Slashdot Mirror
How Newegg Saved Online Retail
bargainsale writes with an account at Ars Technica of "the inspiring story of Newegg vs the patent troll. Perhaps the system does work after all." Newegg's lawyer Lee Cheng has some choice words for the business model employed by Soverain Software, the patent troll which tried, with some success, to exact money from online retailers for using online shopping carts. Newegg has prevailed, though, and Soverain's claims are toast. From Ars: "The ruling effectively shuts down dozens of the lawsuits Soverain filed last year against Nordstrom's, Macy's, Home Depot, Radioshack, Kohl's, and many others (see our chart on page 2). All of them did nothing more than provide shoppers with basic online checkout technology. Soverain used two patents, numbers 5,715,314 and 5,909,492, to claim ownership of the "shopping carts" commonly used in online stores. In some cases, it wielded a third patent, No. 7,272,639."
A patent troll is one who files or buys overly broad patents, expressly for the purpose of not pursuing active development or marketing of their patents. A patent troll's business plan is to wait for a company to make big on something that might infringe, or buy portfolios that might be infringed on, and keep them in obscurity, till such time they can be used to sue(read: extort) a company such that proper legal defense is purposefully less than the cost to comply with their licensing agreements.
In short, a patent troll would prefer you not learn about their patent till it's too late, while a proper patent holder wants you to know of their patent so that you will license it from them for your technology.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
A "patent troll" is someone that takes advantage of patent law for monetary gain based on the innovation of others. Patent trolls aren't trying to claim reward for what is theirs. They simply game the system and out-maneuver the innovators such that, by legal definition (but not common sense) they are entitled to reward.
As such, it's mostly counterproductive for the purpose that the method of patenting was intended to serve. (encouraging and rewarding innovation)
Patent trolls siphon off some of the rewards of innovation through litigation and through the licensing of innovations where they themselves were not the innovator.
Fortunately, a lot of courts (at least those that'd don't directly benefit from the litigations, such as texas east district) have identified these people as taking advantage of the legal system and costing it money in exchange not for the support of innovation, but for the enrichment of the trolls and stifling of innovation, and are starting to push for change.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What is this strange phrase you use, "don't need"? There's always something any self-respecting geek needs from Newegg!
"Newegg was lucky that they had an in-house lawyer and the original owner who was prepared to make a stand. This is rare: Conventional wisdom is to hire outside lawyers - patent specialists and all. "
They did hire an outside law firm, Weil Gotshal, which is one of the top firms in the country.
In theory judges are supposed to dismiss law suits without merit, but they don't - because they don't give a shit about the costs and it gives them something to do. . . That the original judge fucked up does not surprise me. Forget what you see on TV about just and fair judges: In patent troll counties like the Eastern District of Texas the judges are blatantly pro-plaintiff. If they were not all the money flowing into their district would dry up, the judges and legal fraternity would be looking for a job somewhere else.
Absolutely wrong, judges love dismissing cases, particularly complex cases like patent actions, because they don't want their docket to get overloaded. Judges make incorrect holdings of fact and law all the time; that's the whole point behind appeal courts. It's usually not out of malice or incompetence, despite perennial slashdot anger at what is perceived as to the contrary. Speaking as someone who used to litigate in federal courts, the majority of judges just don't care on a personal level about the parties before them, they just want to get the cases moved through their court. The only personal investment most judges have in the cases is they don't want them to be reversed because they consider it as a hit on their reputation.