The big news this week is the pounding that patent trolls have been taking lately.
You may remember MPHJ, perhaps the most notorious patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms., which sued the FTC for having the nerve to investigate it. Unsurprisingly, MPHJ lost its suit against the FTC.
Lumen View Technology is the patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. that sued FindTheBest, which then countersued for under the RICO Act for racketeering. Well, Lumen View has given up its appeal and admitted defeat.
Rackspace (which has been very aggressive in fighting patent trolls) also had a major victory against the patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. Rotatable. Rackspace knocked out Rotatable’s patent through inter partes review.
And an Acacia subsidiary was ordered to pay NetApp’s legal fees after suing on patents that turned out to be licensed already.
Despite the bad week, the trolls keep going. For example, ITUS Corp. sued Apple, claiming to have invented the technology used in Apple’s FaceTime products.
Clearly, it’ll take a lot more than a few losses to deter patent trolling. We still need patent reform!
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