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Virnetx Loses Court Battle To Cisco Over VPN Patent

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-luck-next-time dept.

schneidafunk writes "VirnetX, a patent-licensing firm with 14 employees, has seen its stock price fall after it lost a major patent trial in Texas on Thursday. A jury there ruled that Cisco did not infringe VirnetX's patents on virtual private networks (VPNs), and that the networking giant didn't have to pay $258 million in damages."

17 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Awwww.... by Dexter+Herbivore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Poor patent troll. I'd like to see more losses like this for these parasites.

    1. Re:Awwww.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is still a loss for Cisco. The fact that it made it to trial means they had to spend millions on lawyers and VirnetX probably made sure discovery was as expensive as possible. For patent trolls there's really no downside for them. They don't make anything, so they aren't open to countersuits, and they simply bought the patent from someone else so there's not much to do discovery against on their side.

    2. Re:Awwww.... by Zemran · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is one part of US law that I will always fail to understand. Their action caused harm and CISCO should be able to claim for those damages. I have counter sued twice in the UK when I had to go to court over things that should not have gone to court.

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      I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
    3. Re:Awwww.... by AK+Marc · · Score: 3, Informative

      In the US, a counter suit is a counter claim for the same issue. If your neighbor cut down a tree rooted in your yard that shaded or dropped leaves on his, and sued you for the cost of removal, then you can "counter-sue" for the loss of the tree. You can't counter sue for his fence being over the property line, or for legal costs for a matter not yet resolved. You can re-sue for legal costs later, but you'd need proof they did so recklessly or otherwise inappropriately. Otherwise, you just ask the judge for costs in the case and hope he awards them, he usually doesn't.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    4. Re:Awwww.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In other western countries citizens expect the government to be proactive about preventing harmful actions. Americans expect that much less and instead the idea is that lawsuits after-the-fact play the role that governments play in other countries. That can only work if everyone is allowed to sue everyone else for any reason with no consequences other than legal fees. It's a bit like how you can't have the police jailed if they investigate someone innocent - being a policeman would be too risky in that case. In a sense, in the US, everyone is supposed to be police and lawsuits is how that is done. It's the same thing with how Americans want to carry guns so they can take out criminals. It is a part of their culture.

    5. Re:Awwww.... by gmanterry · · Score: 2

      Seems like when a patent or copyright troll is shown to be making baseless lawsuits, there should be some more appropriate response. When child molesters are convicted, their names and faces are made public. Shouldn't there be a website for bottom-feeding suckerfish? Shouldn't their neighbors be warned?

      The looser should be forced to pay the winner's entire court costs. That would put an end to this crap in a nanosecond.

      --
      Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
    6. Re:Awwww.... by loufoque · · Score: 3, Funny

      The looser of the two must be quite loose already.

    7. Re:Awwww.... by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 3, Funny

      Seems like when a patent or copyright troll is shown to be making baseless lawsuits, there should be some more appropriate response. When child molesters are convicted, their names and faces are made public. Shouldn't there be a website for bottom-feeding suckerfish?

      That's not a very nice or fair comparison.

      Please, think of the real bottom-feeders out there performing a useful ecological function in our lakes and rivers.

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      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    8. Re:Awwww.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What doesn't sound right to me is that the one with money can decide the outcome of the trial. That problem kind of trumps all other problems I would say.

    9. Re:Awwww.... by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      But should we be mad at the troll, or the government that encourages and rewards patent trolling?

      I mean take for example the stock market, from the turn of the 20th century all the way up to the mid 80s most companies were working towards long term growth and stability and then we suddenly go to this crazy batshit "flip this stock" kind of situation where its all about the short term, what happened? The government injected massive amounts of money into the market and distorted the system so that you were penalized for long term slow growth and rewarded for any kind of short term bounce to the stock even if the cause of that bounce would kill the company later, such as stuffing the channel or selling off the assets.

      Yes patent trolls are fucking bad, we all know this but how do we change it? Going after the trolls does nothing because a dozen more will be ready to play lawsuit lotto and take a shot at the big time, no what we need is serious patent reform to take the incentives for trolling out of the equation. Then and ONLY THEN will things get better, until then companies like Cisco are just playing whack a mole .But since it gives Cisco and other companies an easy way to set up a tollbooth to kill competition or leech money from it, look at MSFT and Android for example, that even when they get dinged occasionally by a troll they write it off as a business expense and keep the status quo.

      So what we need to do is similar to what we did with SOPA/PIPA, get a grass roots movement for fixing this mess going so that these corps won't get rewarded for trolling.

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      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    10. Re:Awwww.... by gstrickler · · Score: 2

      Which is why I have advocated for loser pays as an option the judge can impose on a case-by-case basis, when the facts/merits of the case warrant it.

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      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
  2. Employees by Dan+East · · Score: 2

    Let's hope that VirnetX is down to 0 employees now.

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    Better known as 318230.
  3. Publically traded? by MMC+Monster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that a 14 employee company is publicly traded? Or is this common?

    I've certainly worked in much larger companies that weren't on the stock market.

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    Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
    1. Re:Publically traded? by Dexter+Herbivore · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No doubt it'll be structured that way to avoid liability for whatever parent group owns them. A nice little sock puppet to take all the risk and pass any reward on to the limited shareholding.

  4. Half the battle by Anonymous+Psychopath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a good thing when companies with deep pockets stand up patent trolls and win, but I worry that they'll just move to smaller, softer targets who can't afford to fight. Even after widely-publicized losses like this we'll continue to suffer from patent trolls until we have some meaningful legal reforms.

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    Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

  5. Before complaining about the USPTO... by Theaetetus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... note that the jury also found that the patents were valid over the prior art. Cisco doesn't practice the invention in the patents, but that doesn't mean that the patents don't cover a valid invention.

  6. Re:What we need is communism by mcgrew · · Score: 2

    Congratulations on the very worst "in soviet Russia" joke I've ever seen.

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