Bonum Certa Men Certa

With $2.5 Billion in Claimed (and Won) 'Damages' in One Single Patent Case of a Pharmaceutical Giant, Does the Patents for 'Small Guy' Myth Still Pass Muster?

Even the iconic light bulb invention is an epic example of corporate raiding (Thomas Edison, a famous patent troll-like personality, didn't invent it)

Hand idea



Summary: A look at a record-breaking patent decision where the winner denies affordable access to medicine and other new examples of large companies crushing small competitors (that are not patent trolls)

WHILE BILLIONAIRES' favourite media pushes a misleading narrative of "patents for the little guy" it is important to remind ourselves who runs the USPTO, who the USPTO works for, and who the USPTO speaks to (e.g. in consultations that are misleadingly called "roundtables" every once in a few years). Under Battistelli's autocracy the same thing has been happening at the EPO.



Days ago, not too long before Christmas, Professor Crouch said that "Merck’s sub Idenix was just awarded $2.54 billion for Gilead’s infringement of its Hep-C treatment patents. Asserted patents include Nos. 6,914,054, 7,105,499, 7,608,597, and 8,481,712.. D.Del. Case No.14-cv-00846-LPS. Merck announced that a patent right “guarantees a period of return on investment [and as such] patent protection provides the research-based pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries with an incentive to invest in research and development.”"

Will the money be pumped into R&D? Of course not. Merck is lying as usual (see our articles about Merck [1, 2, 3]). Does society benefit from the increased pricing? Obviously not. Those who benefit here are already-affluent shareholders and executives. "A Delaware jury has ordered Gilead Sciences to pay $2.54 billion in damages to Merck," MIP wrote. And what for? It's "for infringing a patent related to hepatitis C treatment." In other words, monopoly on potentially life-saving drugs. "It is the largest-ever patent damages award," MIP wrote.

Suffice to say, hepatitis C does not affect many people in rich countries.

Readers of ours, or readers of sites like IP Watch, will certainly understand what's wrong with this. It also serves to remind us who this patent system is for: billionaires. Not poor, ill, impoverished people.

Here is another new report that asks: "Are preliminary injunctions regarding patents in the drug, chemical and medical device industry more likely to succeed than PIs for other types of patents?"

For those who don't know what injunctions technically mean, a term like embargo might be more familiar. And who suffers? Or dies? Poor people of course.

Returning to the notion of "reasonable" patent tax, here we have Patently-O entertaining words like "fair", "reasonable" and "non-discriminatory", which are spurious euphemisms so often used to soften the image of reduction in access to medicine. To quote Patently-O:

A new draft paper by Professor Michael Risch (Un)Reasonable Royalties positions itself as a major reconsideration of the way that we calculate damages in patent cases. This revolution has been brewing in academic circles, but I expect the spillovers into case law will be coming soon. Over the past few years the Federal Circuit has pushed for more explicit discussion and explanation of damages. (See Lucent and Uniloc). However, Risch argues that the result has been a “piling” of “rigid rules” rather than economic rationality.


There should be ethical rationality, not just economic rationality, assuming that laws should be written for society as a whole, not just top wealth holders (or hoarders). Sadly, we still live in a world where copyright law and patent law are dominated by few conglomerates, to be used as tools of oppression or occupation against the population at large.

"Tile Tech had also destroyed evidence," said another new article from Patently-O, noting that some firms that are accused of patent infringement are now being treated like criminals (with forensic terminology). To quote:

United Construction was won on default judgment and was awarded a permanent injunction to bar Tile Tech from ongoing infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 8,302,356. Although Tile Tech had participated in the case, it had missed many discovery deadlines and had produced only two document – both of which were nonresponsive. The district court issued an order to comply with a warning that failure to comply would result in default judgment. Tile Tech did not respond to the order and the court then entered default judgment. (Tile Tech had also destroyed evidence …)


So from what we can gather, here we have another relatively small company being pushed around by a much bigger company. The only case where the smaller party is the plaintiff tends to be a classic troll case, where the plaintiff makes nothing at all and just tours the courts (or demands settlements out of court). Where are those mythical stories about little inventors (not patent trolls) 'sticking it' to Goliaths?

Recent Techrights' Posts

New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
 
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually