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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."
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."
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.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The patent trolls need to win until corporations break, only then will real change in patent laws occur in the legislature.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
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