03.01.10
Patent Trolls Got Guns!
Summary: Patent trolls (or their feeders) have got guns, based on this latest shocking story
A FEW months ago there were many headlines about US bankers carrying guns. We included many links about it (in Daily Links).
For those who do not remember Patent Troll Tracker (real name Richard Frenkel [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]), he was dragged into court by patent trolls and/or those who represented them as they looted the nation, Frenkel’s employers included.
Watch who gets arrested. It’s Gregory Girard.
The inventor who holds the patent that was at the heart of two libel lawsuits against “Patent Troll Tracker” blogger Rick Frenkel and Cisco Systems was arrested last week, after police found an illegal stockpile of firearms, ammunition, and grenades in his home in Manchester, Mass., about 30 miles from Boston.
Gregory Girard, named inventor on U.S. Patent No. 7,283,519, believed he was readying himself for “Armageddon,” according to police. In addition to having around 20 firearms, Girard was stockpiling food and medicine, camouflage, and body armor, and had built an indoor shooting range in the attic of his condominium, according to accounts of the arrest in the Gloucester Daily Times and the Boston Globe. Girard had a license for the guns, but his explosives, double-edged knives, and habit of shooting indoors are all illegal.
[...]
Greg Girard did come up at the libel trial — but not as an Armageddon-fearing weapons hoarder. Instead, ESN’s lawyers praised Girard as a brilliant individual inventor — the cornerstone of American innovation. George McAndrews, a founding partner of McAndrews, Held & Malloy and one of the lawyers representing ESN in the suit against Cisco, praised Girard in a letter to Cisco general counsel Mark Chandler: “Mr. Girard is exactly what the founding fathers had in mind when they penned the Patent Clause in the basic Article I of the U.S. Constitution.” Frenkel’s use of the term “Patent Troll” to describe ESN was “outrageous,” wrote McAndrews. “Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, both individual inventors like Mr. Girard, were also not manufacturers in the traditional sense,” the letter said. “To call Mr. Girard and his company ‘Patent Trolls’ and to accuse him and his legal counsel of criminal activity is irresponsible, unfair and defamatory.”
This is also covered in:
- Patent Litigation Weekly: Inventor from ESN v. Cisco and Troll Tracker Lawsuits Arrested on Weapons Charges
- Police say man was preparing for Armageddon
- Inventor Involved In Patent Troll Tracker Lawsuit Arrested For Weapons Stockpiling
Well, it’s not the type of story one finds every day. █
Robotron 2084 said,
March 1, 2010 at 12:55 pm
So, just one person that Roy would define as a “Patent Troll” was arrested for possession of illegal weapons…. yet the headline reads: “Patent Trolls Got Guns!”
Suppose a black man is arrested for stealing a hot air balloon. Would it then be appropriate for a local newspaper to say, “Black men love stealing balloons!”? Of course not. It’s racist and factually incorrect. Roy’s headline isn’t racist, but we can see a similar style of poisonous thinking at work in this headline. A person Roy doesn’t like did something wrong, so now he’ll portray them all as being part of the same crime. Racists would do exactly the same thing. Hate is hate, no matter if it’s for a race of people or any group who’s ideas, values, or behavior run counter to that of the bigot.