"Serial Troll": "Yandex" was forced to enter into a settlement agreement in a patent dispute with an American company
Yandex and the American company Fellowship Filtering Technologies entered into a settlement agreement on a patent dispute. The lawsuit against "Yandex" in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas withdrawn. Both parties paid all the proper expenses and work of the lawyers.
Fellowship Filtering Technologies filed a lawsuit in December last year against three legal entities - the Russian LLC Yandex, the Dutch Yandex NV (owns 100% of the LLC) and the American Yandex Inc. Yandex was accused of violating patent number 5884282, registered in the United States in 1999.
“Yandex primarily uses its own expertise and technologies developed by our company's specialists. Our projects are also protected by patents. In international markets, our patents confirm that our developments are unique, high-tech and well protected. At the moment, Yandex has several dozen patents granted in Russia and the United States and several hundred patent applications filed in Europe, Russia and the United States, ”said a spokesman for Yandex Asya Melkumova.
')
“We believe that there was no patent infringement on our part. The conclusion of the settlement agreement is caused by the peculiarities of the procedural law in the USA, ”she added.
Whether Yandex had to pay the owner of the disputed patent is unknown. “This is a typical case of a“ patent troll ”. The company completed it at minimal cost, ”a source close to Yandex believes.
Since the litigation ended in just a few months, the “patent troll”, most likely, set a goal to quickly earn a small amount - up to $ 100,000–150,000, says Vladislav Kochetkov, chairman of the board of Finam. Such money is often easier to pay a troll than to spend many months on lawyers for many months or even years. For amounts in millions of dollars, it is already worth suing, he sums up.
In total, last year, the American company filed 16 claims for infringement of the same patent against major technology companies - Salesforce.com, Cloudera, NetSuite, Oracle, Callidus Software, SAP America, TIBCO Software, IBM, eHarmony, IAC / InterActiveCorp, Open Text, Hewlett-Packard, Adobe Systems, Baidu, Alibaba. Almost all of these disputes were settled, and amicable agreements were also concluded for them - only a claim against the Alibaba Group is still pending.
Although in almost all cases the courts between Fellowship Filtering Technologies and technology companies ended in an amicable settlement, it still does not follow from this that all defendants had to pay a “patent troll,” Alexey Mikhailov, the patent practice director of Patentus, told Vedomosti.
Such agreements generally contain strict confidentiality clauses.
Perhaps Fellowship Filtering Technologies realized that companies are not ready to pay even small compensation and will defend their positions to the end. Failure to disclose the terms of the peace agreements will allow Fellowship Filtering Technologies to continue to sue, only with smaller market players, Mikhailov said.
Fellowship Filtering Technologies filed a lawsuit in December last year against three legal entities - the Russian LLC Yandex, the Dutch Yandex NV (owns 100% of the LLC) and the American Yandex Inc. Yandex was accused of violating patent number 5884282, registered in the United States in 1999.
In 1999, Gary Robinson (co-owner of Fellowship Filtering Technologies) invented an automatic filtering system that collects and stores data on the behavior of Internet users - for example, the history of their preferences and online purchases. When a new user enters this system, she recommends a certain product to him, based on the preferences of other users with similar tastes.According to the plaintiff, it was this invention that formed the basis of the system for analyzing user behavior developed by Yandex. Moreover, now the Internet company allegedly shares the data of this system with advertisers. Fellowship Filtering Technologies asked the court to oblige Yandex to pay damages. In addition, the American company wanted to receive royalties from Yandex for using its technology.
“Yandex primarily uses its own expertise and technologies developed by our company's specialists. Our projects are also protected by patents. In international markets, our patents confirm that our developments are unique, high-tech and well protected. At the moment, Yandex has several dozen patents granted in Russia and the United States and several hundred patent applications filed in Europe, Russia and the United States, ”said a spokesman for Yandex Asya Melkumova.
')
“We believe that there was no patent infringement on our part. The conclusion of the settlement agreement is caused by the peculiarities of the procedural law in the USA, ”she added.
Whether Yandex had to pay the owner of the disputed patent is unknown. “This is a typical case of a“ patent troll ”. The company completed it at minimal cost, ”a source close to Yandex believes.
Since the litigation ended in just a few months, the “patent troll”, most likely, set a goal to quickly earn a small amount - up to $ 100,000–150,000, says Vladislav Kochetkov, chairman of the board of Finam. Such money is often easier to pay a troll than to spend many months on lawyers for many months or even years. For amounts in millions of dollars, it is already worth suing, he sums up.
In total, last year, the American company filed 16 claims for infringement of the same patent against major technology companies - Salesforce.com, Cloudera, NetSuite, Oracle, Callidus Software, SAP America, TIBCO Software, IBM, eHarmony, IAC / InterActiveCorp, Open Text, Hewlett-Packard, Adobe Systems, Baidu, Alibaba. Almost all of these disputes were settled, and amicable agreements were also concluded for them - only a claim against the Alibaba Group is still pending.
Although in almost all cases the courts between Fellowship Filtering Technologies and technology companies ended in an amicable settlement, it still does not follow from this that all defendants had to pay a “patent troll,” Alexey Mikhailov, the patent practice director of Patentus, told Vedomosti.
Such agreements generally contain strict confidentiality clauses.
Perhaps Fellowship Filtering Technologies realized that companies are not ready to pay even small compensation and will defend their positions to the end. Failure to disclose the terms of the peace agreements will allow Fellowship Filtering Technologies to continue to sue, only with smaller market players, Mikhailov said.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/299980/
All Articles