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"Patent Markings" Lawsuits Could Run Into the Trillions
bizwriter writes "The latest legal bugaboo facing manufacturers is the false patent marking suit. Using what has been until recently an obscure type of legal action, individuals and enterprising law firms have targeted large manufacturers with lawsuits that can easily run million of dollars — in a case involving a drink cup manufacturer, over $10 trillion — for incorrectly including patent numbers on products. Some companies named in such suits are 3M, Cisco, Pfizer, Monster Cable, and Merck. Even expired patent numbers can be actionable." Sounds like a perfect opportunity for some enlightened appeals court to inject some sense into the debate. What do you think the chances are? Note: if ever there were a page that cries out for the Readability bookmarklet, this is it.
How about this is completely unrelated and if I really care about the list of patents on a product I'm probably treating them as a warning, not an ad, and I'd rather they be too-inclusive than super-exclusive?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I wish (US) copyright law worked this way around ... right now there's essentially no risk in tacking on a questionable copyright notice.
Never going to happen.
In the eyes of the Federal Gov, upholding patents and IPs are so important, it would be considered National Security to protect them. Seriously, what the hell does America have that's worth selling? Nothing except services and IP. We hardly manufacture anything anymore.
Life is not for the lazy.
This is simple a case of false advertising. The companies that are being sued labelled their products wrong. "Oh I forgot". Yeah, likely story. I see they did NOT forget to put the patent claim on the product. How odd is that eh?
If it is going to cost the likes of Monster Cable a few millions or even bankrupt them to get false patent claims of products, then I am all for it, and the people bringing these cases making a fortune? Well sometimes the person who cleans up the system gets paid.
Say that someone found a way to make serious money of prosecuting companies sending fake copyright take down notices, would we be against that as well? No.
Sometimes you need to cheer on the slime to get rid of the scum.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Here is a link to the court's decision. It is not a judgment against Solo, but a denial of their request to dismiss the case.
The judge argues the problem of incorrect markings here:
The plaintiff, i.e. the "troll", has not yet made his case. In order to prevail he has to prove that Solo used the incorrect markings "for the purpose of deceiving the public." That remains to be determined.
But therein, it is not clear to me what's really going on here with Solo (for example). It seems that laziness about cleaning up one's patent markings has a distinct reward, i.e. to scare off copy-cat competitors (which is exactly the kind of subsequent activity that the publicly filed/expired patent is intended to encourage). I'm not so sure that these are just mistakes, and in fact, I find it unlikely that there isn't some willfulness here. The corporate counsels that insist on taking advantage of adding the patent markings don't consider the correctness of removing them once they are no longer valid???
It may take a crack of the whip to clean up the rampant "laziness" that leaves these wrong and discouraging markings in use.
Loser pays actually helps a lot more than you're describing. It makes it enormously more feasible for attorneys to take cases on contingency, especially obviously ridiculous ones.
EVERY attorney I've ever spoken with (and that is a lot of them) has told me that if a case goes to court there is at minimum a 10% chance they will lose the case no matter how iron clad their argument. Even being correct is no guarantee that you will win once the case gets to a judge/jury. If we have a loser pays system that is a pretty substantial risk for a party who can't afford to lose.
Don't get me wrong, I think there should be some form of loser pays in the system - we just have to be careful how it is implemented.
How about reforming the law to do away with the moronic idea of awarding "punitive damages", or whatever it is called in cases like these, to claimants?
So how do you propose to make large companies pay attention to their bad behavior? The medical bills are pocket change and a company doesn't have a sense of ethics. They exist to make money. That is the ONLY reason most of them exist. If a company misbehaves one way to punish the company is to do so financially - hence, punitive damages.
If you have a better idea I'm sure lots of people would be interested but I'm pretty sure you don't.
In some countries, like the one I live in, payments to claimants are pretty much limited to actual damages and legal fees, maybe with a small bit added on top for things like mental anguish or redress.
Which is an approach that potentially rewards large companies for bad behavior. If the benefit of the bad behavior outweighs the financial cost, the company is going to behave badly. People have died because of this sort of cost/benefit analysis.
And if another company has been naughty and put incorrect markings on their products, they should received reasonable punishment.
Agreed but you don't seem to have a very clear idea of what reasonable might be. A $50,000 fine to McDonalds is not a punishment.
Some of these amounts sound excessive, and in any case, they should be treated as fines and go to the state, not to some random claimant.
Why is the state any more deserving? Besides, the state will take much of it in taxes anyway.