Patent Troll Ordered To Pay For the Costs of Fighting a Bad Patent

We mentioned last year that FindTheBest CEO Kevin O'Connor had taken an unusual step, when confronted with a demand by patent troll company Lumen View that the startup pay $50,000 for what struck O'Connor as a frivolous patent: He not only refused, but pledged to spend a million bucks, if necessary, to fight Lumen View in court. Now, as Ars Technica reports, O'Connor has succeeded on a grand scale. Before trouncing Lumen View in court, Ars reports, "FindTheBest had spent about $200,000 on its legal fight—not to mention the productivity lost in hundreds of work hours spent by top executives on the lawsuit, and three all-company meetings. Now the judge overseeing the case has ruled (PDF) that it's Lumen View, not FindTheBest, that should have to pay those expenses. In a first-of-its-kind implementation of new fee-shifting rules mandated by the Supreme Court, US District Judge Denise Cote found that the Lumen View lawsuit was a 'prototypical exceptional case.'"

Comments

Re:Sounds awesome except....

[fuzznutz]

That is part of the reason that these 'looser pays' rules make me nervous..

Would you feel better if it was 'tighter pays'?

Re:Newegg did that too?

[rmdingler]

Per Slashdot's unwritten rule, and there are more of them than in baseball, a poster may be generously moderated for jumping on the grenade that is reading the flocking article.

Re:Sounds awesome except....

[stealth_finger]

Well if the examiner cant understand it immediately, they should deny it, if in doubt dent. Yeah I know they get paid for approvals and all that but really, the whole system sucks, it needs pulling out, burning, having the ashes jumped on then started again using common sense.

Or if it isn't immediately obviously what the patent is even for.