. We could all take a page from his book.
Uh-oh! That yogurt is expired.
See? This could've killed me.
Now I can give it to Erlich.
Hmm. I'm not quite sure what you're doing.
Is there something I can help you with?
Yeah, how do I shut you the fuck up?
Aw, is somebody having a rough day?
Did that fucker password-protect the settings?
His fridge, his rules.
Fuck.
My man, I was told I had a spot on the floor tonight,
but it seems that I've committed
the cardinal sin of being early.
What time does the game actually start?
It's about to.
Wait. When he said, "a spot on the floor,"
did he mean... on the floor?
I wasn't a part of the conversation.
Come on, baby, come on! Come on, bring it! Unh!
I cannot do that.
All right, you guys go shirts.
We'll go skins.
And I can definitely not do that.
Will not.
Don't let him drive on you.
All day.
Yo, Erlich. Where you at, dawg?
Yo, what up, what up, what up?
Which one of you pussies, uh, put sugar in my gas tank
to prevent me from housing you on the hardwood?
What? Yeah, my car won't start.
It's a real fucked situation,
so I guess I'll have to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to...
We play every Tuesday.
I'll see you next week, bro-seph.
♪ ♪
Hey, let me get in. Let me get in. Let me get in.
Hey, I squished those front-end bugs.
Did you finish your networking issue? Nope.
Hmm. I'm sorry. Wrong password.
You're sitting here, trying to hack Jian-Yang's password
instead of doing your actual work?
Well, good luck, it's a 10-digit alphanumeric.
Ten digit? Fuck.
And you have one underpowered laptop,
so you know, you should have the answer in...
9,000 years.
Time to pull out the big gun.
Well, maybe you should pull out the bug gun...
'cause of the network bug.
As in the bug you're supposed to be fixing.
If you were programmed to have a good sense of humor, you'd laugh at that.
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see any Good Humor ice cream bars.
Shall I add them to your shopping list? You know what? Yeah.
Good Humor ice cream bars
added to your shopping list. Come on.
God. You believe this? I'm... I'm still on hold.
With? Microsoft Azure.
Yeah, I... I'm trying to negotiate a lower cloud storage rate
because we're gonna need it if, or more realistically when,
Richard finally decides to pay that patent troll.
I mean, I'm still on hold.
It's like they don't even care about small businesses.
Jared, they don't care about small businesses.
That's why small businesses have to lie.
Like, um, Google named their first building Building 40,
so that people would think they were already huge.
When I worked at my first startup,
I would transfer people to "my supervisor,"
and then I'd just get back on the phone myself.
Oh. Uh, yeah, hello.
No, no, I'm not gonna go on hold again.
Um, in fact, could I transfer you to my supervisor?
Oh.
Oh, no, no, no, I have to take a shit.
Just, um... do your best Ed Chen impression.
Um, one moment please.
♪ ♪
What's up? You got Ed Ch... Chambers.
♪ ♪
Hello, everybody. Thanks again for making it.
And thanks to Gus of Gigglybots for hosting.
No problem. My name is, uh, Richard Hendricks,
uh, of Pied Piper.
You're the guys working for Gavin Belson.
Was working with Gavin Belson, yeah.
So, he's not coming? No. No, not at all.
But I'll have you all know that without any involvement from Gavin Belson,
Pied Piper, just like yourselves,
has reached the Hooli app store's top 500 list,
and you guys are aware
that you are all directly above us on the list,
which is why you should know that a patent troll
named Stewart Burke has recently demanded
that I pay a $20,000 licensing fee,
and if I pay, he's gonna come and ask you guys for more money.
He starts with the little guy.
Not that I'm little. I'm, uh... I mean I'm not.
I'm actually, uh...
above average height.
Isn't this something that could have been done over e-mail?
I mean, I guess, but... look.
If we don't stop this guy, he's gonna just keep asking for more and more money
until someone is stuck with an unpayable bill.
It's kind of like that old fraternity game,
uh, the limp biscuit.
Sorry, I wasn't in a fraternity. What is that?
Oh, I-I... I don't think we need to get into...
It's where guys stand in a circle and masturbate onto a cracker.
And then the last guy... eats it.
What?
Again, I... again... I don't really know
why he would mention that. It's super gross.
Is this why Gavin Belson stopped working with you? No.
The important thing is here,
um, my lawyer has actually drafted a partnership agreement.
Why don't you all just... Essentially, uh,
we all band together and each contribute $20,000.
We should have more than enough money
to mount a challenge against this guy's patent.
And if we win, we dissolve the patent,
so that he can't do this to anyone else ever again.
Because in the end,
shouldn't it be Mr. Stewart Burke, the patent troll,
who is forced to eat the biscuit?
I'm pretty sure that's sexual assault.
Yeah, no one deserves that.
I know. That... That's all I'm saying.
Look, I'm pretty sure it's even made up.
Like, you know, like a donkey punch, you know?
Again, what is a donkey punch?
It's, uh, when guys... Just don't. Don't.
♪ ♪
G-man, you busy at the moment?
Very. I'm about to set Anton loose
on that talking chrome beer coozy.
So, care to take a breather and...
help a pal throw a basketball hoop on the old garage?
Why would you need help from a scrawny code jockey such as myself?
Fine.
I'm perfectly capable of figuring it out myself.
All I need is... Ah!
May I borrow this hammer to pound in these flamboyant little nails?
Those are screws. Yeah, no, I...
♪ ♪
Jared Dunn. Yep, just a moment, please. I'll transfer you.
Go for Chambers.
Ned! I knew it was you.
Hey, did that pussy Jared keep you on hold long?
I eat that motherfucker's lunch every day.
No, man, I literally eat his food. What do you want?
Uh-uh, ain't gonna happen.
That's as high as we go, homo. Till next time, rook.
I mean, did you see that?
He's amazing. Who?
Ed Chambers. He got Pied Piper a great cloud storage rate from Azure,
and he's got the hookup on a couple of pallets
of pamplemousse LaCroix at, his words, an amaze-balls price.
Wow. Good job, Jared.
Well, I mean, don't congratulate me. Congratulate Ed Chambers.
Ed Chambers is you. Well, I wish, but...
Gentlemen. You all said that it couldn't be done,
but it appears as if Sir Richard the Not-Short
hath now slain the slimy troll.
Stu Burke. R. Hendricks.
I got word that you called. I assume you spoke with my attorney,
Monsieur Ron Laflamme?
Yes, I did speak to Ron Laflamme.
What, pray tell, did he tell you when he called you?
Well, I called him, actually,
to tell him that the eight companies
you apparently tried to organize against me
have reached out to me preemptively to settle.
And because I appreciated that,
I offered them a very, very reasonable rate.
So, Richard Hendricks, fuck you.
Okay. Uh, yeah.
Uh-huh.
I understand.
So, you're firm on that?
Well, bye then.
So, your coalition fucked us? Yes.
So, now we have to pay the $20,000?
Uh, not exactly. Because he...
Stu is saying that since all eight companies
have now licensed the patent,
he has a stronger case against us,
so, um, he'd actually like m-more money.
How much? Three hundred thousand dollars.
So, we just ate the Wheat Thin, didn't we?
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see any Wheat Thins.
Shall I add them to your shopping list?
Eh, sure.
Well, let's hope that Melcher doesn't hear about all this.
♪ ♪
You guys don't need all these lights on, do you?
Yes, we do.
Okay. Well, that should be fine. We should be fine.
Um, fine from what?
That fridge is putting up a fight,
so I'm gonna have to try something with Anton.
Might put a little strain on the wiring, that's all.
I'll be in the garage.
Hey, Richard, but you're not seriously gonna defend yourself in court, right?
Well, Larry Flynt did it.
And Sir Walter Raleigh,
although he lost and was publicly beheaded.
But you could argue that he eventually won in the court of history.
I get it. I should've settled.
Okay? And I didn't.
And you're right, I will probably lose,
but I'm not going down without a fight.
And I've got all of Monahan's discovery from the Hooli case right here,
so that's something.
Oh my God.
This is from high school.
These are all my notes from the original build of Pied Piper 1.0,
back when it was just some stupid search app for music copyright... s.
♪ ♪
Hold on. Hold on.
What the fuck?
Sorry. Everybody okay?
I don't know, you fucking maniac!
Are we? Probably.
Richard? What... What are you up to?
About six foot two, Jared.
Looks like I can slay that troll after all.
What am I looking at?
Well, you said that you used "Cancion de Amores"
to sue musicians,
claimed that they stole that song, right?
Bought two houses, put Jeremy through four years of college.
Six, and he's still 20 credits short.
Okay, well, he may want to consider financial aid,
um, because that little song there
was itself stolen from an old country song
called "I'm Cryin'"
from 1967, a full eight years
before "Cancion de Amores."
And I'm pretty sure Katrina and the Waves would want to know
that they gave you a piece of "Walking on Sunshine" for nothing.
Mazda may want to pull that whole Super Bowl spot.
Bullshit. No, no, not bullshit. Computer science.
Yeah, and we can take it to court if you like, see who they believe:
perhaps the most advanced and sophisticated pattern-matching algorithm
ever devised by a fucking genius
or some old asshole who once sued Stevie Wonder.
All right. What do you want, you little prick?
Correction, sir.
I am a big prick.
♪ ♪
Hello, my cold friend.
Hello?
Huh! Suck it, Jian-Yang.
Mmm. Ah. Huh. Huh.
You attack and destroy my refrigerator?
And you misspell my name.
I did. I had to overclock Anton,
but I was able to brute-force the backdoor password
to that chrome piece of shit in under 12 hours.
And I added a little visual flair.
Huh. Suck it, Jian-Yang.
♪ ♪ Mmm. Ah. Huh.
So? So... he bought it. Hook, line and sinker.
Yeah, he thinks the search results are real.
You trolled the troll.
Yeah, yeah, for a second there, he wasn't buying it,
and then I just started babbling on about tech specs
until his eyes glazed over.
Well, as a result, we now have
a perpetual royalty-free license for the patent.
Yes! See? I stuck to my guns and as a result,
we now have 20 grand we would have otherwise lost
if I had listened to you delicate little snowflakes and settled.
Yeah? Twenty grand.
Yeah, so let me cum into a bucket and have you all drink it.
Uh, Richard? Could I have a... a moment?
Sorry about that.
I-I-I... I regretted it the second it came out of my mouth.
Richard. Well, yes, but...
Here. What's this?
Um, that is a bill from Ron Laflamme
for the paperwork he had to do to put your coalition of companies together.
Twenty-two thousand dollars?
Yeah. It's at the high end of standard.
So, it would've cost us slightly less if we'd have just...
Paid the troll? Well, that's true,
but can you put a price on dignity?
Apparently, I just did.
Do me a favor and don't tell the guys.
Yeah. You have my utmost discretion. Thank you.
Um, speaking of, Richard, I need to tell you something.
I had to let Ed Chambers go.
Who? My fictional supervisor.
He bragged to a sales rep at LaCroix about doing it to Sonia Sotomayor,
so Ed is no longer with us.
I'm sure we can manage.
He also was never actually with us.
Right. Out of sight, out of mind. 'Cause he was never real.
And out of reality. Yeah, well.
Oh, Ed Chambers.
Don't hit... No, no, no, no! Oh!
Fuck!
Yeah, a lot of these guys aren't man enough
to work for an all-female led VC firm, but not me.
I believe that the future is female.
And anyone who says otherwise can suck my fat dick.
Yo, yo, yo!
Woo!
Bachman, scoreboard.
Ah, scoreboard. Fuck. Shit.
Who made that one through the...
It was a three-pointer, dumb-ass!
Three-pointer? What, are we in Europe?
Pass!
- Is he fucking with me? - Shoot it!