09.10.17

Microsoft-Connected Patent Troll Finjan is Now Threatening and Also Suing Firms From Europe

Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Patents at 8:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Although Finjan's lawsuits in the UK go back almost a decade ago

ESETSummary: ESET is apparently the latest target of Finjan’s extortion and blackmail campaign — a campaign which typically targets Microsoft’s competition

ESET, a Slovakian company, has just been sued by Finjan, a patent troll which we have been writing so much about and have just created a Wiki page for.

Finjan is nowadays busy ‘harvesting’ patents (buying them for extortion) and we wrote about it at least thrice last month [1, 2, 3]. Any patents granted by the EPO or the USPTO can end up on this troll’s lap.

The latest lawsuit from Finjan (it started suing quite a lot recently) targets yet another Microsoft competitor, this time ESET. Zuzana Hošalová is quoted in the English-speaking Slovakian media:

Eset is involved in disputes over patents for which it might pay up to €15.5 million, the Hospodárske noviny (HN) daily wrote on September 7. The lawsuits were submitted to the courts in the USA and Germany by the US company Finjan.

Such lawsuits are common under US jurisdiction, Eset’s spokesperson Zuzana Hošalová told HN, adding that Finjan sues nearly every important company active in the cyber security field. She refused to comment on the ongoing disputes. The US company questions the antivirus programmes that allegedly use their solutions protected by licences. One of the two suits, in which Finjan accuses Eset of violating six patents, was submitted to the Californian court in July 2016. The company extended the complaint last month, asking for compensation at €15 million for damages. In Germany, it is asking for €0.5 million.

Notice the part about Germany? German courts have quickly become an infestation zones for patent trolls. Thanks, Battistelli! █

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