Bonum Certa Men Certa

Who's Obsessing Over Patent Trolls in Latest 'Reform' Efforts? Larger Patent Trolls Such as Xerox

Xerox logo



Summary: Response to claims that the patent problem is being tackled by focusing on patent trolls and their favourite courts in the Eastern District of Texas

TECHRIGHTS has consistently (over the course of several years) opposed the obsession with "patent trolls". The de facto usage of the term implies small firms without products, but in reality a lot of the same tactics are used by multinational companies such as Microsoft. The only difference is the number of products advertised on their sites (if any exist at all).



The other day the EFF said that "[w]e Need Venue Reform to Restore Fairness to Patent Litigation", citing a TV programme about the issue of patent trolls, not patent scope or anything like that. To quote the EFF: "Back in 2011, This American Life toured an office building in Marshall, Texas, and found eerie hallways of empty offices that serve as the ‘headquarters’ of patent trolls. For many, that was the first introduction to the strange world of the Eastern District of Texas, its outsized role in patent litigation and especially its effective support of the patent troll business model. Trolls love the Eastern District for its plaintiff-friendly rules, so they set up paper corporations in the district as an excuse to file suit there. Meanwhile, defendants find themselves dragged to a distant, inconvenient, and expensive forum that often has little or no connection to the dispute.

"The remote district’s role has only increased since 2011 The latest data reveals that the Eastern District of Texas is headed to a record year. An astonishing 1,387 patent cases were filed there in the first half of 2015. This was 44.4% of all patent cases nationwide. And almost all of this growth is fueled by patent trolls."

But that's far from the only issue.

An article by Joe Mullin, who specialises in patent trolls, says that "changes to patent law have made it easier to beat patent trolls, but it hasn't made the patent hotspot of East Texas any quieter. In fact, it's been in the news more. Massive numbers of patent troll suits continue to be filed there, and the judge who hears most of them has erected barriers to defendants seeking to have their cases disposed of early."

So it's obviously not working out. This whole kind of activism (or corporate lobbying) does nothing to eliminate the core issues, mostly addressed by SCOTUS for the time being (more on that in a later post).

Xerox, itself a patent troll by extension, is claimed to have just beaten a patent troll, MPHJ [1, 2, 3, 4]. To quote a lawyers' site, "Xerox Corp., Lexmark Corp. and Ricoh Americas Corp. won their bid to undo a so-called patent troll's patent for document scanning Wednesday when the Patent Trial and Appeals Board ruled eight of the invention’s claims unpatentable.

"Nonpracticing entity MPHJ Technology Investments LLC, once called a “patent troll” by Vermont’s attorney general, was unable to persuade the board that the claims in its patent didn’t just combine decades-old prior art, according to a decision handed down by PTAB."

It is so strange to see Xerox among the defendants here because Xerox itself has become a troll. ~100 Novell employees ended up working for Xerox after Fuji Xerox signed an early patent deal with Microsoft (involving Linux). Xerox now uses proxies to act as its own private patent trolls. Remember when the Microsoft-connected Acacia attacked Linux using Xerox patents (5,276,785 and 5,675,819)?

If spurious litigation (not just "patent trolls") is what we're seeking to combat, then we ought to look beyond the scope defined by large conglomerates with an army of lobbyists. Contrary to common belief, Xerox is not a dead company as it still enjoys an annual revenue of $26.58 billion.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
 
New Paper From the EPO Highlights Large-Scale Discrimination at the Office, Where People Are Rewarded for Granting More and More Illegal Patents
Even the Kremlin is probably more competent than this
Links 10/02/2025: Ban on D.E.I. Language, Listeria Risk/Outbreak
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Announcing "Stringless" and Mental Health Improvement
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake
Links 09/02/2025: Coffee, Toxic Productivity, and Programming
Links for the day
Debian's Human Rights violations & Swiss women Nazi symbolism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 09/02/2025: Software Patents on MP3 and Another Scam Dressed Up as "Crypto"
Links for the day
Links 09/02/2025: Russian Energy Cut Off, LLM Pushers Show Signs of Desperation
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Does Not Have Media Companies and Lobbyists on His Side, But His Message Spreads Regardless
The message of RMS is spreading in spite of all the smears
GNU/Linux Rises to All-Time High in Chile
sharp rise for GNU/Linux in Chile
Links 09/02/2025: Hottest January on Record, Panama Blackmailed
Links for the day
Why We Still Love Gemini Protocol
Gemini Protocol may seem like something "old" (it's actually very new) and something "nobody would use", but many people use it
Gemini Links 09/02/2025: "Died as a Mineral" and Game Interface for a Non-Game
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 08, 2025
Links 08/02/2025: UK Back Doors and Religious Fundamentalists in Positions of Higher Power
Links for the day
Today's IBM (Red Hat) Isn't the Company That Fought a Microsoft-Sponsored SCO in Court
IBM is nowadays in a state of rapid disintegration
When You Simply Rebrand Almost Everything as "Hey Hi" ("AI"), "Hey Hi Workloads", "Hey Hi Datacentres" and Whatnot
The "growth" has been a growing lie for years if not decades
Microsoft Windows Falls to 12% in Myanmar
Remember that Microsoft is virtually 0% in mobile
This is the Man Who's Attacking Linus Torvalds et al in "a Disease" (Social Control Media)
One thing that Richard M. Stallman and Torvalds can agree on is that Social Control Media should be avoided
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: "Thought Leaders" and Returns to Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Links 08/02/2025: MElon Coup, Mass Layoffs at Facebook, and PlayStation Network Down
Links for the day
Unlike GAFAM, Free Software Serves You, It Does Not Serve Governments and MElons (Overlapping Forces)
Tired of oligarchy controlling your life through gadgets and "apps"?
On Wars Against Founders
We need to insist that founders remain
When It Comes to Social Control Media, Linus Torvalds is Channeling Techrights
GAFAM workers know exactly who to aim at
New EPO Paper: Promoting (Rewarding) People Who Grant Many Illegal European Patents to Make More Money (at Europeans' Expense) While Patent Courts in the EU Are Themselves Illegal
now the coup is sort of complete and even the "courts" are part of the corruption
Slopwatch: Carnival of LLM Slop and FUD Spewed by Bots, Pasted in by MaKenna Hensley and Day
Welcome to the Web in 2025. Articles about "Linux", "Security", and the Web (e.g. "Firefox") are fake.
Links 08/02/2025: News Corp Admits Traffic Declines, Wildlife Trafficking Tackled
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: Lamp and Notions
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 07, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 07, 2025