Related: Ericsson Hired From the World's Largest Patent Troll and Became a Massive Troll in Europe

Summary: The demise of patent-asserting/patent assertion business models (trolling or enforcement by proxy) may see front groups/media supportive of it diminishing as well; this appears to be happening already

THE US Supreme Court did quite a lot in recent years in order to stave off patent maximalism. For that we are grateful. Last year it gave us TC Heartland, which is already having a profoundly positive effect.

Sites like IAM may soon ebb away. They're like lobbyists. Some sites like these already struggle (go silent or barely post anything new) because they rely on patent maximalism and trolls (which they promote).

"Sites like IAM may soon ebb away.""IP Bridge is the latest Japanese patent owner to join Avanci," IAM wrote some days ago, "as JPO continues to mull SEP guidelines" and here is the corresponding article. What the patent trolls' lobby (IAM) failed to say is that Avanci is a troll, headed by a person whom IAM recently crowned personality of 2017 (as gross as that notion may be). Here is what IAM wrote:

I recently caught up with IP Bridge executive vice president and CIPO Duke Ogata and we talked through the fund’s decision to throw its lot in with Kasim Alfalahi’s team, and how it fits into their long-term strategy. He was very clear about what signal the decision should send to the market, both inside Japan and outside: “IP Bridge has always tried to promote innovation in the Internet of Things. We don’t want to be an obstacle to spreading or disseminating IoT technologies. That was our motivation to join”.

"IoT" is just one of these buzzwords we mentioned earlier today; these are often a shallow mask for software patents.

"Companies like Ericsson, which essentially became patent trolls, are paying to mislead us all."Alfalahi has come from Ericsson, which now operates through several patent trolls. Here is that buzzword again: "The @LESIntl les Nouvelles Article of the Month is " #SMEs & Standard Essential #Patents: #Licensing Efficiency in #IoT (Internet of Things)," by Harris Tsilikas and Claudia Tapia. #LESGermany https://www.lesi.org/les-nouvelles/les-nouvelles-article-of-the-month …"

Claudia Tapia is Director IPR Policy at Ericsson and SEP is inherently anti-SME (or SME-hostile). Companies like Ericsson, which essentially became patent trolls, are paying to mislead us all. They know they cannot just attack everyone directly, so they operate through satellites and engage in patent stacking (a legal term describing exactly what they have been up to).

One well known satellite of Ericsson is now known as Unwired Planet (this troll used to be known as all sorts of other things, including Openwave). Here is a new article about TCL v Ericsson and its relevance to Unwired Planet, as explained some days ago by the patent microcosm:

The fourth US bench trial to determine a FRAND royalty is the first to use a top-down approach. It also has parallels to the UK’s Unwired Planet decision

Judge James Selna gave patent practitioners some holiday reading on December 21 when the public version of his fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) determination in TCL v Ericsson was released.

This is considered to be bad news. If Ericsson cannot pull off these tricks, perhaps nobody else can. Meanwhile, the number of articles and authors in the sites above has dropped; a large number of writers may already have left. That's certainly true when it comes to IAM. Our prediction is that they will become obsolete. ⬆