Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What To Do About Patent Trolls Seeking Wi-fi License Fees?
An anonymous reader writes "My company has been contacted by certified letter by Delaware law firm. They are seeking license fees for a Wi-fi patent. I believe this is a patent troll (not that this matters in relation to dealing with this issue). This is a newly formed law firm less than 4 months old. This patent is U.S. Patent No. 5,506,866. This patent covers equipment and method related to the transmission of information involving the multiplexing information into a stream of signal points (and demultiplexing the same), and related technology. They have 'offered' to license this patent with no amounts specified. Unfortunately we are a small free software company. The company is setup as a sole proprietorship. I'm not asking for legal advise from the Slashdot community. The question is where might one look for 'legal counsel' with the expertise to answer these types of legal questions as it relates to this inquiry. I would prefer to avoid legal fees, court cases, or license fees running the company into the ground. The company is registered in New Jersey."
What are the repercussions or ramifications of you writing back,
"Fuck you, we're not going to play this game."
Serious question.
You should find yourself an attorney.
1) this patent was filed in 1993, making it a 17 years from issue date patent. Based upon it's issue date of April 9, 1996, it expires (dies) on April 9, 2013. So in a very very short time, the patent will be useless anyway.
2) What is claimed is based upon side channel data in a simultaneous analog/digital signal. It is very unlikely to actually apply to WiFi, but if they can scare you into paying them, then they win. With a competent atty., it is very likely you can make them look elsewhere for victims they can frighten into settlements.
http://www.google.com/patents/US5506866
Lazy bones.
a public debunking with a standard legal response is exactly what's needed. saves everyone else he time and effort.
Would Canada work for those purposes? I guess so.
See title. Also don't reply until you absolutely HAVE to. Paten runs out this year!
I doubt that you are competent enough to evaluate the patent givien that you are not able/willing to shoulder the burdon of three/four extra clicks to arrive at the relevant documentation.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Could someone please make this a hyperlink. I'm too lazy to copy and paste it into my url.
It's the only way to be sure.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
This assumes the troll is being honest.
They could be building a case for attacking deep pockets later by assembling a history of knocking off a bunch of little guys first.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Isn't it a shame that there isn't a significant, statutory penalty for filing or threatening to file a false claim?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The Groklaw community will give you plenty of help. Just ask!
You should always answer a lawyer who sends you a letter. Even a troll. Just make sure your answer is either useless to them or can be used to stall the case.
For example you could send a letter explaining that you don't believe your company infringes on said patent amd ask for clarification on why they believe otherwise.
When you get an answer to that, your next letter should be a series of questions asking how they know stuff about your company. Ask them where they got their information from, and ask them to provide a full report on all data collected about you or the company. They may very well be legally obligated to respond to inquiries about collected data.
Finally, ask them for instructions on how they believe you can stop infringing the patent. Explain you have no desire to infringe on it, that you believe you are indeed not, but that you would be happe to evaluate any suggestions they might have regarding ways to ensure the alleged infringement.
Each time wait 7-9 days before responding.
If they get difficult ask for a personal meeting at your office and make sure to explain how busy you are when you apoligize for being unavailable until ... approx 9-17 days later.
By the time you are done with this the patent expiation date will be closer and they will have wasted a ton of time. Also should the case ever get to trial you can show that you have honestly tried to cooperate in any way possible (short on paying for the infringement you don't believe is taking place).
It is almost as much fun as fooling nigerian scammers.
Put them to work. It isn't really that hard. :-)
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
If the OP truly believes that this is a patent troll attacking them, the best thing may be to just ignore them. It's like spam: They are seeing who bites, and then they can reel you in for a settlement. If they send a couple of letters and don't get any response (especially from a small company that may have gone out of business without notifying anyone), they'll just move on to their next possible target.
Ars Technica had an article on this recently, though I can't find it quickly at the moment. It most cases, the best response was to just ignore the first couple of letters.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Firefox and Chrome both support highlighting the url text and opening in a new tab without addons.
You shouldn't have accepted the certified letter.
Certified letters have to have the sender noted on the slip that you get from the post office. Sometimes the post office doesn't do this (I have to remind my postal carrier all the time), but if you return the slip with "WHO IS THE SENDER?" written on it then they will fill it out properly and redeliver it.
If the sender isn't someone you know, or with whom you have a business arrangement (and from whom you might be expecting such a letter), don't take delivery. Don't send it back "refused delivery", just don't go get it. You can claim that you were out of town, never got the note, never had time to get it, or otherwise had a legitimate excuse. They can't do anything unless they have proof of "notice of service", which means that they have proof that they contacted you for the suit.
A certified letter is proof of service (ie - you were served with the letter), and they can use this to file suit against you.
If you don't accept the letter, they have to hire someone to personally hand you the notice. This costs them money - in my area the sheriff charges $80 for serving letters. The sheriff will get to it "when he gets to it", which in practice means anywhere from 2 weeks to never.
(As a personal anecdote, some bank in NYC decided from their internal records that they had been paying my NH property taxes for the last 5 years, and "would I just enclose a check for this and send it back"? I never accepted any of their certified letters, and they couldn't be bothered to send a person out to deliver the notice personally. Eventually they gave up. I had cancelled checks going back 5 years, but couldn't convince them otherwise because "their records showed payments for the last 5 years.")
This is one way to deal with frivolous lawsuits. If the lawsuit is genuine, then these sorts of barriers won't matter and you can address the legitimate legal issues. If the lawsuit is genuine and is something that you should address, then they should have no problem sending you information in a regular letter, which isn't considered proof of service.
I know this advice will cause the real lawyers here to cringe and complain, but then again they don't have any good ways to block frivolous suits.
While I'm not very experienced in US and IP law, I don't understand how a user of a commercially available product can be held liable for using something he just bought. How should one be expected to ensure that every piece of hardware you buy on the open market is legal as far as IP and licensing goes? ... including damages payments for the company targeted in this way ...
Sounds to me like it's a complete scare tactics on the side of this lawyer, and should be punishable by law
But then, when has the legal system been sane and understandable for any person with at least half a brain ...
if you are actively involved in free software, you automatically qualify for free assistance from the Software Freedom Law Centre. phone them up, immediately. do not hang around. also you did the right thing asking around: do more of that, and specifically ask people to find prior art. look up what newegg did. the article was on here last week.
What's even more interesting is that IEEE doesn't list it as a WiFi related patent: http://standards.ieee.org/about/sasb/patcom/pat802_11.html
And considering IEEE doesn't tend to mess around about these sort of things. Actually you might want to contact them on this one. If it works once it could work on bigger players as well, so there is a chance they'd actually take a look at the patent and see if it's worth anything. While I doubt it'll help, it probably wouldn't hurt to try.
If the OP truly believes that this is a patent troll attacking them, the best thing may be to just ignore them. It's like spam: They are seeing who bites, and then they can reel you in for a settlement. If they send a couple of letters and don't get any response (especially from a small company that may have gone out of business without notifying anyone), they'll just move on to their next possible target.
This, or hire a hitman to kill their Lawyer, and couple of lawyers that will be replacing the first one. Eventually they will stop replacing them. This will still be cheaper than litigation.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Many businesses are receiving letters like this. It's a fraud.
You might want to read this article:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Cisco-Motorola-Netgear-Aim-Cannons-At-WiFi-Patent-Troll-121594
And this:
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20121009/01444620656/cisco-motorola-netgear-team-up-to-expose-wifi-patent-bully.shtml
"Last year, we wrote about a crazy patent troll, named Innovatio, who had sued a ton of restaurants and hotels, claiming that anyone who used WiFi was violating its patents. It was even claiming that individuals who use WiFi at home infringed too -- but that it wouldn't go after them "at this time." Instead, it preferred to focus on shaking down tons of small businesses, offering to settle for $2,500 to $3,000 -- which is cheaper than hiring a lawyer to fight it, no matter how bogus. We noted at the time that Motorola and Cisco had gone to court to try to get a declaratory judgment to protect its customers. "
You know the courts are failing in their duty when these sorts of comments get Insightful mods.
You'll know they've failed when the mod becomes +5, Informative.
The problem is that if you send them a letter it says that you exist and are taking them seriously. You don't actually want to do that; if they know that you are taking them seriously, then they know they can threaten you.
Let them actually threaten you first: Make them actually do something that costs them money, like file an actual lawsuit. Then you can immediately offer to settle, or whatever. (And just because you are ignoring them publicly doesn't mean you have to ignore them internally - start a chain of internal correspondence showing that you were checking for use of the patent and considering a reply, or something.)
Right now they haven't actually spent any significant amount of time or money on this. See if they want to, before you spend yours.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
And you can bet that if you win in court, they will suddenly be a company with no assets, and will be wound up the second the verdict comes in, leaving you with no option but to pay your own legal fees.