A New Species of Patent Troll

Geoffrey.landis writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, there's a new species of patent troll out there. These new trolls sue companies that sell products with an expired patent number on them. That's right, it's against the law to sell a product that's marked with an expired patent number. The potential fine? $500. Per violation. And some of the companies have patent numbers on old plastic molds that have made literally billions of copies. Using whistle-blower laws, 'anyone can file a claim on behalf of the government, and plaintiffs must split any fine award evenly with it.' You've been warned."

Comments

Wildly Overblown

[Grond]

The emerging case law on this kind of action is putting the damper on a lot of get-rich-quick schemes. First, the potential damages are up to $500 per violation. Courts are not handing down massive damage awards; quite the opposite, in fact. It's likely that most of these cases will end up with damages assessed at some fractions of a dollar or even fractions of a cent per violation. $500 per violation is a cap on damages, not a target.

Second, the courts are setting a fairly high bar for the 'intent to deceive the public' element of false marking. The majority of these cases are the result of typos or failing to retool an assembly line the moment a patent expires.

Re:Editors, please clearly define which side to ha

[Antisyzygy]

In the case of a mold used to make plastics, stamp metal, ect., its incredibly expensive for a company to get a new mold made. I used to work at a CNC shop as a lowly peon preparing and finishing parts for military contracts, movie cameras and manufacturing molds. The company I worked for routinely charged big bucks for molds simply because it takes a large amount of skilled and unskilled man hours to produce it. An engineer typically did the initial design in some sort of CAD or other program, then the CNC machines were programmed to prepare the part. Then the part typically went through several CNC machines before being finished. After this the part's measurements were rigorously checked to see if there were within specifications. Then little turds like myself (I was a freshman in college) de-burred the sharp edges, put it through various chemical baths and polished the shit out of it before cleaning it one final time. The aforementioned is still a simplification of the process. Generally manufacturing molds were ordered only once. Suppose a patent expires. If a manufacturer chooses to have the patent number included in the mold at the get go, then they need to either modify the mold without decreasing the functionality of their product or they need to get a whole new mold made. A lot of times a company may only have one mold for a particular part, so the cost of any mistake in modification is large since it may mean totally replacing the mold. The point is that the company is not doing anything inherently wrong in using the mold to produce a product that they have been selling under a patent they either owned or licensed if the patent expired. It still references a patent number that can be looked up online to determine if its expired or not if someone chooses to spend the time. My point is ethical considerations need to be taken into account in enforcing this law, because the lawyers are only looking to score some cash at someone else's expense. To be unfair and use a logical fallacy, "Do you think this law is unjust or do you hate small businesses?".

Re:Editors, please clearly define which side to ha

[canajin56]

TFA mentions 50 years, about 49 years and 364 days short of your "day after". Additionally, the law is on the manufacture of goods with incorrect patent labels, not the sale, so it doesn't matter how long it was in the store. What matters is if you are still making them.