Patent Troll Wins $15.7M From Samsung By Claiming To Own Bluetooth

An anonymous reader writes: A jury has upheld patent claims against Samsung and awarded the patent-holder $15.7 million. "The patents relate to compatibility between different types of modems, and connect to a string of applications going back to 1997. The first version of Bluetooth was invented by Swedish cell phone company Ericsson in 1994." Lawyers for the plaintiff argue that the patents cover all devices that use Bluetooth 2.0 or later, so further cases could extend far beyond Samsung. Of course, the company that won the lawsuit wasn't the one who made the invention, or the one who patented it. The company is Rembrandt IP, "one of the oldest and most successful" patent trolls.

Comments

Obvious prior art

[wiredlogic]

Wouldn't Bluetooth 1.0 be the most obvious prior art ever?

Re:Obvious prior art

[ptr2004]

That would be like saying Wright Glider is prior art for Airbus 380

Re:Obvious prior art

[bzipitidoo]

I've come to a more nuanced view on patent trolls. They aren't themselves so evil, they are basically hackers, but of the law instead of tech. The real evil is the patent system itself, not the hackers who take advantage of it. If by their actions they persuade giants like Samsung that patent law needs major reform, then that's good. It's not their fault that patent law is such a mess, it's the fault of giant corporate backers. They're dancing delicately, trying to have it both ways, that is, little people have to ask them for their patents, but they don't have to ask little people for theirs. The bigs are the reason the scope of patent law has been expanded beyond all sense. Possibly the biggest expansion was that originally a patent was supposed to cover a working implementation. A machine that achieves the same thing through a different method was not in violation. Now patents can cover a vague concept. That kind of patent may be shot down in court, but that it was granted at all is one of the problems.

Hating a small patent troll is like shooting the messenger.

Real Reason for the Patent Gap

[mentil]

The real reason America has to catch up on the 'patent gap' is not so we'll be the most competitive, but so we can siphon as much money as possible from other countries' businesses. More patents means more lawsuit money coming into the country to offset the trade deficit. Gotta win at every statistical metric fathomable, dontcha know.

Re:Absolutely garbage claims

[Anonymous Coward]

With patents you don't look at the description, you look at the claims. This one has over 80 in 7 independent patches that are pretty specific. One could easily workaround this were it not part mandatory Bluetooth specs (I don't know if that is the case). But as far as patents go, this seems pretty OK, meaning these guys at least had a clear intention of implementing specific ways and not just cover an idea.

Patent trolls are useful arbitragers

[goombah99]

First, yes some patent trolls are evil. But some are very good.

The key service a Non-producing Patent holder provides is that they purchase patents from inventors. This allows the inventing company to convert their Ideas into cash. When companines die they may cease producing but their IP is still valuable. And it can be sold. It's that value that the shareholders of the company were investing in. So they were entitled to sell it. Patent "trolls" create this marketplace for Ideas and the money they pay goes on to be re-invested in other good things. Hence it maintains a market that funds spending on ideas.

The patent trolls are arbitragers because they profit from non-liquidity of the market for ideas. IN doing so they do make it liquid. So that's good. they are creating real value where there was only theoretical value and keeping prices in balance.

Then there's the evil patent trolls that take lame notions and therough legal machnations extort money from people who can't afford a legal challenge or rely on throwing darts and hoping for a big win.

It's sometimes hard to tell these apart because sometimes a cherished technology we all love really does have a legitimate patent holder not an ogre behind it. The Eolas patent on all web browser plug ins seems like a reasonable case. If they can really show that the basic concept of the web browser plug in was not obvious and had no prior art and that they legitmately patented it with sufficient breadth of description then it really doesn't matter that this catches everyone by surprise. It's worth a fortune obviously but that too is not a reason to say it's wrong. It would be wrong if they got lucky an patented as trivial idea and then tried to extort people with it.

It's these rare paydays that actually can keep the good arbitragers in bussiness. they may buy up lots of patents that never make them any money. All that money goes back to investors who created the IP and hopefully invest in more IP development in the future. The arbitragers get paid big once in a while for their investment in buying those worthless unmarketable patents.

This sort of sounds like maybe that if they really did come up with the basic protocol and immplentations from which blue tooth was originated and the makers of blue tooth didn't have the right to sell that then this could be legite even if it's a big paybat for a non-produycing patent holder.

Re:Patent trolls are useful arbitragers

[quantaman]

First, yes some patent trolls are evil. But some are very good.

The key service a Non-producing Patent holder provides is that they purchase patents from inventors. This allows the inventing company to convert their Ideas into cash. When companines die they may cease producing but their IP is still valuable. And it can be sold. It's that value that the shareholders of the company were investing in. So they were entitled to sell it. Patent "trolls" create this marketplace for Ideas and the money they pay goes on to be re-invested in other good things.

I think I understand your argument. But I think there's an important distinction: Is dead company A selling the technology to new company B, or just the right to use the technology?

If they're selling the technology, ie "company A knew how to do X, lets buy their IP so we can do X" then they're contributing something and new company B benefits from the exchange.

But if the situation is more like "we want to do X, but it turns out company A has patents on X, therefore we need so pay off those patents" then I'm a lot more skeptical. Sure company A's innovative investors make some money off of B, but that money came from B's innovative investors so I'm not sure you're actually promoting investment in innovation. Not only that but the patents added a lot of overhead, cash that would have been better used innovating by both parties.

It's sometimes hard to tell these apart because sometimes a cherished technology we all love really does have a legitimate patent holder not an ogre behind it. The Eolas patent on all web browser plug ins seems like a reasonable case. If they can really show that the basic concept of the web browser plug in was not obvious and had no prior art and that they legitmately patented it with sufficient breadth of description then it really doesn't matter that this catches everyone by surprise. It's worth a fortune obviously but that too is not a reason to say it's wrong. It would be wrong if they got lucky an patented as trivial idea and then tried to extort people with it.

As to my point I'm very skeptical Eolas actually did anything to further the development of browser plugins. Why are they entitled to a fortune when they never actually contributed anything of value?

Re:After reading the article

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I have to conclude that the jury was populated by a group of retards.

I'm American. I last served on a jury in 2005. I have been called to jury duty once since then and was luckily not picked for the case I was a possible juror for. I've served twice as a juror including in 2005 and the whole process has made me incredibly cynical about US "justice", which I deliberately put in quote marks there. Anyway, in my 2005 service, we were hearing a case that was surprisingly complex and involved multiple charges, but you might put it under the umbrella heading of "property damage". We were in the jury room one morning waiting to go hear the day's testimony and I remember being appalled as 3 of my fellow jurors all got into an argument with each other over who was stupider when it came to computers. Each guy in turn tried to top the other ones by showing how he was far stupider about computers than the other 2. Out of 13 jurors, which includes one alternate, I believe that only 2 of us had jobs that might be called "professional". The others were roofers and holders of various jobs that don't require any college education. These are the kinds of people who serve on juries. So I have no problem believing that the jury you refer to was totally made up of technological idiots who had no hope of understanding the complex issues presented to them, let alone rendering a just verdict.

I'm not sure that a lot of people would be really comfortable if they truly understood the kind of horse trading that goes on in juries all the time. "Ok, we've got 7 votes for guilty on charge #2 and 5 votes for guilty on charge number #3, so how about we agree to vote guilty on #2 and innocent on #3 so we can all go home?"