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Cisco, Troll Tracker Blogger Sued For Defamation
Joe Mullin writes "We've discussed Troll Tracker here before — the anonymous blogger who was outed last month as Rick Frenkel, a Cisco lawyer. Since then, two lawyers from the notoriously patent-friendly Eastern District of Texas have filed defamation suits against Frenkel and Cisco, and Frenkel's blog has been shuttered. One of the plaintiffs, a renowned patent judge's son, may have been hunting the anonymous blogger for months. This week Cisco announced new blogging guidelines in response to the Troll Tracker fiasco. The company acknowledged that 'a few Cisco employees used poor judgment' during secret-blog-time, but they're largely standing by their man. Cisco's new rules will prohibit only anonymous blogging by employees about issues for which 'they have responsibilities at Cisco.'"
A blog from a technical lawyer is just what the world needs. The only problem could be if the blogger was dealing with issues that concerned Cisco without listing his affiliation. Otherwise, Cisco should have been proud of their employee. It's good they are standing by him and hopefully they will trounce this groundless lawsuit.
Now all they have to do is repudiate software patents and stop cooperating with China.
No calls now, I'm
This guy stood up to the patent mafia and told what was happening. The system is corrupt. It does not promote innovation. It promotes lawsuits and settlements, and the lawyers get richer.
Troll Tracker did a public service by documenting these scum. We need to know.
Cisco are doing good by supporting him. Thanks.
My blog
I think that any company that has patent and is not implementing them, or selling them or letting other use them for a fee ( or free ) within 2 years of the issuance of the patent, should loose their patent and it should become public domain. This would prevent people from being patent trolls. Basically use it or loose it, and using it to prevent people from implementing it or suing people who implement it does not count as using it.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
There is no "-1 'I disagree'" option for a reason. Remove this poster's gag please.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
One thing that is important to point out, is that Cisco is treating Rick Frenkel extremely well. They aren't firing him, restricting him from blogging, or taking other knee jerk reactions. What they are doing is requiring that a Cisco employee put boiler plate on their sites.
Cisco itself has been trying to embrace web2.0 collaboration for a couple years now. In some instances like http://blogs.cisco.com/home/ they do really well, providing a conduit for actual engineers to comment on technology and the companies products. In other instances like second life, they have gone completely off target and missed the whole point (my personal rant, second life is NOT web2.0). The important thing to focus on, is that Cisco is consistently trying to encourage open communications of its employees with the general public, and should be apploauded for their attempts.
Disclaimer - I am NOT a Cisco employee, and these are my OPINIONS.
Colin McNamara - CCIE #18233 "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible just takes a little longer"
So who do we spam with nasty letters? Physical addresses work best, but email is good too.
The government can't save you.
The blog is not "shuttered" per se, but viewable by invitation only. Hopefully, Frenkel will continue to write, but it might be hard with the lawsuit.
Oops, I didn't even read all the linked articles. Joe's last link says the two lawsuits have been moved to the Western District of Arkansas and the Eastern District of Texas, under different judges.
A guy's getting sued into oblivion by a group specifically formed to create and manage layers of patent-holding shell companies.. and the group's getting away with making tons of money hiding the true owners of patents and confusing the public because American patent law is so screwed. Care yet.
2) Get a list of patents applications filed by said clients;
3) Find the numerous cases of clearly prior art for said patents ( it is inevitable that there will be );
4) Directly contact ( escalating though email,fax,phone,registered letter ) the inventors of each prior art'ed patent until you get a response. Make sure to CC their business,the USPTO and of course Albritton and Ward;
5) Publish the prior art and responses on a website.
And maybe ...
6) If it gets to a court case, deposition those same inventors to see if they were advised by Albritton, Ward or their partners to ignore those cases of prior art.
When one applies for a patent, an oath is sworn. The penalty for falsehoods under that oath in theory - is currently 5 years imprisonment, or a fine, or both..
If an inventor is informed of pre-existing prior art, then that Inventor should be under an obligation to inform the USPTO that they have been made aware of said prior art, or otherwise be effectively committing federal perjury.
It would be interesting, to say the least, to find out what advice Albritton and Ward and Co would give these inventors.
It seems most of the commentators here have not looked at the filings in this case, or read the numerous articles about it on various legal blogs. It is not quite as is being reported here. The two lawyers who are suing him were representing the other side in a case against Cisco. On his blog, he accused them of altering the filing date on some court documents. That's a very serious accusation--if they did it, it would be both a breach of legal ethics and a felony.
In general, it is very very bad for a lawyer to publicly accuse another lawyer of committing a felony unless the accuser has some pretty damned convincing evidence.
And it is a zillion times worse when the accusing lawyer is counsel for the other side in a case the accused lawyer is working on.
Troll Tracker screwed up big time here (heck, commenting AT ALL on a case involving Cisco is a bit shocking), and is probably going to have to cough up a public apology and a wad of cash. It's not about free speech, as some other posters have suggested--it is a plain, old-fashioned "if you accuse someone of a serious crime, you'd better be able to back it up" case.
There's an informative post about the case here. That's a handy blog about activity in the Eastern District of Texas. There was also good coverage in Business Week.
This is a repeat of a post that I made last time the subject of PTT came up, and I will reiterate it just because I think it's so vital and cuts to the heart of the matter at hand. Just because an attorney with a dog in this race is speaking his mind doesn't mean he's wrong. If we're supposed to take sides in this matter I hope we take the side of what is correct and beneficial for society.
To regroup, this statement on PTT's blog that was so insightful and important that I must have read it three times. The commentor on PTT's blog REALLY made an impression on me, especially the parts about how little our law makers understand the issue at hand. All credit goes to the original commentator on the blog, who in my mind left an impression more indelible than PTT himself:
[http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2008/01/j-carl-cooper-and-technology-licensing.html]:
"As a practicing patent attorney with a large corporation, I can see why PTT and other commentators might want not to divulge their name. His anonymity works for me, because the subject of our interest shouldn't be who PTT is, but rather whether the US patent system is functioning effectively and fairly. And PTT's remarks on patent predators aren't any less germane because the sharks are identified by name, and he/she isn't. Forget that it's Niro (or Acacia, or whoever) that PTT comments on, and focus on the fact that they and others are manipulating an imperfect system to the detriment of both the system and its participants.
BTW, there are those who might defend the abuses written of here as nothing more than "arbitrage". I don't agree. Arbitrage smooths out market irregularities caused by assymetrical information or unbalanced supply and demand. It is ethical, and even helpful, where a market is efficient and the market rules are clear and fairly enforced. The swamp of legal, political, technical and economic uncertainties that trolls are rooting around in (and helping muddy up) is more like an armed prospectors' land-grab than what the patent system set out to be: A reward of exclusivity in return for the useful sharing of information. Vigorous enforcement of patents on trivial or useless "inventions", by contingency-fee opportunists, doesn't make them any less trivial and useless. And bundling or accumulating them under shell corporations, the better to leverage them against companies for whom the expected value of a loss at trial (however unlikely) exceeds the price of a settlement, does nothing to better the "market" for IP. It doesn't promote adoption or commercialisation of technology. It doesn't raise capital in support of yet more innovation. It doesn't improve the function of the patent system. It's extortion, pure and simple.
This isn't an abstract, theoretical discussion. It won't be long before Congress, made up of individuals who understand neither the purpose nor the functioning of the US patent system, begins to tinker with it as if it were a tax code with which additional revenues could be extracted and assets could be more equitably redistributed. Trolls cheapen the patent system in a way that makes legislative erosion even more likely. The abuses PTT writes about call the patent monopoly and its proponents into disrepute, and thereby weaken the rights appropriately reserved under other patents to those who really have made a technical contribution to society. As far as I'm concerned, PTT can call the trolls by name. The moneys they've extracted from productive members of society should be enough consolation for them.
Blog on, PTT!
"
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
How are you?
The whole patent business is just getting more and more sour...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
You are free to say what you want, and you are also free to accept the consequences of your speech.
Does anyone have a link to an archive?
It seems to be invite only now, and the wayback machine has nothing...
> On his blog, he accused them of altering the filing date on some court documents. That's a very serious accusation--if they did it, it would be both a breach of legal ethics and a felony.
No he did not!
I *READ* that blog entry, back when it was available. What happened is that they filed the lawsuit a day before their patent issued, he laughed a little at it, and they refiled. So far as I know, the Patent Troll Tracker never claimed that they "altered" anything (like I said, they withdrew and refiled a day later, IIRC), let alone that they committed some kind of felony! In fact, the entire, crazy legal exercise was nothing more than two people fighting, one to avoid Marshall, Texas as a venue (home of the Patent Troll), and the other wanting a sensible venue.
Now, I don't know what you read (most likely the complaint), but it does not match my memory. Heck, this story was submitted weeks ago, but I guess they forgot to run it until now.