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Judge Orders Patent Troll To Explain Its 'Mr. Sham' To Jury
netbuzz writes "Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has no problem calling Network Protection Sciences (NPS) a patent troll. What he does have a problem with is NPS telling a Texas court that NPS had an 'ongoing business concern' in that state run by a 'director of business development' when all it really had was a rented file-cabinet room and the 'director' was actually the building landlord who merely signed legal papers when NPS told him to do so. Judge Alsup calls the alleged business a 'sham' and the non-employee 'Mr. Sham,' yet he declined to dismiss the patent infringement lawsuit filed by NPS against Fortinet from which this information emerged. Instead, he told NPS, 'this jury is going to hear all of this stuff about the closet. And you're going to have to explain why "Mr. Sham" was signing these documents.'"
Too bad there were not any judges like this overseeing the mortgage sham bubble.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
William Alsup deserves a medal for finally pushing those trolls a little. Too long have they been getting away with venue shopping and the abusive use of threats to sue. Time to sit back and watch the fireworks...
Meus subcriptio est nocens Latin quoniam bardus populus reputo is sanus callidus
People need to hear how these people do business. I imagine the jury will have no problem not awarding this patent troll anything. I wish cases like this were on CourtTV instead of stuff like the People's Court, Divorce Court, and Judge Judy.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
He was also the trial judge in Oracle v. Google.
I think I like the guy.
... when all it really had was a rented file-cabinet room and the 'director' was actually the building landlord ...
Don't cheap out on the props for your cover story.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
because Miss Swindle was stuck in meetings.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
I would like to listen to the audio. It must be very interesting. Anyone has a link?
But he's been in other tech cases recently besides these two as well.
For the record, please state your name. "Sam T. Sham". Now, Mr. Sham, can you explain why you signed those documents? Yes, your honor A " Wooly Bully made me do it".
Because she's the only Judge that I've heard about that understands logic. Well done good sir, I tip my hat and bid you good day.
It's cases like this that make me miss Groklaw even more. They'd have someone there in the court to report on all this, and explain the legal shenanigans going on, with links to prior cases of the people involved trying the same thing, and probably how Microsoft is funding them!
Waiting for an amusing sig.
If you were paying the legal bills (easily more than $20k per month and $100-200k for the actual trial), you really want bogus claims or the entire lawsuit dismissed. Even if you win, you probably won't recover your legal fees and nothing for your time. I've been there.
Not sure if this is widely know, but the Eastern District of Texas is horribly corrupt. All the patent trolls have an "office" there so they can sue everyone in that district. Why? Because the court system is infamously plaintiff friendly. Just about any bullshit argument you can make will fly. Doesn't matter if pretty much all cases get overturned on appeal, the plaintiffs get what they wanted: costing the defendants lots of money, forcing most all to settle. And the district gets what they wanted: lots of lawyers and experts flying in to the small towns pumping up the local economy. Those laws congress is mulling over can't get passed fast enough.
it is kind of absurdly low hanging fruit. When we get a case with a judge laying the smack down on a patent troll firm abusing actual patents they own, that is run by actual lawyers with a real office, then we will have news.
Mark my words, he'll come back around here asking for cheezburgers any minute now. DO NOT FEED STRAYS!
Plead the 5th?
Jack of all trades,master of none
I am the master of sham I polished my skills in the army where I had lots of sham points. I am the master of sham sir sham alot. How else do you think you get to be top, Invent shampoo or something.
That's one reason for the shell companies that patent trolls use. The company that filed suit probably has no money. A ruling that they have to pay the defendant's costs is worthless. That is unless the judge had them put up a bond for that possibility when the case began.
And yet, it seems even east Texas is getting tired of seeing these same patent trolls in their courts every week.
The news is, that patent trolls will have to invest in real offices with real people staffing them. Not only that, but the chances that even if they have a sham company set up to protect them from getting hurt if it explodes in their face, they may still be found liable for the damages of the party they sued. If it's obviously a sham company set up for just such a case, I doubt any judge or jury will let it fly and give the actual trolls a break.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
If the landlord was acting as the employee of the company, then the company should be paying social security payments on his earnings, and his rent includes pay as an employee. It's an approach that worked against Al Capone...
Ghengis Khan is said to have said: it's not enough that we win, they must lose. Seems the only way to deal with patent trolls.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
That's an interesting idea - is requiring the plaintiff to post a bond common? Personally I'd be happy if it was a requirement - if you want to sue somebody you need to show that you can pay the costs if you lose.
Rarely does a court decide that a company is a sham company. If this precedent were to take hold, then Google and Apple and Microsoft et al would be fucked since they have all kinds of sham companies set up in Ireland and and elsewhere to which they locate the profits from their American business activities. You can do almost anything and still not be called a "sham" corporation by a court so this must be a (good) judge who really has it in for patent trolls. May he be fruitful and multiply.
I believe it's pretty rare. I'm not a lawyer, I just play one in court. I believe it's just when there's a decent chance you'll be ordered to pay the defendant's costs, and due to using a shell company or some other reason the costs may not be paid as ordered.
Consider this if a bond were required for all suits.
If a bond costs 10% of the face amount, and General Motors can claim they spent $10 million defending a lawsuit related to faulty brakes, that would be an extra $1 million cost before you're allowed to sue if your brakes fail and you're horribly injured. I wouldn't want the victims to have to pay an extra million before they can sue. In every case, the plaintiff is claiming they're a victim of something the plaintiff did, and most often it's true.
Prenda and eleven other assholes file a lot of baseless claims, so yeah we're seeing it in those cases. Prenda isn't common, though. On the day Prenda filed their latest baseless suit, thousands of ordinary Americans sued the guy who ran into them, felled a tree onto their house etc.
Posting as AC because this is an ongoing case...
I'm being threatened by the shell company of an enormously well funded patent troll, Acacia Technologies. I asked my lawyer about this very idea - getting a judge to force the troll's shell company (Treehouse Avatar Technologies) to put up a bond. He said that he's never heard of such a thing. (And his entire practice is IP work.) This is the reason that suits are usually brought by shell companies that own nothing more than the one patent.
I really do miss the insight into the legal world.
Finally, a judge with common sense.
That could work. I could see some reasonably tough restrictions on patent suits for the next 5-10 years , long enough for the crooks to get out of that business.
I laugh at the "ban patents" or "ban patents that can involve software" people because by their logic, they would have banned medicine in the 1880s because there were snake oil salesman.