One Man's Battle With Patent Trolls

farrellj writes "Dovden Investments, labelled as a Patent Troll by many, got more than they bargained for when they went after Ottawa developer Larry Dunkelman. Mr. Dunkelman wrote BusBuddy, an app that takes GPS and scheduling data from OC Transpo, the local city bus service, and predicts when the bus you are waiting for will actually arrive. But when Dovden came along and asked for $10,000, as a 'licensing' fee, Dunkelman got angry, and decided to fight. 'They claim to have patented the method of using GPS location on vehicles to determine when they will arrive at a certain place,' Dunkelman said. 'This applies to buses, package delivery, airplanes, trains - any business that employs a fleet of vehicles in which they track their location to arrive at a certain place, is open to this patent troll.' Dunkelman hired an intellectual property lawyer and started chipping away at the company's claims. Dovden has since discontinued the suit and are now being chased by Dunkelman and his lawyer for legal costs."

Comments

Back under the bridge, troll!!

[haruchai]

Well done, Larry. I hope more developers have a spine as stiff as yours.

Re:Back under the bridge, troll!!

[quacking duck]

The developer of the X-Plane flight simulator is also fighting the patent troll suing him for using a Google-approved and provided API for verifying Android purchases. He's fighting using his own money too, which lawyers have advised could cost him $1.5 million even if he wins.

They aren't the only dev who this troll is suing, though I believe they're one of the few who's actually big enough (barely) to mount a defence. Google has refused to offer legal or even token moral support for their developers, and the API is probably still in place in the latest version, a Trojan horse waiting to happen to other unsuspecting devs.

Re:Back under the bridge, troll!!

[Archangel Michael]

Fixing Class Action lawsuits, and other similar torts would be easy.

1) All Punitive damages are given to the state, to set up a compensation fund for victims, or to the General Fund.
2) Lawyers fees are not generated by Punitive Damages, 100% of all Punitive damages goes to the Compensation or General Fund
3) Actual Damages goes to the victims. 100% of them.
4) Legal Damages/Fees goes to the lawyers. These can be based on either/both Actual Damages, or Punitive Damages, but shall not exceed a certain percentage (10% suggested) but could be less.

This would take the "profit" motive of huge awards away from victims, and their lawyers. It would allow for juries to award punitive damages, to actually punish those that cause damages, while not rewarding victims with ridiculous windfall sums of money. These simple changes would help prevent lawsuit abuses. Especially in torts such as IP lawsuits. In the case of IP lawsuits, the one suing would actually have to show actual monetary "harm". This means they would have to have a working product/service or licensing scheme for their product. Sitting on a Patent and not making anything violates the whole idea of patents;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

When the system no longer "Promtes progress of science and useful arts" ... it is broken.

donation box

[phantomfive]

Does he have a donation box? I've donated to causes much less worthy.

Costs

[Dachannien]

Are patent suit costs in Canada paid for by the losing party? This is one of the big problems in the US - each side usually pays its own costs, even when the patentee loses.

Re:Courts should stamp this out

[AK Marc]

Yeah, same happened to me. Someone was doing a "dead relative" scam attempt on me, and I got info about them. Passed it to the FBI cybercrimes fraud division (or the group that indicated they were responsible, if there is no specific division for that), and they got back to me with the message "if you haven't actually lost money on it, go away. If you have lost money on it, you are an idiot, go away". So long as crimes aren't investigated because they are "inconvenient", we'll have escalation in crimes, in both severity and quantity.

Re:Go after the lawyers, too.

[EuclideanSilence]

A lawyer should be allowed to defend any person, against any charge, against any evidence, without any fear of legal repercussion.

I would prefer the more objective approach, "any lawyer who aids in sending out frivolous (read: obviously going to be overturned) patent notices should be disbarred."

I imagine it wouldn't be impossible for something like that to find its way into some legislation.