Bonum Certa Men Certa

With Help From the US Supreme Court (Key Cases), Patent Trolls Are Going Away

Ebbing away from the market...

Inside a bottle



Summary: The demise of patent trolls in the United States, a trend partly attributable to Alice and other Supreme Court decisions, will likely accelerate soon (later this year) as the future of the Eastern District of Texas courts is at stake

THE US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is doing some fine job in the area of patents. We hope that Justice nominations by Trump won't ruin it all.



On December 6th the EFF's Daniel Nazer said that "Supreme Court Curb[ed] Excessive Design Patent Damages" and a week later, on December 14th, his colleague Vera Ranieri said that the "Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case that Could End Texas’ Grip on Patent Cases". We wrote several articles about that before. This is very big news and the decision can be historic. In an IDG article by Evan Schuman it said:

For years, patent trolls have been the best evidence that pure evil exists. And like most evil entities, they are almost impossible to stop. Even a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision that was highly critical of patent trolls has done little to slow their slimy, reptilian-like existence. But a federal judge on Dec. 19 crafted a novel tactic to curb patent trolls when she slapped a half-million-dollar bill on the lawyers and said that they were personally responsible for paying it, not their client. This could truly be a game-changer.


This is well overdue, as it will help real companies in the US. Patent trolls contribute nothing to the economy or to competitiveness.

In past years we wrote about all sorts of patent trolls and abusers, including Garfum last year (more than once). The EFF posted an update about this serial abuser, which is politely called just a "Patent Bully":

District Court Undoes Fee Award Against Patent Bully



A district court judge has issued a disappointing ruling reversing an earlier decision to require an abusive patent litigant to pay an EFF client’s attorney’s fees. Judge Jerome Simandle of the District Court of New Jersey held that, even thought the patent was invalid, the relevant law was too uncertain to find the case exceptional and award fees.

This case began in late 2014 when Garfum.com Corporation sued a small photography website called Bytephoto.com for patent infringement. Garfum claimed to own the idea of having a ‘vote for the best’ competition, but on the Internet. The case had a lot of problems. For one thing, Garfum had filed for its patent in 2007 but Bytephoto had been running online photo competitions since 2003. Also, its absurd patent, U.S. Patent No. 8,209,618, was plainly invalid under the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank, which holds that abstract ideas do not become patent eligible simply by being implemented on a generic computer or on the Internet.


As the above update serves to reveal, Alice among other factors already contribute to the demise of some abusive activity. Suffice to say, to trolls-funded sites such as IAM 'magazine' this is terrible news to be protested rather than celebrated. Only last night, for instance, IAM was again grooming the world’s latest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, as it did several times before.

To quote this new propagandistic masterpiece:

Two of the biggest names in the IP market have joined forces. Intellectual Ventures co-founder and former VP of patent licensing, strategy and litigation at Intel, Peter Detkin, has today become a senior adviser at Sherpa Technology Group, the strategic IP consultancy among whose managing partners is Rembrandts in the Attic author Kevin Rivette. Sherpa was previously known as 3LP Advisors.


Calling them "biggest names in the IP market" is like calling ISIS and Al-Shabaab "biggest names in the political market." Then again, when you speak for the patent microcosm -- much like the media industry that speaks for the military-industrial complex -- war-makers are framed as heroes and champions.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Register Bill
The Register MS - putting the "MS" in your centre of the universe
Analogies for "Memory Safety" in Rust
Don't worry, it's Rust! It can do anything!
 
Microsoft Sites Now Talking About September's Mass Layoffs at Microsoft
It's noteworthy that even Microsoft's MSN now covers the latest revelations about mass layoffs
Gemini Links 06/09/2025: SpellBinding Moving and "The Cloud" Ridiculed
Links for the day
Slopwatch: On "the Apology Industry", Chatbots (Punchbag for Customers), and Fake Articles About "Linux"
"news reporting priorities changed"
Links 06/09/2025: "Covid Incidence on the Rise" and Many Attacks on the Press Worldwide
Links for the day
Nobody Denies That SecureBoot Will Cause Problems After September 11
Not even Microsoft
Gemini Links 06/09/2025: Infinite Scrolling and Posting from Emacs
Links for the day
Links 06/09/2025: GitHub Meltdown Over Slop, "U.S. Jury Says Google Should Pay $425 Million in Privacy Lawsuit"
Links for the day
Despite Its Severe Financial Problems Gnome Foundation Inc Paid Rosanna Yuen Over 100,000 Dollars Last Year
maybe relocation should be considered
The "Left" and the Right"
It poisons everything
Mozilla and Rust Are Not Leftists
they're part of the mass consumerism machine
Disposable to Microsoft
There is an extensive set of people who got used by Microsoft, only to be thrown away a month later or a year later or a decade later
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VII - This Coming Week Many PCs Will Refuse to Boot "Linux" (Because of Microsoft's Expired Certificate)
The real solution is, disable "secure boot" or "SecureBoot" while it's still possible. [...] Just like submarine patents, a lot of this problem was "hibernating" for a while
The Thing Nobody in Red Hat Wants to Talk About Openly
There is a real sentiment or worry among Red Hatters, Europeans and Americans in particulars (because of higher salary expectations)
Slopwatch: Small Parade of Fake News About "Linux" and Scams Borrowing the Name (or Word) "Linux"
In practice, LLMs are a risk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 05, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 05, 2025
Genini Links 05/09/2025: Community, ROOPHLOCH, and PITkit
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Vaccine Sceptics Poison the Well, Two Exploited Vulnerabilities Patched in Android
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/09/2025: Logitech Lift and DIY Gemini Servers
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Sainsbury's Caught Spying on In-Store Shoppers and Microsoft "OpenAI is Using Legal Threats to Harass its Critics"
Links for the day
BASIC Predates Microsoft by Over a Decade, Microsoft-Controlled Sites Like The Register MS Don't Want You to Know This
The state of the media is really bad when it relies a lot on oligarchs' money and is appointing editors who are working for oligarchs
Brian Kernighan, "Only Third to Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson" (UNIX), Agreed With Someone Who Said Rust Was Just Hype, Should Not Replace C
17 hours ago
Reminder: Microsoft's "Secure Boot" Certificate for "Linux" Will be Expired in One Week
Many PCs won't manage to 'rotate' to another certificate
"Many of the Red Hat Employees Are Still Looking for Work"
Shame on IBM's CEO
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 04, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 04, 2025
Microsoft Started With Code Literally From The Trash, Nothing Has Improved Since
The reality is, there are systems and code that are reliable. But they're not Microsoft's.
Hypothesis That New McKinsey/Microsoft Executive Inside Red Hat Will Outsource Research and Development Operations to India (Like They Do in IBM)
IBM is floundering
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Means of Production and Rusting Out
Links for the day
Links 04/09/2025: Science, Hardware, and Eyes on China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Digital Minimalism and Social Control Media
Links for the day
IBM's GNU/Linux Divestment, Based on Hard But Anecdotal Evidence (IBM Fails to Recognise How Much Money It Made and Can Still Make From "Linux")
Love us or hate us, a lot of what we've been saying about Red Hat under IBM turns out to be rather accurate
Links 04/09/2025: Massive Microsoft Staff Cuts (Barely Reported), "Strange Conspiracy Theory Is Reportedly Spreading Inside OpenAI"
Links for the day
Activists Can Win, But Keep an Eye on the Ball and on the Trophy
GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
Links for the day
At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 03, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VI - This Serious Harm Was Planned for Over a Decade, Not an Accident or Merely Some Misfortune
The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
GNOME Unfit for Diversity and Inclusion
GNOME's leadership is using "bad words"
Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News