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Patent Trolls Target Small East Texas Companies
An anonymous reader writes "In a sign that patent trolls are getting desperate to keep their cases in East Texas — long known as the friendliest venue for their claims — some have taken to suing tiny, no-name companies that are run by East Texas residents. The hope is that, if at least one defendant is located in East Texas, the judge will keep the entire case there. Nate Neel, a Longview, Texas resident with a small open source software company called CitiWare, was sued by Bedrock Computer Technologies in June despite (he claims) having no customers or other meaningful operations of any kind. In response, Mr. Neel has posted a strongly worded letter to Bedrock's attorneys on his Web site. It will be interesting to see how East Texas judges respond to this abuse of process perpetrated against their own residents."
This doesn't really have anything to do with local legislators. Patent disputes are usually handled in US District Court, meaning that the reason why the Eastern District of Texas has been so friendly to patent trolls is because an unusual number of federal judges in that district are unusually biased in favor of plaintiffs in patent disputes.
It's not that he has no customers, it's the fact he closed his branch of the company completely in 2005. FTA :
"According to the complaint, defendants ...CitiWare Technology Solutions... use the method and apparatus falling within the scope of the '120 Patent in the course of their business operations."
Suing CitiWare in Colorado where they are based makes sense, suing them in Texas where that branch of the company hasn't existed for four years is a bit nonsensical except to try and keep it in a region known to be sympathetic to their claims. Which seems more than a bit dirty to me, but then again, they are patent trolls...
A 20x20 pixel white or perhaps transparent shim. Yes, that certainly was illustrative. Sooner or later, someone will post a link to an image that is totally useless. Or are you just collecting IPs?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
-1, Did Not Do The Research
Federal judges are appointed for life, not elected.
Seriously. I was on the verge of googling his (repeated) use of the word slim to see what hip, young lingo I needed to add to my repertoire. Then I realized he just can't spell "slime".
The Parking Lot is Full, Dec 04
There are like, 54 different comics on that page. Which one is the relevant one?
That's why I said "Dec 04" in my citation.
Why should a website be so poorly structured as to not have any direct links to single comics?
Likely because people have been embedding single comics in forum posts and running up the (self-)publisher's bandwidth bill.
Federal Judges are appointed for life, and can acquire Secret Service protection without too much difficulty.
Umm, I thought it was the US Marshals Service that protected Federal Judges?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The Secret Service protects other government officials (mainly the President, the VP, embassy personnel etc); the federal courts have their own executive, which, yes, is the US Marshals Service.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
The judges were appointed at the Federal level (That is appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate). The judges here do not reflect local views. We have more judges in East Texas than we should have, because of a rich gas field and the resulting litigation over those natural resources. The real reason that this area is picked is because cases are heard very quickly (years earlier in some cases). This has earned our federal district courts the nickname "Rocket Dockets". These scams are perpetrated by following the law to the letter, and the scammers use a speedy trial to there advantage.
No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States