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US Supreme Court: Patent Holders Must Prove Infringment
jfruh writes "The Supreme Court issued a ruling that might help marginally curb patent madness. Ruling on a case between Medtronic and Mirowski Family Ventures, the court rules that the burden of proof in patent infringement cases is always on the patent holder. This is true even in the specific case at hand, in which Medtronic sought a declaratory judgement that it was not violating the Mirowski patents."
placing the burden on the patent holder to prove the patent is NOT the result of:
- Patent slamming to game the system (e.g. submitting the same fucking thing 100 different times hoping one submission will slip by an overworked patent reviewer)
- Patenting something already patented
- Patenting something that is already obvious
- Submarine-patenting
I can see this leading to some pretty costly discovery for companies being sued.
Because it's going to amount to "in order for us to prove you violated our patent, we need you to hand over all of your information so we can find the proof".
I hope there is a provision for saying "OK, but we're going to charge you $100 million for our time in getting this" -- because otherwise this just allows the patent trolls to cause the people they accuse to incur massive costs which might make settling cheaper.
You shouldn't be able to make someone bear the cost of you suing them based on something you can't prove without them doing the work for you.
This reminds me of the SCO lawsuit, where the most they ever found was, what, 7 lines of infringing code which SCO themselves had nicked from AT&T UNIX?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A plaintiff always bears the burden of proof in showing that he is entitled to the relief requested from the court. For patent infringement, that means showing a patent has been infringed.
The only reason this is in the news is because the appellate court (the CAFC) screwed it up one time, and the Supreme Court had to make a return to sanity.
This ruling on its own might only help slightly. But aside from that, I think this kind of 9-0 ruling (!) coming from the U.S. Supreme Court is encouraging for other patent-related cases that the Court will soon be hearing.
How hard would it be for OpenSource Projects and Small Companies to file for a declarative judgement lawsuit for every software patent held by trolls? I'm assuming that filing fees would get cost prohibitive quickly, but would we be able to DOS attack the patent trolls and the courts they use to prove the point?
Cue a million companies queuing up to sue for declaratory judgement in order to force companies to show their cards instead of vague "something you do violates some part of one of our patents pay 20% of your income or be sued" threats.
Except in this case the party being sued was the patent holder. They needed to defend their request for royalties. It's odd because normally the plaintiff needs to prove they were damaged rather than the defendant proving that they would be damaged.
The summary omits the central issues in the case. Medtronic had previously licensed patents from Mirowski Family Ventures for some of their older devices. Medtronics claimed their new devices didn't use the same methods and therefore decided not to continue to license the patents. The Federal Circuit Court (which is notoriously patent-holder friendly) decided that since Medtronics had previously been a licensee and they were the plaintiffs in the declaratory judgement suit (they had sued pre-emptively to have the court decide that they weren't infringing rather than wait for Mirowski to file suit) the burden was on them to prove that they didn't infringe. The Supreme Court disagreed 9-0 which should make fighting bogus patents slightly easier.
That's because of the nature of the proceeding the ruling covers. This is a case where the (soon to be) defendant hits the (soon to be) plaintiff up for royalties, then starts rattling the saber. Then the plaintiff effectively says "put up or shut up" by taking it to court themselves for a declaratory judgement. It is the defendant who is making the positive assertion of damages in this case, so it i the defendant who has to prove it.
> if you're suing somebody ... you have to "make your case" so to speak.
Until now. Now, if you sue an inventor the burden of proof is on the person being sued. The plaintiff is asking that the court proactively rule that nothing they ever did infringes on any of defendant's patents. SCOTUS ruled that the defendant now has the burden of proof, so they have to figure out which product plaintiff is concerned about, which patent it might infringe and how, or else the court rules that none of the products infringes any patents.
By analogy, it's the same as me petitioning the court to rule that I never stole anything from you. The court agrees, saying that unless you figure out the puzzle and guess what I stole and when, I'll be deemed innocent and you can't come after me later when you realize that your gold watch is missing.
If you sue someone for patent infringement you have always had the burden of proof, even before this ruling. All this ruling is saying is that if you threaten to sue someone, and they go to a judge first asking you to put-up or shut-up, the burden is still on you as the patent holder, same as if you had sued them.
Secondly, this ruling does nothing to limit the discovery process. As a small inventor suing a big company you still have the same subpoena powers during discovery as you did before.
In other words, the Supreme Court simply reaffirmed that accused infringers are innocent until proven guilty, regardless of the procedural nuances of how the lawsuit is initiated. None of the concerns you voiced will become worse due to this ruling.
LOL...if someone is charging you $10K to file it for you, then you are getting ripped off.
The cost isn't the patent submission fees. The primary cost is the lawyer you'll inevitably have to hire during the process. Getting a patent successfully through is actually more complicated than it might seem at first glance.