Bonum Certa Men Certa

Allergan Collapses After Its Patent “Scam” Goes Awry and the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe Receives Negative Publicity for Abetting

Troller

Allergan logo



Summary: The Mohawk 'brand' is being tarnished by a bunch of lawyers (or mainly one lawyer) who would rather prop up conspiracy theories of the patent trolls' lobby for a quick buck

THE bad news about the EPO and the relatively good news about the USPTO (gradually phasing out software patents) aside, we have a quick update on the Allergan “scam” (the word widely used to describe gross misuse of immunity). We last wrote about it a week ago.

The Mohawk Tribe now floats ridiculous conspiracy theories to distract from the fact it participates in a scam. The patent microcosm seems rather supportive, writing for example that "the Tribe has sought discovery on the Board’s expanded panel practice as well as its internal policy deliberations on sovereign immunity." The patent microcosm always attempts to scandalise PTAB because it wants PTAB abolished.

In the meantime, having recently lost a major lawsuit, Allergan is imploding:
Allergan will eliminate about 5.5 percent of its workforce as part of a cost-cutting move while it prepares for generic competition on several lucrative drugs.

The company will cut 1,000 jobs and leave another 400 open positions unfilled. The Dublin-based company has about 18,000 employees.


There's more on the way. It's the tip of the iceberg as more bad news got reported lately.

Watch what the patent trolls' lobby wrote the other day:

The 2017 patent story of the year took another turn shortly before Christmas when an expanded panel at the PTAB ruled that the University of Minnesota could not use sovereign immunity to shield its patents in a dispute with Ericsson. That’s because, the Board said, the University waived its sovereign immunity by asserting one of its patent against the Swedish company, which Ericsson then sought to challenge in inter partes review (IPR). The panel did confirm that state entities were immune from IPR - just not when they launch an assertion.

That case did not directly involve the Saint Regis Mohawks, the Native American tribe which catapulted the issue of sovereign immunity and IPRs into the mainstream when it was paid millions to take ownership of a number of Allergan drug patents, but the tribe’s lawyers were quick to ratchet up their own dispute when they filed a motion with the PTAB asking for information on the judges covering their case such as how they’re compensated and requesting recent performance reviews. With constraints being placed on how sovereign immunity can be used in relation to IPR, the tribe has clearly decided to come out fighting; though yesterday, the board responded by forbidding the Mohawks from filing further, similar requests.
And then there's this from the patent microcosm:

Earlier this week I discussed the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe’s discovery request directed to the Board’s internal practices, personnel policies, and communications; yesterday, the Board responded. In a strongly worded Order, the Board pointed out the impropriety of the Tribe’s filing and its repeated disregard for the Board’s rules.
So the Mohawk 'brand' is now in alliance with the patent trolls' lobby. They just try to shoot the messenger, having lost the ability to defend misuse of tribal immunity. So much for a charm offensive... Kevin E. Noonan, another part of the patent microcosm, seems happy that this tribe has gone 'full Brietbart' to deny (to itself) that it willingly participates in a patent scam:

The creation of adversarial procedures before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (post-grant review, inter partes review, and covered business methods review) has raised a number of issues arising from the differences between Article I agencies (and the courts created therein and governed by the Administrative Procedures Act; 5 U.S.C. § 554) and Article III courts. Some of these stem from the nature of the two types of courts (with the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court noting these differences somewhat acerbically in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene's Energy Group, LLC, to whit "we usually mean something different when we use the word 'judge"'), and some from legitimate differences between the goals of the two types of tribunals.
Josh Landau from the CCIA wrote a response to this. The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe still seems unable to accept that it willingly participates in a patent scam:

2018 started off with a sovereign immunity bang, with the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe filing a motion that implicitly suggests that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) would only rule against them due to financial self-interest and political pressure.

[...]

The Saint Regis Tribe’s request asks for information about how judges are financially compensated, asks for copies of the performance reviews of the judges deciding their case, and effectively accuses the PTAB of conducting off-record ex parte conversations about the case, while providing no evidence of any such conversations. The obvious implication is that the Tribe is asserting that the PTAB behaved improperly.

People who make a living complaining about IPR occasionally accuse the PTAB of “stacking panels”—of putting additional judges onto a PTAB decision in order to rule against a company they don’t like. It even came up during the Oil States argument, although it doesn’t appear to have been considered particularly important there. The Saint Regis Tribe appears to be buying into this conspiracy theory, and getting ready to litigate it.

The reality, unsurprisingly, is that those complaints are baseless. The PTAB does expand panels on occasion, but they do it for very specific reasons—and those reasons are hardly secret. The PTAB expands panels to ensure that important questions (like, for example, if sovereign immunity applies to IPR) are decided by a panel that includes the most senior PTAB judges, and to ensure that panels apply the law properly in instances where some members of the original panel appear to be applying the law improperly.


We wrote about this bogus 'scandal' last year. It was being spread by sites like Watchtroll, whose strong anti-PTAB bias we'll address in our next post.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
 
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME is Worse Today (in 2023) Than When I Did GTK Development 20+ Years Ago
To me it seems like GNOME is moving backward, not forward, mostly removing features and functionality rather than adding any
HowTos Are Moving to Tux Machines
HowTos (or howtos) are very important in their own right, but they can easily distract from the news and howtos are usually quite timeless or time-insensitive
Proprietary Panda: Don't Be Misled by the Innocent Looks of Ubuntu (and Microsoft Canonical)
Given the number of disgruntled employees who leave Canonical and given Ubuntu's trend of just copying whatever IBM does in Fedora, is there still a good reason to choose Ubuntu?
Debian GNU/Linux is a Fine Operating System, But What if People Die Making It for Somebody's Corporate/Personal Gain?
Will companies that exploited unpaid volunteers ever be held accountable for loss of life, caused by burnout, excessive work, or poverty?
Links 24/09/2023: 5 Days' Worth of News (Catchup)
Links for the day
Leftover Links 24/09/2023: Russia, COVID, and More
Links for the day
Forty Years of GNU and the Free Software Movement
by FSF
Gemini and Web in Tandem
We're already learning, over IRC, that out new site is fully compatible with simple command line- and ncurses-based Web browsers. Failing that, there's Gemini.
Red Hat Pretends to Have "Community Commitment to Open Source" While Scuttling the Fedora Community (Among Others)
RHEL is becoming more proprietary over time and community seems to boil down to unpaid volunteers (at least that's how IBM see the "community")
IBM Neglecting Users of GNU/Linux on Laptops and Desktops
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Personal Identification on the 'Modern' Net
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Not Your Daily Driver: Don't Build With Rust or Adopt Rust-based Software If You Value Long-Term Reliance
Rust is a whole bunch of hype.
The Future of the Web is Not the Web
The supposedly "modern" stuff ought to occupy some other protocol, maybe "app://"
YouTube Has Just Become Even More Sinister
The way Google has been treating the Web (and Web browsers) sheds a clue about future plans and prospects
Initial Announcement of GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix) on September 27, 1983
History matters
Upgrade and Migration Status
Git is working, IPFS is working, IRC is working, Gemini is working
Yesterday in the 'Sister Site', Tux Machines (10 More Stories)
Scope-wise, many stories fit neatly into both sites, but posting the same twice makes no sense logistically
The New Techrights Will be Much Faster
A prompt response to FUD is important. It's time-sensitive.
Slanderous Media Campaigns Trying to Link Linux to 'Backdoors'
Backdoors are typically things that exist by design or get added intentionally (ask Microsoft!), but when it comes to "Linux" in the media the rules are different
The Spamification of GNU/Linux News Sites (or the Web as a Whole) and Why It's Time to Move on, Writing More Stories and Analysis
If you are an enthusiastic Free software user, consider setting up a blog or GemLog (Gemini log)
Techrights is Upgrading
Over the next few days Techrights will be archiving over 40,000 older pages
YouTube Was Never Free Hosting and It Turns Hard-Working People Into Hostages
An accusation, with presumed guilt, seems sufficient for some
The Right to Strike Underutilised by Workers in the Technology Sector
Geeks need to learn how to strike, too.
Welcome to the New Techrights
Looking ahead, we'll probably produce more stories than before because lessening the underlying complexity lets us focus on substance
A Short History of Content Management Systems or Data Shuffles in Boycott Novell and Techrights
In 2006 the site was 'purely' WordPress
GNU Turns 40 This Coming Week
4 decades of "4 Freedoms" show the world that the original definition withstood the test of time