Summary: Infomercial from the Boston Globe (for a patent troll) merits a response, as thousands of victims deserve better media than this

TWO days ago, the Boston Globe -- perhaps feeling a sense of blind duty/loyalty to Boston -- did yet another one of those puff pieces for this infamous troll; we highlighted another recent one earlier in the month, so it's not the first of its kind lately. We must wonder how it came about. Media outreach maybe? Infomercial? Paid for?

The latest headline says that this troll is "actually performing a service" and there is femmewashing too. A patent maximalist said, "Wendy Verlander @bbirdtech_CEO gets chance to tell @bbirdtech's side of the story. Go Wendy/Chris!"

Makes it sound like he knows them personally as friends...

To avoid confusion about what they do and where they came from, consider our previous articles about Blackbird [1, 2, 3]. There's a long chain of victims they have 'run over'. Patent Progress has just compared this troll to another, noting that there is a pattern. "Agarwal’s cases appear to be filed against relatively small businesses," this new post explains (one of the authors of the site once knew this chief troll from Blackbird personally).

What patent trolls do in order to dodge legal challenge is prey on small businesses. Classic troll routine!

Here's more on this:

You might recall a few months ago I wrote about Blackbird Technologies, an NPE with a novel approach to patent litigation. Blackbird is a company owned by lawyers. It buys patents from patent owners, apparently with a share of any litigation wins flowing back to the owner. The lawyers who own Blackbird also litigate the cases. This, as I noted, creates some ethical and practical issues.

[...]

So far, I count 6 cases filed by Mr. Agarwal in the few months he’s been in operation. A pretty solid pace!

The SR-71 Blackbird, of course, was one of the fastest things in the air.

Agarwal’s cases appear to be filed against relatively small businesses, and (at least so far) none of these cases has gone very far. One was stayed pending an IPR, which was recently instituted. All but two have been dismissed before any significant progress in the case, often by Mr. Agarwal. This kind of pattern of behavior is common amongst NPEs. For example, one NPE (Shipping & Transit) was ordered to pay attorney’s fees in part due to a pattern of behavior including “repeatedly dismiss[ing] its own lawsuits to evade a ruling on the merits and yet persist[ing] in filing new lawsuits advancing the same claims.”

It is sad to see corporate media, which I had experience with (the Boston Globe sought comments from me before), resorting to pure puff pieces that help trolls get away with reputation laundering. This is the kind of thing that erodes trust in the media. ⬆