THE epidemic of patent trolls in the US has slowed down and suffered some blows in recent years (TC Heartland being more recent and pretty major because it's a SCOTUS ruling). But the epidemic or this plague isn't a done deal. It's not over yet.
"This is Iancu speaking about patents amassed not only by the millions (in the US alone) but as much as 10 million, with the majority of these granted in recent decades when the system lost sight of its original goal/s."Trump-appointed (likely due to nepotism) USPTO "Director Andrei Iancu lauds risk takers, calls patent troll narrative ‘Orwellian doublespeak’," Watchtoll wrote in yesterday's headline, which sort of quote-mines a speech to the patent microcosm in which he also said: "This is 10 million patents in just over 200 years. And this is not just a number. Though sure enough, 10 million is a nice, round number. But more importantly, 10 million is the accumulation of creativity of such magnitude and concentration the likes of which humanity has never seen."
This is Iancu speaking about patents amassed not only by the millions (in the US alone) but as much as 10 million, with the majority of these granted in recent decades when the system lost sight of its original goal/s. "10 million is the accumulation of creativity of such magnitude and concentration the likes of which humanity has never seen," says a lawyer. Actually, a patent represents monopoly, not necessarily innovation and creativity (which as a lawyer he cannot recognise).
Either way, the above statement demonstrates that the current Director -- unlike his predecessor -- has no problem with trolls. Like Watchtroll, he refuses to recognise that they exist or that they're a problem.
Let's remember that Iancu is not a judge, however, so the more he deviates from what courts are saying (or keep saying), the steeper the decline in US patent certainty and therefore the value of pertinent US patents.
The EFF meanwhile presses on with its fight against patent trolls, having just mentioned AlphaCap again.
Daniel Nazer calls them "Patent troll AlphaCap Ventures" (mentioned here before several times last year) in yesterday's post of his at the EFF's Web site. To quote:
Patent trolls know that it costs a lot of money to defend a patent case. The high cost of defensive litigation means that defendants are pressured to settle even if the patent is invalid. Fee awards can change this calculus and give defendants a chance to fight back against weak claims. A recent decision [PDF] from the Federal Circuit has overturned a fee award in a case involving an abstract software patent on crowdsourcing. This disappointing ruling may encourage other patent trolls to file meritless cases.
Patent troll AlphaCap Ventures claimed that its patent covered various forms of online equity financing. It filed suit against ten different crowdfunding platforms. Most of the defendants settled quickly. But one defendant, Gust, fought back. After nearly two years of litigation in both the Eastern District of Texas and the Southern District of New York, AlphaCap Ventures dismissed its claim against Gust. The judge in the Southern District of New York ruled that AlphaCap Ventures’ attorneys had litigated unreasonably and ordered them to pay Gust’s attorneys’ fees. Those lawyers then appealed.
On October 17, 2018, the Board issued an order terminating IPR2017-01467 pursuant to a joint settlement request filed by Unified Patents and Global Equity Management (SA) Pty. Ltd. ("GEMSA") (an NPE). U.S. Patent 6,690,400, directed to a graphical user interface (GUI) displaying graphics representing various partitioned storage devices in a computer, has been asserted in multiple district court cases, 35 of which were pending at the time of settlement.
On October 18, 2018, Unified added a $1,000 contest to PATROLL seeking prior art for US Patent No. 9928044, the latest patent asserted in a wave of litigation filed by Express Mobile Inc. (an NPE). The '044 patent generally relates to a method and system for displaying a website on a mobile device. The contest will expire on January 18, 2019.
On October 15, 2018, Unified added a $2,000 contest to PATROLL seeking prior art for US Patent No. 6470345, owned and asserted by Uniloc USA, a well-known NPE. The '345 patent, titled "Replacement of substrings in file/directory pathnames with numeric tokens," generally relates to a system and method for a file directory system. The contest will expire on January 14, 2019.
Granted to Hewlett-Packard Development Company in 2013, U.S. Patent No. 8,539,552 for a "System and method for network based policy enforcement of intelligent-client features" details techniques for controlling services in packet-based networks. Described in the IP's main claims are methods for messaging policy enforcement including signaling, authentication and routing to correct services based on stored information.
The patent in question, AppleInsider reports, covers intelligent-client features in IP telephony networks and more specifically relates to how a pair of devices can communicate with one another on a packet-based network.