Summary: Switch signals the potential commencement of a litigation campaign (or at least shakedown), using all sorts of patents on designs (which are on shaky ground anyway)
THE USPTO has long granted design patents. The Supreme Court, however, may be about to invalidate all design patents [1, 2], having already decided to potentially overturn the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) yet again. This is important in light of this week's report which says this (emphasis ours):
Reflecting its focus on intellectual property, Switch said today that it has licensed several of its patented designs for data center cooling technology to Schneider Electric. In announcing the agreement, Switch also signaled that it stands ready to pursue legal action to defend the patents secured by its founder, Rob Roy.
"We are not necessarily suggesting that all the patents from Switch are bogus, just that in light of recent developments in the Supreme Court this entire strategy of Switch may be in peril."As we have already seen, as recently as days ago when the EFF got CAFC to secure invalidation of a notorious patent, just because some patents get granted by the USPTO does not automatically mean they're not bogus. As TechDirt put it a couple of days ago:
For years now we've covered the saga of Personal Audio, the "company" that claimed it held a patent (US Patent 8,112,504) that covered podcasting itself. The actual patent is about delivering news on audio cassettes, but give lawyers enough old patents and they'll twist them to be about anything. The company sent threat letters to a bunch of popular podcasts, and actually sued a few. EFF filed to invalidate the patent back in 2013 and finally succeeded in 2015. But... Personal Audio appealed.