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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...
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.
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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.
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).
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.