At trial in East Texas Cheng took the stand to tell Newegg’s story. Alcatel-Lucent’s corporate representative, at the heart of its massive licensing campaign, couldn’t even name the technology or the patents it was suing Newegg over.
via Newegg nukes “corporate troll” Alcatel in third patent appeal win this year | Ars Technica.
This is big win #2 in recent times for Newegg. Here’s their win against the shopping cart patent.
Rackspace is being sued over its Rackspace Cloud Notes app for iOS, in a lawsuit that also includes claims again several other Texas companies, including Petroleum Geo-Services, PlainsCapital Bank, Texas Instruments, Schlumberger Technologies, and energy giant TXU. All of those companies have iOS apps which, apparently, rotate their screens.
via Rackspace goes on offense against second patent troll in two weeks | Ars Technica.
Rackspace’s dispute is with an IP Nav unit called Parallel Iron, which says it has three patents that cover the open source Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). But remarkably, Rackspace didn’t even know that at first; IP Nav contacted Rackspace and told the company it infringed some patents while refusing to even reveal the numbers or the owners of the patents, unless Rackspace signed a “forbearance agreement” to not sue first. (Sometimes companies threatened by patent trolls can file a “declaratory judgment” lawsuit, which can help them win a more favorable venue.)
via Rackspace sues “most notorious patent troll in America” | Ars Technica.
Soverain isn’t in the e-commerce business; it’s in the higher-margin business of filing patent lawsuits against e-commerce companies. And it has been quite successful until now. The company’s plan to extract a patent tax of about one percent of revenue from a huge swath of online retailers was snuffed out last week by Newegg and its lawyers, who won an appeal ruling [PDF] that invalidates the three patents Soverain used to spark a vast patent war.
via How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail | Ars Technica.
The first patent troll story of the new year. I like Newegg. If I didn’t live so close to a brick and mortar Microcenter I’d probably use them a lot.