According to the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)’s 2011 survey, an average patent lawsuit costs between $900,000 to $6,000,000 to defend. In the last month and a half alone, Twitter has received three new patent troll lawsuits.
Tag Archives: patent trolls
Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay!
Rackspace has been subjected to yet another patent lawsuit by a patent troll looking for a settlement. In this case, the plaintiff is called PersonalWeb Technologies. This particular lawsuit is not much different than the others, except that it highlights why software patent litigation suppresses innovation, and why Congress and the courts need to improve the system. If it wasn’t such a serious issue we might want to laugh at the irony of it all.
via The Official Rackspace Blog – Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay!.
In fact, GitHub is a perfect example of a company that is built to foster and enhance innovation. The GitHub repository service for software development projects has achieved legendary status among open source developers all over the world. GitHub has over 2.1 million users hosting over 3.7 million repositories. They are a paragon of innovation. Yet PersonalWeb has the audacity to file a lawsuit which alleges that “Rackspace Cloud Servers and GitHub Code Hosting Service” infringe some obscure patent from 1999 that has nothing to do with Rackspace and GitHub. Who is truly innovating here, PersonalWeb or Rackspace and GitHub?
Here‘s a list of their patents. My favorite:
8,099,420 Accessing Data In A Data Processing System
Startups and Patent Trolls by Colleen Chien
I find that although large companies tend to dominate patent headlines, most unique defendants to troll suits are small. Companies with less than $100M annual revenue represent at least 66% of unique defendants and 55% of unique defendants in PAE suits make under $10M per year. Suing small companies appears distinguish PAEs from operating companies, who sued companies with less than $10M per year of revenue only 16% of the time, based on unique defendants. Based on survey responses, the smaller the company, the more likely it was to report a significant operational impact. A large percentage of responders reported a “significant operational impact”: delayed hiring or achievement of another milestone, change in the product, a pivot in business strategy, shutting down a business line or the entire business, and/or lost valuation. To the extent patent demands tax innovation, then, they appear to do so regressively, with small companies targeted more as unique defendants , and paying more in time, money and operational impact, relative to their size, than large firms.
University of California Sues Facebook And Others Over Patents
The Regents of the University of California and its lawsuit-happy patent licensee Eolas Technologies yesterday filed lawsuits against Facebook, Disney and Wal-Mart over four interactive technology patents they believe the companies are infringing.
via University of California Sues Facebook And Others Over Patents.
However, two of the patents cited in the new lawsuits were declared invalid in February 2012 by a Texas jury in a separate lawsuit, which targeted Amazon, Apple, Google, Yahoo and others.
At the time, Wired headlines its report on the invalidation thusly: “Texas Jury Strikes Down Patent Troll’s Claim to Own the Interactive Web”.
Groupon Sued With LivingSocial Over Mobile Ad Patent
XcellaSave Inc. is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages from Chicago-based Groupon and Washington-based LivingSocial, according to two lawsuits filed yesterday in federal court in Delaware.
via Groupon Sued With LivingSocial Over Mobile Ad Patent – Bloomberg.
As if Groupon doesn’t have enough problems.
Update: I missed this on August 1 from Techcrunch.
Verdict Overturned in Favor of Research In Motion in Mformation Patent Case
After considering motions presented by both parties, as well as the jury verdict (which was announced by RIM on July 14, 2012), the Judge determined that RIM had not infringed on Mformation’s patent. In granting RIM’s motion, the Judge also vacated the $147.2 million jury award, which means that RIM is not required to make any payment to Mformation. Mformation has the right to appeal the Judge’s ruling; however if Mformation successfully appeals the ruling, the jury verdict would not be reinstated and instead a new trial would occur.
via Verdict Overturned in Favor of Research In Motion in Mformation Patent Case – MarketWatch.
Troll sues Facebook, Amazon and others for using Hadoop
Big data has become the latest front for the patent troll epidemic as a shell company is suing firms for using a common open-source storage framework known as the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).
via Troll sues Facebook, Amazon and others for using Hadoop — Tech News and Analysis.
Hadoop has been built by a large network of contributors, including individual developers and large companies like Yahoo and is an Apache Software Foundation project. HDFS, its storage component, was based on Google’s Google File System. Parallel Iron’s patent complaints, however, say the whole system was made possible by four men:
EMG Technology Sues Google for Infringing Its Mobile Device Patent
Elliot A. Gottfurcht, Managing Member and lead inventor of EMG’s patent portfolio, explains, “Google’s Chrome Mobile Browser directly infringes the ‘196 patent by displaying mobile webpages on smart phones and tablets using EMG’s patented simplified navigation system, which permits users to navigate a touch screen with unique inputs and to manipulate the screen for zooming and scrolling. Mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, made by Motorola (which is owned by Google) and Samsung, use Google’s Chrome Mobile Browser to navigate mobile web sites using EMG’s patented simplified navigation system.”
via EMG Technology Sues Google for Infringing Its Mobile Device Patent – MarketWatch.
“Defensive Patent License” created to protect innovators from trolls
The pledge might help Twitter attract ethical engineers, but ultimately it’s just one company taking a stand among a sea of litigators that are happy to prevent the sale of competitors’ products or extract licensing fees. A potentially more ambitious project called the “Defensive Patent License” aims to take the same basic idea practiced by Twitter and spread it across a big part of the technology industry.
via “Defensive Patent License” created to protect innovators from trolls | Ars Technica.
The commitment is both daunting in that it requires submitting all of a member company’s patents to the pool, and forgiving in that members can still sue the pants off non-members. Schultz said his team thought long and hard about the exact implementation of the Defensive Patent License.
Oracle Sues Lodsys!
The constellations have shifted again. Oracle has just sued Lodsys, seeking to invalidate four of its patents. The complaint actually claims noninfringement and invalidity.
via Groklaw – Oracle Sues Lodsys! ~pj – Updated, Complaint as text.
It seems that Lodsys has been going after Oracle customers, and they in turn have been asking Oracle to indemnify them. Lodsys, methinks, has made a mistake. One doesn’t go after Oracle’s money. No. No. Never a good plan. I suspect Oracle will go for damages, tripled, and all their expenses, legal fees, etc. when this is over. That’s what that long list of prior art is saying to me, that it’s war. Also, note that DLA Piper US is also on the case. That’s another signal that Oracle intends to prevail, all other things being equal. When you have to add “US” to your law firm name, it’s because you are global. Here’s what DLA Piper says about itself: