Lawsuits for ... patents on Wi-Fi
What do we have there today in the field of patent practice? Yeah, these guys are here . A certain company, Innovatio IP Ventures from Delaware, collected a set of patents formerly owned by Broadcom and opened fire on companies using Wi-Fi demanding to stop violating outrages. Under the gun, there were hotels of large chains like Marriott, Comfort Inn, etc.
And it works very simple. In the early stages of patent trolling, tactics for working on large targets was used. We take Microsoft and try to prove to the distinguished court that they violated our patent number XXX using the word “byte”. There is a powerful court shootout, lawyers on both sides get hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a small company often wins millions in court. As an option - to arrange an exchange of fire with the participation of lawyers outside the court, and get a little less than millions of extra-judicial agreement.
But you can take not only quality but also quantity, right? Reasonably deciding that there may not be enough money for many months of dismantling in the courts, Innovatio IP Ventures modestly proposes to resolve the issue on the spot in the pretrial order. No, a lawsuit will certainly be filed anyway, otherwise the threat will not have a basis - but it costs $ 100 (I could be wrong here, but the orders are about the same). The price of a pre-trial decision ranges from $ 2,500 to $ 5,000, which is nothing compared with the patent attorney's hourly rate of $ 500–800. After all, if the case goes to court, the defendant will have to hire such a lawyer for dozens of hours, then we consider ourselves. According to the lawyer of Innovatio IP Ventures, some have already put two and two together ... and agreed to the proposed conditions. And since 5,000 in the scale of the world revolution are pennies, the guys didn’t have to waste time on trifles, and instead of a lawsuit, the hotels are rolled over to the hotels themselves, which by the way most often work on a franchise from the network, like the Best Western, for example North America had several thousand hotels, and in every one of the good ten that I had the honor of being, there was Wi-Fi.
')
I would not like this topic to raise the endless flood on the idiocy of the patent system. Let's try to figure out how this can be stopped, and not so much these specific guys (for whom Motorola and Cisco have responded in response ), but the very practice of using civilian legal resources paid by taxpayers for this idiocy. Here are my options:
1. To prohibit patent trolls to file patent claims for those patents that are currently not used at least in the design.
2. As an option, apply clause 1 exclusively to companies whose percentage of profits from production is less than X%.
3. Work out the features of the transfer of patents from the original owners. At this time, a patent is almost the same as a gun lost on the street - the cost of finding it will not be comparable to the potential damage to the victim. The difference is that lost pistols go through the police department (or the FBI, I don’t know for sure), but patents are often distributed almost for nothing.
4. To increase the fee for filing patent claims to, say, 10 thousand dollars. Or 50 thousand. Still, the potential benefits are higher, i.e. this will not stop serious matters.
What are some other options for the respected public?
And it works very simple. In the early stages of patent trolling, tactics for working on large targets was used. We take Microsoft and try to prove to the distinguished court that they violated our patent number XXX using the word “byte”. There is a powerful court shootout, lawyers on both sides get hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a small company often wins millions in court. As an option - to arrange an exchange of fire with the participation of lawyers outside the court, and get a little less than millions of extra-judicial agreement.
But you can take not only quality but also quantity, right? Reasonably deciding that there may not be enough money for many months of dismantling in the courts, Innovatio IP Ventures modestly proposes to resolve the issue on the spot in the pretrial order. No, a lawsuit will certainly be filed anyway, otherwise the threat will not have a basis - but it costs $ 100 (I could be wrong here, but the orders are about the same). The price of a pre-trial decision ranges from $ 2,500 to $ 5,000, which is nothing compared with the patent attorney's hourly rate of $ 500–800. After all, if the case goes to court, the defendant will have to hire such a lawyer for dozens of hours, then we consider ourselves. According to the lawyer of Innovatio IP Ventures, some have already put two and two together ... and agreed to the proposed conditions. And since 5,000 in the scale of the world revolution are pennies, the guys didn’t have to waste time on trifles, and instead of a lawsuit, the hotels are rolled over to the hotels themselves, which by the way most often work on a franchise from the network, like the Best Western, for example North America had several thousand hotels, and in every one of the good ten that I had the honor of being, there was Wi-Fi.
')
I would not like this topic to raise the endless flood on the idiocy of the patent system. Let's try to figure out how this can be stopped, and not so much these specific guys (for whom Motorola and Cisco have responded in response ), but the very practice of using civilian legal resources paid by taxpayers for this idiocy. Here are my options:
1. To prohibit patent trolls to file patent claims for those patents that are currently not used at least in the design.
2. As an option, apply clause 1 exclusively to companies whose percentage of profits from production is less than X%.
3. Work out the features of the transfer of patents from the original owners. At this time, a patent is almost the same as a gun lost on the street - the cost of finding it will not be comparable to the potential damage to the victim. The difference is that lost pistols go through the police department (or the FBI, I don’t know for sure), but patents are often distributed almost for nothing.
4. To increase the fee for filing patent claims to, say, 10 thousand dollars. Or 50 thousand. Still, the potential benefits are higher, i.e. this will not stop serious matters.
What are some other options for the respected public?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/129700/
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