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Patent Troll Says Anyone Using Wi-Fi Infringes
akahige sends this excerpt from an article at TechDirt:
"The Patent Examiner blog has the incredible story of Innovatio IP, a patent troll that recently acquired a portfolio of patents that its lawyers (what, you think there are any employees?) appear to believe cover pretty much any Wi-Fi implementation. They've been suing coffee shops, grocery stores, restaurants and hotels first — including Caribou Coffee, Cosi, Panera Bread Co, certain Marriotts, Best Westerns, Comfort Inns and more. ... The lawyer representing the company, Matthew McAndrews, seems to imply that the company believes the patents cover everyone who has a home Wi-Fi setup, but they don't plan to go after such folks right now, for 'strategic' reasons."
So, I guess amateur radio operators have been infringing since, what... the early 1900's? Voice is just data, right..?
--- no sig to see here... move along.
At some point its just cheaper to pay someone to take a hit out on a troll like this. Maybe invite him out on your new yacht and have a little accident...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
what, avoiding a lynch mob?
Kill them with fire.
Ok. This is classic patent trolling. They aren't going after the Wi-Fi manufacturers who have the resources to possibly fight this in court but rather going against the little people. There's an obvious fix for this. Force people to sue the companies that make potentially infringing technologies rather than the people who buy them until there's a precedent with the company that the tech is infringing. Unfortunately, with the grab-bag of junk that is America Invents now done, everyone is going to avoid serious patent reform for another decade. So this isn't getting fixed for a while. Then we'll probably get some other terrible mix of good and bad stuff in some new law and the whole process will repeat itself. Good for the lawyers. Not very good for everyone else.
They could not recoup their losses going after home users the way they can with business users.
What losses?
I'm sure part of their strategy is to target small companies and attempt to bully them in paying a few grand to "license" the technology. I would imagine that these guys know this case will be thrown out once a defendant with resources goes to court. I'm not going to claim to be a patent expert, but I do know a couple of things: 1) The patent has to be actively protected. So if it was filed in the 90s and not enforced until today, from my understanding they essentially forfeit the right to later lay claims to the patent. 2) If it is known to "someone skilled in the art of" as the next logical step, then the patent is null. I obviously have no clue what all of those patents exactly cover, but I'm going to run that with prior art in wireless transmission in radio and television that there is a precedent that data transmission via an industry standard would be a next logical step. These asshats need to be nuked with a low orbit ion cannon.
Good for the lawyers. Not very good for everyone else.
That's what we get for making so many lawyers in this country. People bitch about how med schools and dental schools "don't make enough doctors/dentists". Law schools make absurd surpluses of lawyers and now we see what happens when we have too many of them. The lawyers aren't getting enough business from people, so they have to find new ways to keep themselves busy by suing each other.
Not to say that we couldn't use more medical and dental professionals, but we sure as hell don't need any more lawyers. Somewhere in between there should be a happy medium.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This solves one problem only once. Then the portfolios passes to the next person and the problem repeats itself.
To solve the general problem, we need to encourage more ridiculous patent trolls. This needs to get to a critical threshold where the entire system is brought on trial and exposed for the absolute absurdity that it is.
"The page linked to by this summary did not explain why the patent trolls are going after the users of WiFi devices, rather than vendors."
actually it did:
"The company is demanding a one-time lump sum licensing payment between $2,300 and $5,000 from each of the several hundred defendants targeted in its lawsuits, McAndrews said. Some of the defendants have already settled, he added."
"In casting such a wide net, Innovatio (it means “innovation” in Latin, McAndrews said) displays a new approach in patent enforcement. In a field where patent-holding companies often demand six- or seven-figure dollar amounts for damages, five-figure settlements are considered basement-low. By demanding a few thousand dollars, Innovatio ensures that, for many small business owners, taking up a legal defense won’t make financial sense."
They are suing when they can pursue action cheaper than the defendant can defend. If the patent were strong they'd go after big money, but the big money will fight and since the patent is weak, they will instead play spam.
Also, by suing a large number of people in diverse locations and jurisdictions they will make it difficult for defendants to defend collectively and economically.
Think of all the Jobs Being Created by the Job Creator Class, isn't it lovely?
It's the usual reasons. Easy shakedown target. The defendants are ill equipped to invalidate the patents since they aren't technology companies and the extortion amount is kept carefully below the cost of going to court.
It's pretty much the same as any shakedown racket with the courts playing the part of the leg breaker.
...the western world's economy is collapsing. When you make ideas property, everyone gets hurt, even the big guys (but more so, the little guys). We already have patents and copyright strangling the market and preventing innovation, and now we're seeing more and more their use to undermine technology that is already a basis part of out society.
This is just another example in an infinitely long chain of abuses, and still there is essentially no proof that either patents or copyright actually encourage much of anything. So, are we going to abolish imaginary property, or fade into legally enforced obscurity? Because I know China won't give a crap about our patents once they no longer need to sell us cheap junk. If all we export is old ideas and lawsuits, there will reach a point when other powerful countries just shut down that trade all together.
Wake up, people, now is the time to elect people who are going to do something about this untenable situation. You aren't going to get another chance.
Great Intellect...
But but.. how are they going to find a judge who doesn't use wireless technology? The entire system is against them! Oh, the poor trolls!
Seriously though, maybe this one.
I'd like to know what number patents Innovatio are using. The CSIRO patent (5,487,069, filed in 1992) was a pretty complete description of the 802.11 OFDM physical layer. Surely anything else has to be a minor and obvious increment? The oldest patent I can see, with inventors Meier and Mahany, is 5,394,436, filed in 1994, and it does not refer to the CSIRO patent (meaning it is open to challenge from the CSIRO patent?) 5,394,436 might apply to the MAC layer, rather than the physical layer, and it is quite vague. Defenders might want to refer to the PARROT project, which the CSIRO was running as part of its WLAN work, predating 5,394,436. PARROT was a complete WLAN MAC layer (google: csiro parrot mac layer).
There was also a PhD thesis that came out of Macquarie University in the early 1990's. The name of the author escapes me, but the supervisor was David Skellern. The thesis described a MAC layer for mobile IP, and fed heavily into the standards at the time.
Andrew Myles was the author of the thesis.
Yep, if I were sued I'd probably raise enough procedural headaches to make sure my eventual settlement was a wash for them or net loss. But I would settle in the end. I mean, I'm a lawyer and it still wouldn't be worth my time to learn convoluted patent litigation.
I hold a patent on the process of buying patents from other companies and then suing people who it might be argued are using something vaguely related to my patents and who are wealthy enough to pay me off but not wealthy enough to defend themselves legally.
These bastards owe me money!
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Let's pretend for a moment, that these people aren't just trolls looking for quick settlements. Difficult, I know.
But in what universe does it make sense for a patent holder to sue the end user? That would be like Apple suing a consumer for buying a Samsung tablet.
I would like to see one of the troll victims post an open letter that says something along the lines of, "Go away or prepare to be counter-sued into oblivion." Alas, TFA makes it sound like someone could try that and still lose. :(
home users will be less likely to fight them than an ISP would.
Well, I can't afford to fight them in court, but I CAN afford bullets.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Make patent ownership non-transferable, or only transferable once from a person to a corporation (to benefit individual inventors who may need to sell their patents in order to bring inventions to market).
I think it is called the protection racket. Paying your weekly fee is cheaper than fixing your windows or hiring an army of security guards.
Hat Guy is in it for the movie rights.
Maybe, though the story the CSIRO guys tell is that the inventive step was using OFDM on indoor channels, which was not being done in 1992, and they were actually told by others that "it won't work". Also in their favour, they did develop and commercialise a product (via Radiata). They also didn't wait until WiFi was widespread, as they were in there from day one saying "we have a patent". Rather the big companies ignored them, hoping that they would go away. Eventually CSIRO got sick of doing it gently and brought out the big stick.
On the bright side, the CSIRO patent must be nearing expiration (21 years), so it will soon be open season on WiFi?
I think everyone should direct their concerns to the law firm. Just make an honest inquiry about avoiding the infringement and litigation. Maybe offer them some free network testing in exchange for not getting sued. Maybe do some testing first as a show of good faith.
Contact the law firm (Niro,Haller and Niro):
Telephone: (312) 236-0733
Facsimile: (312) 236-3137
It's the RIAA extortion racket all over again.
Write the AG and tell him to get RICO on their asses for racketeering.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I would have thought that Starbucks (the largest coffee chain in the USA and possibly the entire world) would have been a target since WiFi has been a huge part of their business lately.
Or McDonalds (the largest fast food joint on the planet with over 11,500 WiFi locations in the US alone)
There is an easy fix for this. Make patents non-transferable. Whomever invents something can claim a patent on the invention and reap the benefits for a limited time. Once the inventor dies, or the company folds or gets bought, the invention becomes public domain.
The real problem is that patents or no longer a means, they are the end.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
The company is demanding a one-time lump sum licensing payment between $2,300 and $5,000 from each of the several hundred defendants targeted in its lawsuits, McAndrews said. Some of the defendants have already settled, he added. [...] “This is not a seat-of-the-pants, fly-by-night shakedown.
Law school probably offers an entire range of courses teaching their students how to keep a straight face.
On August 11, 1942, US Patent 2,292,387 was granted to George Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey", Heddy Lamarr's married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. It was never implemented at the time. Perhaps owing to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution. Lamarr and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Wi-Fi. Antheil was pianist who wrote some Hollywood film music and performed. He was one brick short of a load and was known to come out to perform and lay a pistol on the piano implying that he would shoot anyone who disturbed the performance. In 1933 Heddy Lamarr became famous (or infamous) for making the film "Ecstasy" in which she appeared nude and was depicted having an orgasm. It was banned pretty much everywhere. When promoting war bonds she offered to kiss any man who bought at least $250K. She raised $7 million in one night. President Obama has ordered an overhaul of the patent system. Currently 500,000 patent applications haven't even been opened. I'm personally considering a patent on "selling things for money". If you have an algorithm you want to patent, consider programming that piece of code into an FPGA using VHDL and patent the circuit. Patents on circuits hold up very well in court.
Patent troll "losses" = MAFIAA "potential sales"
Imaginary profit making made real by kangaroo courts and parasitic lawyers.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
They have 34 assorted patents that they are using as an Argumentum Verbosium - Proof by intimidation. They make up hundreds of pages of legalese, there's no way a business can defend itself without spending tens of thousands on patent attorneys to examine those claims and cross-check them against the WiFi standards. Below are the 17 patents asserted against Holiday Inn, have fun. (Talk about "redundant" patents!)
6,714,559 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
7,386,002 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
7,535,921 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
7,548,553 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
5,740,366 “Communication Network Having Plurality Of Bridging Nodes Which Transmit A Beacon To Terminal Nodes In Power Saving State That It Has Messages Awaiting Delivery.”
5,940,771 “Network Supporting Roaming, Sleeping Terminals.”
6,374,311 “Communication Network Having A Plurality Of Bridging Nodes Which Transmit A Beacon To Terminal Nodes In Power Saving State That It Has Messages Awaiting Delivery.”
7,457,646 “Radio Frequency Local Area Network.”
5,546,397 “High Reliability Access Point For Wireless Local Area Network.”
5,844,893 “System For Coupling Host Computer Means With Base Transceiver Units On A Local Area Network.”
6,665,536 “Local Area Network Having Multiple Channel Wireless Access.”
6,697,415 “Spread Spectrum Transceiver Module Utilizing Multiple Mode Transmission.”
7,013,138 “Local Area Network Having Multiple Channel Wireless Access.”
7,710,907 “Local Area Network Having Multiple Channel Wireless Access.”
7,916,747 “Redundant Radio Frequency Network Having A Roaming Terminal Communication Protocol.”
7,873,343 “Communication Network Terminal With Sleep Capability.”
7,536,167 “Network Supporting Roaming, Sleeping Terminals.”
Yes, there is. It's called Declaratory Judgment.
And Cisco & Motorola have already started the process for you: http://morrisjames.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/cisco-systems-inc-and-motorola-solutions-inc-v-innovatio-ip-ventures-llc.pdf