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Jury Finds Newegg Infringed Patent, Owes $2.3 Million
Jah-Wren Ryel sends this quote from Ars:
"Newegg, an online retailer that has made a name for itself fighting the non-practicing patent holders sometimes called 'patent trolls,' sits on the losing end of a lawsuit tonight. An eight-person jury came back shortly after 7:00pm and found that the company infringed all four asserted claims of a patent owned by TQP Development, a company owned by patent enforcement expert Erich Spangenberg. The jury also found that the patent was valid, apparently rejecting arguments by famed cryptographer Whitfield Diffie. Diffie took the stand on Friday to argue on behalf of Newegg and against the patent. In total, the jury ordered Newegg to pay $2.3 million, a bit less than half of the $5.1 million TQP's damage expert suggested. ... TQP's single patent is tied to a failed modem business run by Michael Jones, formerly president of Telequip. TQP has acquired more than $45 million in patent licensing fees by getting settlements from a total of 139 companies since TQP argues that its patent covers SSL or TLS combined with the RC4 cipher, a common Internet security system used by retailers like Newegg."
Hopefully this turns out to be good advertising for NewEgg - I know I'll be making my next computer purchase from them to help support them in fighting a patent troll.
I need to buy a new desktop anyway. Newegg, my money's coming your way.
"With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone."
We can fight these stupid decisions coming out of east Texas one by one, or we could be smarter about it. We can try for patent reform, but the $$ involved, they will probably find a way around that as well. How about we start a PR fund with the goal of flooding the East Texas jury pool (buy TV/Radio/Newspaper/Internet in that geography) explaining why this is bad to the people that will be sitting in the jury box. Explain that it's actually killing small, successful companies, and only enriching the trolls/lawyers who actually did nothing. Call it carpetbagging - should resonate with Texans.
Playing devil's advocate here... Why is this result some failure of the judge/jury of this case? Like it or not, this patent has previously been granted by the patent office. Jurors and judges don't get to invalidate patent claims because of some flaky idea of who is trolling who. Rather, they have to follow a more or less established legal process, regardless the side they may otherwise be rooting for. You want a "Bad Guy" for this event? Blame Congress, as current law incentivizes patent reviewers to accept questionable patent applications, and the number of years granted to these patents are too many.
What is somewhat surprising is that Newegg had, as expert witness, Whitfield Diffie, as in 'Diffie-Hellman' Diffie. I didn't even know that it was possible to lose an assymetric-key encryption related case with him on your side, especially against nobody in particular.
When the guy who invented public key encryption tells you that the basis of the patent had been around for years, that is a failure of the jury in this case.
At this point, I think people should just be suing the USPTO for lousy patents which should never have been granted in the first place.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
As a developer of original software products, I consider it impossible - just my opinion - to determine if any software I create infringes on existing patents. There are usually thousands and often tens of thousands of ideas, algorithms and design approaches in a product that would need to be checked, and patents are so wordy that the time it would take to determine if there was infringement would always far exceed the time it takes to make the product. This seems to me to pose an undue burden, and is therefore unconstitutional?
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Sent from my ENIAC
NewEgg's lawyers spent a fair bit of time proving Diffie's claim. They had a textbook, his original paper, and he gave a very informative talk about the early days of public key crypto. I suspect what happened here is that they took TQP's argument to heart that said TQP has a piece of paper that says they own it, so the law says the must find in favor of TQP, despite whatever feelings the jurors might have on the issue.
TQP managed to make the trial about "Did Newegg infringe on this patent?", not "Is this a bad patent that should be overturned?" In that case, the answer is probably a yes.
I read the internet for the articles.
There is no "let's discuss this" based on what was presented. Any jury not doing so will be kicked out and the trial starts from fresh.
Then fucking do it!