Home Messages Index
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index

[News] Lawyers Exploit the Brokenness of USPTO

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Silicon Valley Patent Attorneys Register Their Own Patents; Sue Google,
Microsoft, Yahoo And Others

,----[ Quote ]
| A few months ago, we pointed to Joe Mullin's excellent article detailing how 
| various patent attorneys were finding a lucrative side business in 
| registering or buying their own patents and suing companies themselves. It's 
| just that much more lucrative. Mullin is back, describing two Silicon Valley 
| patent attorneys, Dominic Kotab and Kevin Zilka, who have been registering or 
| buying a bunch of patents, and have been quite active in both setting up 
| multiple shell companies, and suing many different defendants.      
`----

http://techdirt.com/articles/20081202/0342312995.shtml


Recent:

AT&T Makes the Case for Patent Reform

,----[ Quote ]
| Think the current patent process is corrupt, too open to abusive
| patent-seeking and unduly influenced by corrupt rent-seeking special
| interests? Well, AT&T is here to disabuse you of that notion...
`----

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/att_makes_the_case_for_patent_reform.php


The Marshall Plan

,----[ Quote ]
| Crucial reading for those interested in the notable docket of rocket, the
| Eastern District of Texas, in this week's Texas Lawyer. With 232 patent cases
| filed in Marshall in the past year, trial dates for filing there are now
| running to 2012. Judge T. John Ward's patent litigation mill is slowing, but
| faring.
`----

http://www.patenthawk.com/blog/2008/08/the_marshall_plan.html


Ideas Are Everywhere... So Why Do We Limit Them?

,----[ Quote ]
| Gladwell uses this to talk up what Myhrvold is doing, suggesting that
| Intellectual Ventures is really about continuing that process, getting those
| ideas out there -- but he misses the much bigger point: if these ideas are
| the natural progression, almost guaranteed to be discovered by someone sooner
| or later, why do we give a monopoly on these ideas to a single discoverer?
| Myhrvold's whole business model is about monopolizing all of these ideas and
| charging others (who may have discovered them totally independently) to
| actually do something with them. Yet, if Gladwell's premise is correct (and
| there's plenty of evidence included in the article), then Myhrvold's efforts
| shouldn't be seen as a big deal. After all, if it wasn't Myhrvold and his
| friends doing it, others would very likely come up with the same thing sooner
| or later.
|
| This is especially highlighted in one anecdote in the article, of Myhrvold
| holding a dinner with a bunch of smart people... and an attorney. The group
| spent dinner talking about a bunch of different random ideas, with no real
| goal or purpose -- just "chewing the rag" as one participant put it. But the
| next day the attorney approached them with a typewritten description of 36
| different inventions that were potentially patentable out of the dinner. When
| a random "chewing the rag" conversation turns up 36 monopolies, something is
| wrong. Those aren't inventions that deserve a monopoly.
`----

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080507/0114581051.shtml


Who is the world's biggest patent troll?

,----[ Quote ]
| In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different
| answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild
| of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as
| $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from
| universities in Asia."
`----

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9816163-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20


Playing Microsoft Patent Poker

,----[ Quote ]
| This time though, while Ballmer slinks away to try to con … convince people
| that Microsoft Unified Communications somehow offers people more than what
| Cisco's VOIP (voice over IP) been offering customers for years, a patent
| attack finally launches at Linux. Specifically, IP Innovation, a subsidiary
| of Acacia Technologies Group, has filed a patent infringement claim against
| Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat.
|
| So was it just timing, or was it something more? Let's take a look at the
| players.
`----

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2201579,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616


Top Ten Patent Trolls of 2007

,----[ Quote ]
| 3. Acacia. I didn't start tracking Acacia carefully until the summer. But
| still, on my blog I have reported on over two dozen lawsuits brought by
| Acacia this year, against more than 235 defendants. That's in addition to the
| over 200 lawsuits Acacia filed in previous years against hundreds and
| hundreds of defendants. And that's not including the two lawsuits (at least)
| Acacia has filed in December against 20 more defendants (yes, Acacia, I'm
| watching you). Acacia's business model, as a publicly traded company, is to
| accumulate patents and sue as many companies as possible in order to extract
| licenses. They have a market cap of over 275 million - that pays for a lot of
| lawsuits. Unlike other trolls, Acacia tends to not focus on one court in
| particular, although they have sampled the Eastern District of Texas more
| this year than in the past.
`----

http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2007/12/top-ten-patent-trolls-of-2007.html
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAkk49f8ACgkQU4xAY3RXLo4fPQCdFg/yl6jxxtu0ThIjksKxZU64
q0EAn3NfKWo1q1u6KRcN6TuQ/ZnEfZIN
=Sm05
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index