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PanIP Drops E-commerce Patent Lawsuits
Darlok writes "Back in October 2002, PanIP sued 50 small businesses, claiming patents over basic E-commerce functions. One of the defendents set up a group defense fund, and in the last week, contributors to that fund have been notified by e-mail and this notice on the fund's homepage that PanIP has agreed to drop its lawsuits without any licenses being issued. The U.S. Patent Office is currently reviewing the patents in question. Hopefully this will set some sort of precedent ..."
I posted my take on this story four days ago on my journal.
Here's what it says about it:
The message board and all the pages within the site are now gone, and there's only one single page that briefly outlines what happened.
But big fat question marks are all over the place. What happens now? The fifteen or so defendants who banded together to fight are off the hook, at least as far as PanIP is concerned, but what about the dozens of others? Has PanIP dropped all of its suits, or just the ones against the members of that group?
At the bottom of the page is a sort of cryptic quote: "Don't let the things you can't do stop you from doing all that you can," which I take to mean that among the things that couldn't be done was to utterly defeat PanIP and prevent its founder from continuing his campaign of lawsuits against e-commerce companies.
Back in January, the founder of the PanIP Group Defense Fund had placed a warning on the site that PanIP was sending threatening letters out to businesses who had previously been left alone. Were those letters a last-ditch effort by PanIP to generate the capital necessary to continue the fight over its patents? Or was PanIP anticipating settling its way out of paying the $19,000 in legal fees awarded to the defense group following a determination by at least one judge that PanIP's defamation lawsuit against the group was an illegal SLAPP under California law?
Should e-commerce businesses breathe a sigh of relief that PanIP has backed off, or should they be more worried than ever? If PanIP starts up its campaign of lawsuits anew, will the next round of targeted companies similarly band together to fight off the suit?
The former website of the defense group states that both of PanIP's e-commerce patents are facing re-examination by the USPTO. The "automated sales" patent has been under review since August, according to the old version of the site, which never mentioned that the other patent was actually under review. If they are indeed both under review, can PanIP even file any new lawsuits?
I do not mean to denegrate the defense group in any way... standing up to PanIP was, in my opinion, the correct and brave thing to do. And, at the same time, carrying on the fight when an olive branch is offered with few, if any, strings attached would have been foolish. I don't blame the defense group for opting out of a longer, uglier fight, and I salute them for standing tough as long as they did. Just getting the patent office to re-examine both the patents was quite a feat, one that very well might get both patents invalidated and send PanIP packing in the end, after all.
But if the patents are re-affirmed, you can bet that a whole lot of businesses who'd never heard of PanIP or its patents will be hearing all about them real soon.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
As if I didn't see this one coming...
As an aside, I like the choice of "www.youmaybenext.com" for the fund's homepage. I wonder what the next ridiculous patent lawsuit will be for? I smell a new poll.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
The PanIP Group Defense Fund is saying that it's going to dissolve because the all lawsuits against group members are being discontinued, in exchange for the group willing to give up the already on the books order that PanIP pay PGDF's legal fees. Uhm...
To me, this is not a result the outside world should be cheering. It's a settlement that protects the asse(t)s of the group members, but it's not a knockout blow to PanIP. PanIP is giving up nothing but the right to pursue an appeal that they weren't likely to lose and create an even stronger precedent. The PGDF is giving up the chance to extract real money from PanIP.
Boo! Hiss! Bad move!
The PGDF shuuld not be folding. Just because their orginal case has been settled does not mean they have become pointless. They should be seeing through that the patents be invalidated, and keeping the group in existance so that anybody sued by PanIP in the future could get quick and easy access to the resources that worked before.
As their website domain has always said, you could be next to be sued by PanIP if you're doing basic e-commerce on the Web. And nothing in this settlement prevents that happening. PanIP's plan may be to just let this group fade away, and then sue another group of defendants hoping that they don't join together into a large enough group to squash them like a bug again. It's a little too early to be putting the fly swatter away.
I had a friend who was being sued by PanIP. His online discount perfume store was nearly forced out of business over these dubious patents. What kills me is that the prior art for selling on the web was out there. Hot Hot Hot launched in 1994 doing most everything covered by that group of patents. Good Riddance.
Thalasar
Well, it doesn't set any sort of legal precedent and since businesses are, except in the extremely rare case, demonstrably amoral I wouldn't expect any sort of karmic-rub off on other companies, either.
Businesses are beholden to their shareholders. If shareholder valuation can be increased via protection of patents then the company has a fiduciary duty to pursue that course of action. To not do so would be neglicent and could open the company up to a shareholder lawsuit.
Hopefully this will set some sort of precedent... Oh, rest assured, it will. I just hope it's a good precedent.
-DB-
E-mail is like a prison: a prison with no walls... and no toilet. -Strong Bad
Hopefully this will set some sort of precedent ...
What kind of precedent? Patent defense consortia have been routine practices in defending against agressive plaintiffs seeking to take fundamental control of key industry elements. When this was first raised, I pointed out the various routes to shut down an overactive plaintiff: reexamination regarding prior art, joint defense agreements and joining forces to share costs of a legal defense. All of those happened and it worked.
This isn't new, it's routine.
The lawyers.
PanIP e-commerce patent suits withdrawn
20:52 Thursday 25 March 2004 Rejected
Yeah, I know, go ahead mod me down for bitchin about it and after all, stories like "Pokemon Game Boy Advance Update," that appeared that day really were more "stuff that matters."
In a legal sense, a precedent would be something new and groundbreaking. If the courts find PanIP's patents to be invalid due to prior art and such a decision has never been rendered before, then we may call it a precedent. Otherwise, its just another case.
Blah, blah, blah. I guess you're probably trolling, but in case someone falls for it: the McDonald's lawsuit in question is a piss-poor example of a "frivolous" lawsuit. Two quick links explaining why:
Clicky
Clicky
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
I used to think the same thing until someone pointed out the actual details of this lawsuit. It is defintely interesting. McDonald's was told repeatedly before this incident that they served coffee way too hot, something like 10-20F above the average. This lady just wanted a very small amount for medical bills, McDonald's bascially told her to go screw herself. In the end McDonalds was slapped with such a big fine because they were so far out of line with how they served the coffee in general and not because of the injuries to the old lady.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Yeah. It sets the precedent that small businesses should work together to establish a "technology, business process and other silly patents defense fund" to deter such behavior in the future.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
My apologies if this seems offtopic, but I just need to point out that not all cases that appear frivolous are truly frivolous. Found via Snopes, from the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, here are the actual facts of the McDonald's coffee spill case:
Facts Sheet: McDonald's Scalding Coffee Case
You may pay for your "IP" license thru Passport!
This isn't the only case. There's also Apple's ripping off customers with the iPod batteries that it refuses to fix and requires people throw away their iPods for, and Al Gore's outrageous claim "It was me that invented the Internet, Jon Postel and Vint Cert are dweebs".
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: William G. Wilhelm 858-454-7095 Raymond Mercado rmercado@panip.com
PanIP Settles All Litigation With The "You May Be Next" Defendants
San Diego, CA March 24, 2004. PanIP, LLC is pleased to announce that as of March 19, 2004, it has settled all outstanding litigation with the members of the "PanIP Group Defense Fund, Inc.," the originators of the You May Be Next website. PanIP released those defendants from liability by issuing them covenants not to sue under a confidential settlement agreement. Currently, PanIP has no outstanding litigation in relation to its United States Patent Portfolio.
In the fall of 2002, PanIP filed suit against 40 individual defendants in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego, California, alleging that those defendants were infringing claims in U.S. Patents Nos. 6,289,319 B1 and 5,576,951. Shortly after PanIP initiated suit, a group of sixteen defendants formed the "PanIP Group Defense Fund" in an effort to defeat the patents. Their efforts, like those of another group defense fund formed in 2002, were fruitless. Since 2002, when PanIP began enforcing its intellectual property rights, all parties that have been sued for patent infringement have settled with PanIP and the cases have been dismissed.
PanIP, LLC is a technology development company that holds a number of United States and Canadian high-impact patents. Several additional patent applications are pending.
For more information about PanIP, LLC, please visit www.panip.com
Some interesting stuff, Currently, PanIP has no outstanding litigation in relation to its United States Patent Portfolio. This makes me think the other 24 suits have been dropped. Their efforts, like those of another group defense fund formed in 2002, were fruitless. Seems like they where fruitful in getting you to drop your suits. Perhaps more judges theatening to force companies to pay the legal bills of defendents in questionable patent lawsuits may prevent these things in the future.
That it's mostly lawyers who represent us and have seen fit to do nothing about the abismal state of the USPO.
Lawyers seem to thrive on the idea that not keeping things a fucked up as possable keeps them in constant jobs. In most any other profession they would be fired for incompitance on day 1.
"I used to think the same thing until someone pointed out the actual details of this lawsuit"
You do not know the actual details.
"McDonald's was told repeatedly before this incident that they served coffee way too hot, something like 10-20F above the average"
Actually, that is the recommended serving temperature. McDonald's was selling coffee at the recommended serving temperature, which was how the customers wanted it. A detail you did not know.
"This lady just wanted a very small amount for medical bills"
But it was entirely her fault, since she dumped it. Another detail you overlook.
McDonald's bascially told her to go screw herself
As it should to anyone who begs for money with no reason.
the end McDonalds was slapped with such a big fine because they were so far out of line with how they served the coffee in general
Except they were entirely in line! A detail you forget. If you look at the miniscule number of burns per # of cups sold, it is something like a staggering 1 in 25,000,000.
After McDonald's was forced to serve the coffee too cold, the complaints greatly increased. Only after the frivolous lawsuit were they forced to be "out of line".
The two links you presented were to ambulance chasing crooked law firms, which profit from frivolous lawsuits like this. Of COURSE these crooked guys lie about the lawsuit, and you fell for it. Your links were 100% fact-free.
The McDonald's case is a textbook example of a frivolous lawsuit; a case utterly without merit. It helps make the case for tort reform much stronger.
Perhaps the head of PanIP found a dead fish in his bed :)
This group is known for a few things, including:
lying in the courtroom during their cases. Why wouldn't they lie on their web site?
They are a powerful special interest group that lobbies Congress against any restrictions on frivolous lawsuits.
Come on. You can do better than "this lawsuit is not frivolous because the crooked attorney's lobby says it is not frivolous!"
Not all cases are frivolous. Based on the facts, this one clearly is.
Come on, now, We all know Al Gore invented the Internet and won the 2000 election. Someone said he killed *BSD, too. (I think it was Rush Limbaugh)
hey mctroll. McDonald's served boiling-hot coffee to its customers after numerous complaints. No one can drink coffee that hot. No one.
Something that burns someone severely 1 time out of 25,000,000 times used is too many. You can't get away with that.
Well - here we are are again watching ourselves waste more time in patent shakedowns etc.
Not exactly America's finest hour is it?
Now if Pan had to pay reasonable legal costs of the 50 defendants, this sort of shit would go away.
This approach is used successfully by many other countries.
In general, lawyers and law students are very intelligent people who are active in pursuing what they believe and have often rendered charitable services.
Not "in general": just some of the time. The times that lawyers file frivolous lawsuits, or lie in court (such as trying to get someone off the hook that they know is guilty) are quite staggering. The law industry as a whole seems to have no problem with this, unfortunately. The lawyers are happy that the murderer walks free and can go play golf, as long as they got rich off it.
Should be jailed: the lawyer who tries to get a guilty man set free.
Should be applauded: the lawyer who tries to moderate the sentence of a guilty man to something that is fair but still a punishment (like from a death sentence to a life sentence). That is reasonable.
Just to point out that Hot Hot Hot is a fine puveyor of some of the best (read as really, really hot ) hot sauces known to mankind. Other than it would be a waste of good hot sauce, the principals at PanIP should have a liberal dose of something like Rior Mortis applied to a variety of sensetive body parts so that they remember that there was prior art.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Easily disproven. The ATLA is not interested in the facts at all, especially when their bread and butter is threatened (if someone cut off profiteering from frivolous lawsuits):
From their site:
"As she removed the lid, the entire contents of the cup spilled into her lap"
Nice misleading wording. The cup spilled itself. Anything but mention that she spilled it (which would be admitting that it is her fault). McDonald's and their defective leaping cups!
"During discovery, McDonald's produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992"
In typical misleading fashion, they forget to mention that this 700 is out of billions of cups purchased at this same temperature and consumed during this same time period. Do the math; it was quite safe.
"He also testified that McDonald's had decided not to warn customers about the possibility of severe burns"
McDonald's, in fact, did. The coffee has always been labelled as "hot coffee". Hot means something. Everyone is taught caution around hot liquids. Even the lady who filed the frivolous lawsuit: the ATLA site leaves out the fact that this same lady had bought many cups of the same temperature at the same McDonald's in the past, and had consumed them with no problem.
That ATLA sheet is not a fact sheet. It is a spin-laden press release from a scared pressure group that was caught in one of the worst frivolous lawsuits.
"Further, McDonald's quality assurance manager testified that the company actively enforces a requirement that coffee be held in the pot at 185 degrees, plus or minus five degrees"
This same paragraph leaves out that this is the recommended serving temperature for coffee. It does, however, include the lie "was not fit for consumption". If 24,999,999 out of 25,000,000 are able to consume it with no problem, it looks quite "fit for consumption".
"This amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at fault in the spill."
This account by the ATLA is actually factual, but it does show something odd. Unless McDonald's cups are animated and leap and spill themselves, it is clear that she is 100% to blame for the spill. It took a lot of lying in the courtroom to get them to believe that she is only partially responsible for her own action.
"Post-verdict investigation found that the temperature of coffee at the local Albuquerque McDonald's had dropped to 158 degrees Fahrenheit"
This is when the cold coffee complaints increased greatly. McDonald's was no longer able to serve the coffee its customers wanted.
That ATLA sheet is not a fact sheet. It leaves out the most important facts of the lady's guilt for the spill and the safety of McDonald's product. It is a spin-laden press release from a scared pressure group that was caught in one of the worst frivolous lawsuits.
http://www.overlawyered.com/archives/000589.html
Slashdot's stories are queued up weeks in advance. Someone submitted this story much earlier and it was put in the submission queue. Editors only randomly browse for "breaking" stories a few times a day, and those get posted immediately. Ever wonder why it seems that stories are posted, on average, every 90 minutes on Slashdot? A perl script randomly chooses the delay between stories and pulls up the next one from the queue. There are usually around a hundred stories already in the queue at any one time.
So there you have it. Slashdot is completely automated on the server side and generates money for the Slashdot owners because millions of slashbot idiots (like myself) provide page views, ad revenue, comments, and the moderation which makes it successful. Do your part and kick the habit while there's still hope. For myself, I plan to join my local support group (Slashdotters Anonymous Cowards) and share my pain with like-minded people.
Am I seriously misreading this, or is the "National Coffee Association" (are they affiliated to the Ketchup Advisory Board?) a bunch of nutters?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
A law that gives patents to obvious processes.
A legal system that discourages the use of ideas (remember the eolas v microsoft patent)
The white settlers of a large part of North America thought that patents of nobility were a tyranny.
Now you can get a patent for a file layout that is based on a standard.
Whose to blame?
Those taking advantage of the system?
Those who enforce the system?
Those who created the system?
Those who elected the creators of the system?
The only thing that sets legal precedent is published appellate court case results. Since this didn't go to an appellate court (it sounds like it didn't go to any court), this isn't going to set any kind of legal precedent.
Perhaps you mean, "Hopefully, this will enlighten stupid fucking multinational corporations, whose board of directors thinks they are entitled to eternal perpetually increasing profits at the expense of others, that they can't fuck with this community."
ON topic, though, it seems like, um, PanIP sucks like a slashdot spammer... mod child up!
That's it!
I would like to hereby announce that I am going to finally sue those jokers for trademark infringement, using my good name and/or shameful stealing of my IP. Furthermore, I claim patents over basic metabolic (as well as e-metabolic) functions, therefore please stop breathing as soon as possible. You will do a great favor for the whole e-ndustry and humanity at large. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Pan with IP shamefully stolen.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Anything less will still leave a door open for legal thugs to try and mug small businesses on the grounds of ridiculous claims on abusively granted patents (on obvious business methods and such).
The business world would be a safer place with those jailbirds slammed to where they belong.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
They install an annoying talking animated giant mouse pointer.
"It looks like you're trying to surf the web. Would you like me to help with that?"
A co-worker and I went to check this PAN-IP company out... after all I'm just a lowly reporter for a small e-zine! Guess what, 329 Laurel Street in San Diego is a spot to park your car... not your butt. There's no office there. I tracked down the PAN-IP owner's house... and it's in tatters within a location called South Park San Diego. Really, the place is a shit-hole and in disarray. My guess is they needed money to pay the mortgage on the tired old house. PAN-IP was a scam folks. Challenge them completely and countersue. Watch this bottom feeder move into Barrio Logan.
Their web site has a statement claiming that the 'youmaybenext' folks were 'fruitless' in their attempts to defeat the patents. This leaves the implication that they paid the license fees when, in fact, they did not. PanIP was faced with $19K in SLAPP fines and it's obvious that being a 'one-man-band' he didn't have the funds, so he agreed to drop the infringement claim if the 'youmaybenext' folks dropped the SLAPP fees they were entitled to.
The youmaybenext folks won this battle.
PanIP won't sue the next group of defendents that band together to fight lawsuits brought by this weasel using his submarine patents, that's for sure.
It's the Supreme Court of the United States, which refused to rein in the blatant abuses of the patent/copyright clauses of the Constitution. As it stands, "promoting the progress of the useful arts" is the same as "granting a stream of monopoly rents to people and organizations with skilled legal teams and good lobbyists."
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
There is often a difference between actual guilt and court-determined guilt.
"The problem with that is a man is innocent until proven guilty, which is for the court to determine, not the lawyer"
If the lawyer knows the man is guilty, but presents a case which denies this, they are clearly obstructing justice. How can anyone deny that there is something pretty bad going on with this happens.
The "National Coffee Association" reminds me of "The Tobacco Institute".
Oddly enough, the current "Tobacco Institute" website is entirely geared towards "provide the public with access to documents produced by The Tobacco Institute in Attorney General reimbursement lawsuits and certain other specified civil actions"
I'm sure they just forgot to mention that you should only "drink immediately" in tiny little 5ml increments, and that conveying said large quantities of "scalding water" should only be undertaken in suitable spill containment systems.
I mean, anything else would be negligent.
Let alone actually KNOWING about a hundred critical incidents and doing absolutely nothing to mitigate the obvious statistical certainty that a hundred more critical incidents WILL occur should nothing change.
"Let alone actually KNOWING about a hundred critical incidents and doing absolutely nothing to mitigate the obvious statistical certainty that a hundred more critical incidents WILL occur should nothing change."
How about the rest of the facts? These critical incidents amounted to 1 of 25,000,000 cups sold. Everyone* was able to drink the coffee served at this temperature with no problem at all (the * is for the negigibile amount who couldn't, like the idiot who dumped it in her lap and filed this famous frivolous lawsuit).
Synergy
In this case, I'm guessing that it's basically meaning co-operation between two groups resulting in mutual benefit (in this case the customer/salesperson). However, the rest of the sentence pretty much says that already, so it's basically a bunch of BS meant to make them sound important.
I got one of those letters, not from PanIP but from some other clowns, who claim to have invented the idea of downloading media files over the web. They cited the presence of a couple mpegs on my web server as proof that I was using their technology without permission, and insisted that I contact them to discuss licensing. I trashed the letter and never heard from them again.
the coffee was safe, as there were only 700 problem cases out of billions of cups sold and consumed
The plaintiff spilled the coffee herself. McDonald's did not spill it.
They just lie and try to weasel around things. They do not have valid arguments at all.
"I believe Snopes has an article..."
So? They are not a source of unbiased or truthful information. A great example of their "spin" is their silly attmept to get Gore off the hook for the time he took credit for inventing the Internet.
"Had the woman removed the top"
Ermmm. check all accounts of the case. This is part of court record. She did remove the top.
"to tip and the cup wasn't remotely strong enough to contain liquids once tipped."
You need physics/engineering 101. Or perhaps kindergarten. It is not a matter of "strength of the cup". If you take the STRONGEST possible container (imagine a cylinder of titanium) filled with liquid, and remove the top, and tip it on its side, the liquid WILL come out. It is physics. It has nothing to do with the strength or weakness of the side materials. If you have entirely removed the top, the stuff will come out.
"Had the woman removed the top, we might be talking about a very different situation"
So, it is a very different situation. Changing your tune now?
"Clue for you: nobody actually wants 185F coffee"
That is not true. Clue for you: complaints about cold coffee greatly inreased after McDonald's made the coffee too cold as a result of the lawsuit.
"given the container was clearly a faulty design"
A coffee cup where you can remove the lid is "faulty"?
"Now, sir, you are the one employing sophestry. Nobody consumes coffee at 185F"
No, you are. Your error rate is astounding. Billions of cups of this coffee were sold and consumed with no problem (other than the 700).
"It's 700 incidents too many. You can't fail to correct a flaw because you don't think it happens often enough."
You have yet to show a "flaw" to be corrected. Perhaps some of these cases involved faulty cups, but you have mentioned none. Yes, any incident of someone hurting themself by doing something stupid is unfortunate, but the blame should lie where the blame is. It is a tragedy that someone stabs themself in the eye with a butterknife, but it is not the fault of the company that sold the butterknife.
"You might just as well argue it's her fault because she should have bought the coffee from Burger King"
No, it is her fault because she did the action that resulted in the burn. However, it should also be pointed out that she had purchased and consumed many cups from the same exact McDonald's previously with no problem.
"It's certainly not "billions" though it would have been a lot of coffee"
It certainly is billions. McDonald's sells a billion cups of coffee per year. The 700 burn incidents were over 10 years, so that is 10 billion. You certainly "don't do numbers" do you?
"Additionally, we're only talking about 700 reported incidents"
Reported, actual: same thing. You have no evidence that the numbers are different, do you?
We can only base discussion of this on the facts, now. Don't try to bolster your case by making up incidents that there is no evidence of: "700 is not enough. I guess there are more, so I'll pad the number for the hell of it!"
I can just imagine your faulty logic getting laughed out of the courtroom if you were a lawyer. "You must convict Sam Jones. We caught him robbing 2 banks, but surely he robbed a lot more than this! I just know it! Send him to jail because he robbed 10... no 20 banks.!"
You also keep referring to "faulty design", but in this case the cup held up exactly as it was supposed to. If you can come up with examples of bad cups used by McDonald's you might have a case. You haven't.
The address refering to the site owner is "misleading" directing one to Logan Heights... Not a very nice neighborhood. Unlike the actual neighborhood he lives at.
I am friends with a close relative of his. He usually ask for $10,000 to 8,000 for the license.
After the owner of the site contested this and start their efforts to make this null and void, they settled. The price was $6,000, of which the lawyers got $3,000 - or half.
I don't particularly agree with some of his tactics. However he does own the patent and to date, after 3 reviews, "NO" prior art has been found by the USPTO.