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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."
All big IT companies are patent trolls.
Time to review the whole thing...
which is a double burden. much, much harder.
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 logic the majority used in ruling on this case seems pretty simple (unless I'm totally off): the patent troll had a patent that was still legally valid because there had been no court challenge to declare it invalid. Because the patent was still legally valid, the infringement of the patent is still a valid cause of action in a lawsuit.
Scalia's logic is that you can bypass a legal challenge over a patent that might be ruled invalid in court because it was never valid in the first place. The question is, though, how would you know whether the patent is valid without the court saying so?
First off I think all Intellectual monopoly will go away in the next few decades because it will prove to be unworkable.
But if you are going to have this stupid system patent trolls serve an important purpose. They buy up patents from small inventors and in return provide the legal firepower the small inventors don't have.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
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
It is absurd that the USPTO has a massive backlog on patent issuance -- by law, it is expected that a patent term is 20 years from the filing date -- however there is an exception to that rule if the patent is not issued within 2 years -- if the patent is not issued within 2 years (due to a USPTO delay) the clock on that 20 years is paused until the patent issues. There are still hundreds of thousands of patents filed on things like HDTV which havent yet issued. It means that HDTV technology will be patent encumbered for the long term future. Nobody has the incentive to fix it. If you wanted to make an open hardware HDTV, you can't do it royalty free because a lot of the HDTV standards essential technologies are still patented and will STAY patented virtually forever thanks to the USPTO patent backlog. Why would any tech companies object to that? They make money off the patents they filed that got issued PLUS the ones that were filed but the USPTO hasnt taken action on them. Think about it this way if Sony filed two patents on HD technology, they get one of them issued fairly quickly within 2 years .. and then by luck or bribery the USPTO action on the second patent is delayed 19 years just as the first patent is expiring .. then because it's the USPTO's fault that the second patent didnt issue .. they get to claim 17 years of additional monopoly on the HD technology. I am not against patents, I am against infinitely long patents .. which are unconstitutional .. yet in practice the USPTO is enabling it. Let's not forget that the constitution only authorizes patent rights if and only if they enable the advancement of the useful arts and sciences (and those too for limited times).
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.
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.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The patent itself is worthless to find any basic, quick facts, for that matter.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Fuck the system, it's broken.
That's a good idea although it makes the patent holder wonder what he paid all that attorney, filing and maintenance fees for if it turns out his patent is invalid, years after being accepted.
But you're right, since the USPTO can't afford to spend too much time researching all the patent claims, the person being sued for infringement should have the right to prove that some or many claims in the patent are trivial, obvious or frivolous and therefore, invalid.
Thanks for pointing out that Roberts and Scalia were the 2 dissenters, which means that Thomas didn't vote with Scalia. I ask in all seriousness - is the first time ever that they haven't voted the same on a case?
and sounds based along the same lines of an individual can't ignore a law even if they think it will (at some point) be deemed unconstitutional. So Cisco should have moved to have the patent revoked prior to making use of it rather than infringe and then try after (if at all).
Removing the presumption of validity would throw the baby out with the bathwater. Patents would be much less valuable if the prior prosecution and grant didn't mean anything. And as a sibling post said, it would raise the question of why anyone would pay fees to the USPTO for a meaningless piece of paper, and why even have the PTO?
As it is, we already try the validity of a patent (along with noninfringement, inequitable conduct, anti-trust, etc) in pretty much every patent case. And it only takes one district court in one case finding invalidity to unravel the patent everywhere (in contrast, a finding of validity is not binding on other district courts).
The answer if we want better quality patents is to ensure that happens at the patent examining phase, not turn every district court into a branch office of the PTO.
Nothing posted to
The patent is from 2001 and seems to detail some kind of cell phone system, which was invented many years before. But it is on a LAN!
So this is a patent for a micro/femtocell tower setup that can hook to a PBX, or the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Not exactly novel, and not exactly non obvious, even in 2001.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/12/15/3603686/supreme-court-if-youre-a-cop-mistakes-about-the-law-wont-stop-your-drug-bust/
The Supreme Court says police can be mistaken about the laws governing their conduct, and that's fine. But a company can't be mistaken about whether a patent's validity will be upheld in court.
Every time the USPTO tries what you suggest they get sued by every applicant and quickly exhaust their entire budget in legal fees. Congress wouldn't provide additional money for a legal defense fund so they just started approving basically everything.
Given how bad many issued patents are, I feel that it's the presumption of validity that is the mistake. And that the baby being thrown out is a baby predator...which we would be vastly better off if it were killed.
There actually *is* a good case to be made for certain patents, but for such a small percentage that with the current system even eliminating all patents would be a net gain.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well the expansion of various forms of post-grant practice is coming closer to your wish. IPR in particular is booming right now.
Again, I think changing the legal standard would have much more drastic consequences than people understand. But strong post-grant processes can go a long way toward killing the ridiculous patents that we all rail against.
Nothing posted to
patent trolls to this day mostly impact large companies who are patent trolls themselves.
Tell that to all the mobile app developers who've been targeted. In fact, because of the way the law works, it's often more profitable to go after lots of smaller targets for quick settlements which can have them paying royalties well past the patent's expiration date than it is to go after just a few large targets who can fight back with lengthy litigation and in the process disqualify you from going after those smaller targets after the verdict is in.
Rackspace fights patent troll in the name of every mobile developer everywhere
i) Yes, unless it qualifies for a patent term adjustment. .. a company can collect on standards essential technology for extended periods of time and technology can't really advance while someone owns a monopoly for such a long time. .. just google it fool.
ii) virtually every patent issued nowadays is delayed so much that patent term adjustments are virtually guaranteed. You always get it when the USPTO doesn't approve your patent within a specified time as a result of their delays.
iii) Yes.
iv) If the patent is delayed they can get back royalties from others who independently came up with similar technology during the time in which the patent was being processed -- at least recently new applications are being published within 18 months so this issue is diminished for new filed applications. But then it's still a problem because of the issue referred to in (v)
v) There isn't only one patent on HDTV you ditz. HDTV is covered by hundreds of patents on the various technologies that comprise it. A single company can have a patent on the audio encoding and a separate one on the video processing aspect -- they can collect on the audio encoding patent when it issues and then collect for an extended period on the video processing part when that issues. In fact many companies have more than one patent on HDTV. Look at how many companies had patents on mp3 technology
i) Yes, unless it qualifies ........
Look moderately hard at:
Patent No. 6,266,674
Filed... Mar 16, 1992
Issued Jul. 24, 2001
Did they patent the original adventure game (created c. 1975-76)? ....http://rickadams.org/adventure/a_history.html
Dropping a gold coin or more is clearly a user
defined label for navigating a data structure.
Game after game would play a tune...
Recall the interface for Marble Madness Atari Games c.1984.
http://www.aes.org/aeshc/pdf/f...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
http://www.patentlyapple.com/p...