They have their media cheerleaders, too

Summary: The companies seeking to complement their business (or make up for their demise) using patents are still suing rivals while calling that litigation "research and development" (the same old euphemism)

BOLSTERED by patents from the EPO and USPTO (BT had also lobbied India to allow its dubious patents on software about a decade ago), BT continued with its patent aggression some days ago. It's a regrettable strategy which isn't entirely new at all [1, 2] (we have been covering examples for half a decade).

As WIPR put it last week, BT nowadays chooses the popular District of Delaware for litigation:

Telecommunications company BT has accused cybersecurity software developer Fortinet of infringing five patents relating to network security.

BT filed its complaint at the US District Court for the District of Delaware on Tuesday, July 10.

According to the lawsuit, BT is the oldest telecommunications company in the world. It annually spends more than €£500 million ($660.7 million) on research and development, which BT said has led to “numerous patents” being granted.

They drop the talking point about "research and development" whenever they seek to euphemise "patent monopolies". BT has a long and colourful history of monopoly abuse, not only in the UK but also abroad (colonialism contributed to that).

Then comes IAM's Richard Lloyd. Being a lobbyist for patent trolls and aggressors, his headline says this act of aggression "shows how cyber security is becoming big patent business" (extortion, more so than "business").

"They drop the talking point about "research and development" whenever they seek to euphemise "patent monopolies"."BT, according to him "has launched a lawsuit in US district court accusing a Silicon Valley based cyber security company of infringing five of its patents. According to the complaint, which was filed earlier this week in Delaware, BT contacted Fortinet in late 2014 and claimed that it infringed on two of the patents-in-suit. Despite writing to the company on three separate occasions through 2015 and again in early 2016, Fortinet did not respond to any communication until February 2016 via its outside counsel. According the court filing, it did not provide any meaningful explanation for why its products did not infringe the pair of patents."

So this goes back almost half a decade ago (2014), i.e. the time we first covered BT's patent assaults on companies which do Free/libre software, including SIP, Android and so on. Will we see BT reduced to drone strikes (assassinations) and 'trolling' (e.g. passing patents to patent trolls) as means of "doing business"? Hopefully not. But it seems to be gravitating in that direction.

"Will we see BT reduced to drone strikes (assassinations) and 'trolling' (e.g. passing patents to patent trolls) as means of "doing business"?"We have meanwhile learned that Sonos, a patent aggressor which hired former senior IBM and Microsoft patents executive Tanya Moore (she left earlier this year), is boasting about patent aggression again, claiming revenue derived from lawsuits. It says that "Sonos owns 630 issued patents, and 570 applications. It invests heavily in R&D." R&D ("research and development", as above) is just a euphemism for patents; further down it says "Innovative Business Model With Patents". Sonos sued rivals, e.g. in 2014.

When your business is patents more than actual products (example from last week's news) maybe you're not really producing a compelling product and instead preying on other people's work/sales. ⬆