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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
He was also the trial judge in Oracle v. Google.
I think I like the guy.
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.
I'm guessing that the reason you think she understands logic is because you've only heard about her, rather than having actually heard her. She is a straight moron who jumps to conclusions based on zero facts and then uses them to form psuedo-logical conclusions based upon pure rationalizations. I have never seen a more ridiculous person who could best be described as a bad caricature of herself in all my life.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Actually, at the end of the day, the judge will instruct the jury in the relevant law. He'll let the jury know that these people are trolling asshats, but that what they are doing is legal and that they have to follow the law. They will win something. It won't be huge though because the jury will have been turned against the troll. The troll will then appeal based on, "but the judge tainted the jury". And they will win their appeal. Because at the end of the day, just because they are scum, doesn't mean they are doing anything illegal.
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.
She's not a "Judge," or at least not any more. She's an arbiter/celebrity. The "trials" on that show aren't real trials, they're arbitration with a contractual agreement not to pursue further arbitration elsewhere.
And, yes, she can be extremely biased and unprofessional. It's easy to do when you stack the "docket" with the worst human scum you can find.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
And Mrs. Sham was out shopping with friends.
Really? Mrs. Sham? Wow.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
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...