Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Patent Troll

An anonymous reader writes: The Supreme Court ruled today (PDF) that Cisco Systems can't skip out of a patent suit against them from patent troll Commil USA. The case reached the Supreme Court because Cisco argued it had a "good faith belief" that the patent they were infringing was invalid. The justices voted 6-2 that such a belief didn't matter if they were indeed infringing. The Supreme Court's opinion is that a company must know of the patent it's infringing, and that their product infringes upon the patent — which, at least, is more than what Commil was pushing.

The case isn't completely over — a $63.7 million verdict in Commil's favor was overturned by an Appeals Court, and now the Supreme Court has sent it back down for re-evaluation after it clarified the rules of infringement. The Appeals Court could still overturn the judgment for some other reason. The good news is that the Supreme Court dedicated a page in their opinion to telling lower courts how to sanction patent trolls and keep them from clogging the courts with ridiculous claims. "[I]t is still necessary and proper to stress that district courts have the authority and responsibility to ensure frivolous cases are dissuaded."

Comments

Court Rules in Favor of Patent Reform

[penguinoid]

At some point, the trolls will collect enough tolls that we'll finally have to do something about the ridiculous patents that are granted.

Remember, the trolls are legally in the right, which makes it not a problem with bad ethics on the part of the trolls, but bad ethics on the part of our legal system or patent system.

Re:Court Rules in Favor of Patent Reform

[martin-boundary]

I disagree. Good faith that a patent is invalid should be the default position of all legal systems. The fact is that the world is full of scientists who can duplicate each other's work. The fact that some guy from company A invented X only means that at the time, other companies didn't have the same priority, not that they didn't have employees Y capable of inventing the same thing X did.

We have to get off this stupid idea that inventors are unique snowflakes who invent unique stuff that nobody else could ever discover and we therefore owe them. The default position should be that a patent is probably invalid, and it should be up to the patent holder to prove otherwise, or pay costs trying. Also, examiners who grant invalid patents should be penalized. The chilling effect of patents and the amount of money being wasted and the lost opportunity costs on the economy are stifling.

The patent trolls need to win

[OrangeTide]

The patent trolls need to win until corporations break, only then will real change in patent laws occur in the legislature.

Re:Win some, Lose some

[whoever57]

What if you emply a patent attorney and the attorney tells you that you don't infringe? In the past, this provided a defence against "willful infringment" claims. But now?

Re:View from a patent holder ...

[gnupun]

This is a very subjective matter -- what one considers a valid patent, another considers it obvious and invalid patent.

Instead of courts attacking patent holders (trolls), the USPTO should set clear guidelines as to what is patentable and what is not. Once they invalidate patents that have obvious claims, the trolling and racketeering will end. This is not an easy task (determining obvious vs non-obvious claims), but it must be done.

Re:View from a patent holder ...

[penix1]

To me there is a much easier fix. Remove the assumption that patents reviewed by the USPTO are valid since a vast number have been proven to not be. That will shift the burden of proving validity to the patent holder making it less profitable for patent trolls.