Gregory Youngblood wrote:
On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 12:05 -0700, Chris Travers wrote:
5) Independant patent license firms. I guess it is a possibility, but in the end, companies that mostly manufacture lawsuits usually go broke. Why would you sue a non-profit if you were mostly trying to make a buck with the lawsuit?
IANAL, but I think this category would be higher. For the simple
reason that the non-profit might be viewed as low-hanging fruit and
easy to pluck.
Remember, what some of these (a lot?) "patent license firms" (now
that's a lot nicer than what I would have called them) try to do is
get easy targets to license the patent. This makes it easier to get
other companies to license the patent.
Often, the smaller targets will settle and license the patent because
the cost to defend themselves is so high that it is cheaper to pay the
license fees than to fight (this sounds familiar, oh yeah, protection
rackets). These "firms" then use those licensees to legitimize their
patent, claiming others licensing the patent "proves" their patent is
enforceable. Then they target bigger and more lucrative fish.
IANAL either, but I am hard pressed to determine where such a settlement
proves anything (at least in the US). Now if you go to trial and lose,
then the same defenses may be unavailable to others. I.e. if the court
determines that your arguments for X being prior art do not impact the
invention in question, then the next defendant will probably be barred
from arguing that X is prior art at least in reference to the same
invention. But this cuts both ways... If the courts determine that X
*is* prior art, then the patent may be limited by the courts. I.e.
prior suits don't prevent new defenses which is why serial enforcement
of patents is so dangerous (sooner or later, maybe someone finds a chink
in the armor), but facts necessarily decided as part of one case are
generally considered beyond dispute.
Again, Remember RamBus? They collapsed suddenly when someone finally
came up with a defense that invalidated one of their critical patents.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting
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