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Newegg Defeats Alcatel-Lucent in Third Patent Win This Year
Newegg's policy of not backing down from patent trolls, even ones as large as Alcatel-Lucent, continues to result in victory. Earlier this year, Overstock and Newegg successfully defended themselves with a jury invalidating Alcatel-Lucent's main patent used to force companies as large as Amazon to settle. Naturally, Alcatel-Lucent appealed, but the appeals court quickly ruled in favor of Newegg and Overstock.com. From Ars: "Federal Circuit judges typically take months, and occasionally years, to review the patent appeals that come before them. Briefs in this case were submitted last year, and oral arguments were held last Friday, May 10. The three-judge panel upheld Newegg's win (PDF), without comment — in just three days. ... Alcatel-Lucent dropped the case over its other two patents, desperate to get back the '131 patent that Newegg and Overstock had killed at trial. 'If they had been able to revive this patent, the litigation machine would have continued on,' Reines told Reuters after the win."
at the trial the alacatel VP who was sent to testify had no idea which patent newegg was violating or how they were violating it. alcatel just said you must be violating one of our 27,000 patents
THIS is why I give my business to companies like NewEgg, and have and will NEVER buy a single damn thing from ones like Amazon.
Amazon settled because it is also a patent troll. Blood runs thicker than water, especially between patent trolls.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Am I the only one that read the patent and thought it was extremely vague and so general that it describes almost every client-server relationship since the beginning of the computing?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
What happens with the settlements that Amazon and others made over this patent? Can that money be clawed back?
Verbum caro factum est
"Successful defendants have their litigation managed by people who care," said Cheng. "For me, it's easy. I believe in Newegg, I care about Newegg. Alcatel Lucent, meanwhile, they drag out some random VP—who happens to be a decorated Navy veteran, who happens to be handsome and has a beautiful wife and kids—but the guy didn't know what patents were being asserted. What a joke.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
The patentability of software only applies when it is run on a computer.
Software isn't being patented in "software" patents. Vague ideas and idioms are patented. Pinching the screen to zoom isn't a software patent. If it was a software patent the patent should be on exactly how the software accomplishes the effect, on the implementation. If my implementation accomplishes the effect differently it wouldn't infringe your patent. The implementation is the code. The code is copyrighted. A real software patent would be redundant. The way it works now is the equivalent of inventing a special kind of drill bit and getting a patent on anything that makes holes. That's how software patents work now.
Who is John Galt?
Only 1980's? I'd be surprised if substantial part of that, at the least, didn't go back to Doug Engelbart's On-Line System demo in 1968. :-) That was a veritable treasure trove, that one.
Generally, when invalidating a patent, you go for the most recent prior art that's still "prior" to the priority date of the patent - there's less wiggle room when you say "this was done 6 months earlier by X" as opposed to "this was done 20 years previously by Y", because with the latter, they can respond "if so, how come no one exploited it for 20 years?"