Summary: The latest troll cases in the US and where they have gone (all about software patents, as usual)

THERE IS some good news and bad news this week. First -- the good news!

Patent troll Uniloc was stopped, for a change, owing at least in part to PTAB, after the troll had sued in the Eastern District of Texas. Yesterday a press release was circulated about this [1, 2], noting that: "In November 2015, Uniloc filed a patent infringement claim against Acronis before the US District Court of the Eastern District of Texas. Rather than settling, Acronis fought the claims in district court and challenged the asserted patent by petitioning for inter partes review at the U.S.P.T.O."

"...not only does Microsoft blackmail a lot of companies using patents; it also uses its trolls to accomplish similar things.""Arent Fox Wins Software Patent Infringement Dispute for Acronis" is the title of the press release. It's self-promotional, sure, but at least it has some information in it.

Meanwhile, the Microsoft-connected patent troll Finjan Holdings (last mentioned here earlier this year) is suing the censorship and surveillance vendor of the EPO [1, 2, 3] (which incidentally blocks Techrights inside the EPO). This week it issued a paid press release about it. Software patents are in it again, even after Alice (which Microsoft lobbies against).

We have said it before and we'll say it again: not only does Microsoft blackmail a lot of companies using patents; it also uses its trolls to accomplish similar things. We wrote about it earlier this year [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. ⬆