Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Trolls in the United States Increasingly Target Small Businesses Which Cannot Challenge Their Likely-Invalid Software Patents

Most of the patent 'assertion' (shakedown) activity never becomes visible to the press/public

SXSW on Patent Trolls



Summary: South by Southwest (SXSW Conference/Festivals in Austin, Texas) has a presentation about patent trolls, whose general message may be reaffirmed by recent legal actions in Texas and outside Texas

THE reforms leading to stricter examination at the USPTO (it's a lot harder to get software patents these days, let alone enforce them) has paid off for large companies. They very often beat trolls in court. That in its own right is a deterrent. But what happens when these trolls manage to avoid the courts and even PTAB altogether?



There's this new presentation this week (yesterday) that notes the following. Slide 16 says:

A shift in troll activity?



From high-profile cases against large entities with large damage demands…

… to large numbers of low-profile letters and lawsuits against small/medium size companies more likely to settle for nuisance value.

Still within the top three issues for startups.


Why did this new presentation (from a law firm together with Engine presenting some data) titled "The Persistence of Patent Trolls in Tech" get twisted (by patent maximalists) as "Is There Still a Patent Troll Problem"? They continue to attempt to deny that there is a problem because they themselves are connected to patent trolls.

Earlier today we found this new report about fraudulent lawsuits:

A New Jersey sports memorabilia dealer on Friday asked a federal judge for attorneys’ fees as sanctions following the Federal Circuit’s ruling that a payment processor’s suit seeking a declaration it didn’t infringe the dealer’s purported interactive software patents was frivolous.

In a motion, Eric Inselberg and his company, Inselberg Interactive LLC, said payments processor First Data Corp.’s unsuccessful action was filed in bad faith because Inselberg didn’t even own the patents at issue...


It is far from the first time we see this being done; we covered more such examples as recently as a couple of months back. Should it not be considered a crime (such as blackmail) to assert rights that you know you don't have?

There are other new stories this week, as well as old ones such as Watchtroll covering one week late how InterDigital bought Technicolor's patents on the cheap.

The Texas-based Portal Communications sued Apple in the Eastern District of Texas. Looks like a patent troll to us, having covered it over the weekend, based on an Apple advocacy site. Here's WIPR's coverage, which frames this as a 'monetisation' effort (a technical person passing the patents to a litigation front):

The three patents, US numbers 7,376,645; 7,873,654; and 8,150,872, are all called “Multimodal natural language query system and architecture for processing voice and proximity-based queries”.

According to the claim, the patents were developed by inventor Dave Bernard and were assigned to Portal Communications.


Why isn't Bernard himself suing? It seems to have become so common to just sue through shells, some of which don't even have an office, just some registration somewhere (typically LLC). There's another lawsuit against Apple in the headlines, such as ParkerVision, Inc. v Apple Inc. et al in Docket Navigator. Yesterday it wrote about litigation-friendly places/venues (such as the Eastern District of Texas above) being dodged by defendants. After TC Heartland businesses will likely decide to abandon presence in venues that sought to attract patent trolls. As the Docket Report put it:

The court overruled defendant's objection to the magistrate judge's recommendation to deny its motion to transfer for improper venue because defendant had a regular and established place of business in the district through its office that closed a few weeks before plaintiff filed suit.


It's worth noting that the above case isn't in Texas, which already lost more than half of its 'share' in lawsuits (right after TC Heartland). States that harbour trolls will soon discover that they also repel actual companies which employ locals; more so after TC Heartland. Better fix/amend their state policies?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Stop Begging Companies That Don't Value Your Freedom to Stop Pushing You Around
That's not freedom
The forbidden topics
There are forbidden topics in the hacker community
Curation and Preservation Work
The winter is coming soon and this means our anniversary is near
 
They Say Free Software is Like Communism When They, the Proprietary Software Giants, Constantly Pursue Government Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
At the moment Ukraine is at most risk due to its dependence on Microsoft (inside its infrastructure)
Social Control Media Has No Future, It Was Always Doomed to Fail (Also Promoted Based on Lies)
Recent events, including developments at Twitter, meant that they lost a lot of their audience and then, in turn, sponsors/advertisers
Proprietary Software: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Proprietary software has an entirely different mindset, revolving around business models rather than science
They're Been Trying to 'Kill' Richard Stallman for Years (by Mentally Tormenting Him)
Malicious tongue wanted to do him what had been done to Julian Assange
We Temporarily Have Two Gemini Capsules
They're both authentic and secure, but they're not the same
Consumerism is Lying and Revisionism
We need to reject these liars and charlatans
Links 30/09/2023: Open VFS Framework, CrossOver 23.5, Dianne Feinstein Dies
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
GNU/Linux, Microsoft, and more
Microsoft Down on the World Wide Web, Shows Survey
down by a lot in this category
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 29, 2023
IRC logs for Friday, September 29, 2023
A Society That Fails Journalists Does Not Deserve Journalism
It's probably too later to save Julian Assange as a working publisher (he might never recover from the mental torture), but as a person and a father we can wish and work towards his release
Almost Nothing To Go With Your Morning's Cup Of Coffee
Newspaper? What newspaper?
A Lot of Technological 'Progress' Has Been Nothing But Buzzwords
Free software does not try to excite people people over nothing
Techrights Was Right About the Chaff Bots (They Failed to Live up to Their Promise)
Those who have been paying attention to news of substance rather than fashionable "tech trends" probably know that GNU/Linux grew a lot this year
Selling Out to Microsoft Makes You Dead Beef
If all goes as well as we've envisioned, Microsoft will get smaller and smaller
Mobile Phones Aren't Your Friend or a Gateway to Truly Social Life
Newer should not always seem more seductive, as novelty is by default questionable and debatable
Links 29/09/2023: Disinformation and Monopolies
Links for the day
iFixit Requests DMCA Exemption…To Figure Out How To Repair McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Jim Zemlin Thinks the World's Largest Software Company Has 200 Staff, Many of Whom Not Technical at All
biggest ego in the world
Microsoft GitHub Exposé — In the Alex Graveley Case, His Lawyer, Rick Cofer, Appears to Have Bribed the DA to Keep Graveley (and Others) Out of Prison
Is this how one gets out of prison? Hire the person who bribes the DA?
Richard Stallman's Public Talk in GNU's 40th Anniversary Ceremony
Out now
Links 29/09/2023: Linux Foundation Boasting, QLite FDW 2.4.0 Released
Links for the day
Red Hat Does Not Understand Community and It's Publicly Promoting Microsoft's Gartner
RedHat.com is basically lioning a firm that has long been attacking GNU/Linux in the private and public sectors at the behest of Microsoft
A 'Code of Conduct' Typically Promoted by Criminal Corporations to Protect Crimes From Scrutiny
We saw this in action last week
Objections to binutils CoC
LXO response to proposed Code of Conduct
Conde Nast (Reddit), Which Endlessly Defamed Richard Stallman and Had Paid Salaries to Microsoft-Connected Pedophiles, Says You Must Be Over 18 to See 'Stallman Was Right'
Does this get in the way of their Bill Gates-sponsored "Bill Gates says" programme/schedule?
Techrights Extends Wishes of Good Health to Richard M. Stallman
Richard Stallman has cancer
endsoftwarepatents.org Still Going, Some Good News From Canada
a blow to software patents in Canada
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 28, 2023
IRC logs for Thursday, September 28, 2023
Links 28/09/2023: Openwashing and Patent Spam as 'News'
Links for the day
Links 28/09/2023: Preparing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 and 9.3 Beta
Links for the day
We Need to Liberate the Client Side and Userspace Too
Lots of work remains to be done
Recent IRC Logs (Since Site Upgrade)
better late than never
Techrights Videos Will be Back Soon
We want do publish video without any of the underlying complexity and this means changing some code
Microsoft is Faking Its Financial Performance, Buying Companies Helps Perpetuate the Big Lies (or Pass the Debt Around)
Our guess is that Microsoft will keep pretending to be huge, even as the market share of Windows (and other things) continues to decrease
Techrights Will Tell the Story (Until Next Year!) of How Since 2022 It Has Been Under a Coordinated Attack by a Horde of Vandals and Nutcases
People like these belong in handcuffs and behind bars (sometimes they are) and our readers still deserve to know the full story. It's a cautionary tale for other groups and sites
Why It Became Essential to Split GNU/Linux Stories from the Rest
These sites aren't babies anymore. In terms of age, they're already adults.
Losses and Gains in an Age of Oligarchy - A Techrights Perspective
If you don't even try to fix something, there's not even a chance it'll get fixed
Google (and the Likes Of It) Will Cause Catastrophic Information Loss Rather Than Organise the World's Information
Informational and cultural losses due to technological plunder
Links 28/09/2023: GNOME 45 Release Party, 'Smart' Homes Orphaned
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
Xen, breaches, and more
GNOME Console Won’t Support Color Palettes or Profiles; Will Support Esperanto
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer