THE legal terrain in the US has become trolls-hostile, as we last noted yesterday. Having run short of opportunities in the gradually-reformed US (especially the courts, not the USPTO), some patent trolls now look at China for litigation opportunities. That includes iPEL, an unethical troll which calls itself "ethical" and even trademarked this term ("ethical NPE").
"That includes iPEL, an unethical troll which calls itself "ethical" and even trademarked this term ("ethical NPE")."Joff Wild and his colleagues/writers/lobbying team have been doing puff pieces for iPEL, e.g. [1, 2]; the matter of fact is that almost nobody else writes about it and they speak directly to the troll, issuing puff pieces (and threats) every week or so. Yesterday's latest puff piece was about "game-changing patent case" and by "game" they mean "trolling". To quote:
After all, $100 million of damages from one company indicates that there is considerable further upside in the wider industry or sector the patents cover. To hand over the ability to tap that amount of revenue for anything other than a huge sum of money would be extremely careless – to say the least. From what I know of the likes of Huawei, ZTE and others that iPEL has bought from, such as Panasonic, it’s hard to see them doing such a thing.
Although Yates has been a long-time player in the US monetisation [trolling] market – and filed over 500 suits during 2015 and 2016, before falling foul of Judge Gilstrap in the Eastern District of Texas last year – he does not seem to have done much work in China up to now. It is likely, though, that he has done plenty of research and spoken to a lot of people. They would surely have told him that discretion is the better part of valour in a jurisdiction that, although it generally treats plaintiffs well, is increasingly complex and political.
"We cannot stress strongly enough that media covering patent issues is in an appalling state. It's almost entirely PR; there's barely any investigative, critical journalism in this domain."Patent Docs is another mouthpiece of patent maximalists' agenda. Webinars from the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) and other proponents of software patents are still being advertised there this weekend (coming soon). It's quite fitting that patent lawyers nowadays use the term "unclean hands" (brought up a lot recently). Webinars like this upcoming one deal with questions such as: "How will Supplemental Examination effect both unclean hands and inequitiable conduct?"
We cannot stress strongly enough that media covering patent issues is in an appalling state. It's almost entirely PR; there's barely any investigative, critical journalism in this domain. In the case of IAM, it's borderline lobbying, pure and simple. ⬆