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Newegg Sues Patent Troll After Troll Dropped Its Own Lawsuit (arstechnica.com)
WheezyJoe writes: Not satisfied that a patent troll dropped its lawsuit against them, Newegg has sued the troll. So-called "patent holding company" Minero Digital sought to exact royalty payments on a wide range of USB hubs, suing, among others, Newegg's subsidiary Rosewill. But the "non-practicing entity" dropped its East Texas lawsuit against Rosewill within days of getting a call from the Newegg's lawyer. However, Minero dismissed its Texas lawsuit "without prejudice", meaning it can refile the case at a time of its choosing. So, Newegg filed its own lawsuit against Minero in Los Angeles federal court, asking a judge to lay down a ruling that Minero's case against Rosewill is baseless. Says Newegg's Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng, "Minero's case does not have merit, and its patent is not only expired but would suck even if it wasn't expired. Now that they have started the litigation, it would be irresponsible for Newegg to not finish it."
And its fields salted. Defeat of patent trolls shouldn't be the object. Utter and complete destruction and the disbarment of their lawyers should be the proper goal. Don't just defeat those evil sociopathic monsters, make sure they're living in a gutter after it's done.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They are not asking for any financial compensation. They are doing it a) because they can and b) because the troll had it dismissed without prejudice, meaning they could file again.
Cool. I bought some rosewill drive enclosures a few years ago that are still working great. Although I didn't know they were a store brand at the time.
I don't buy much of anything on new-egg anymore. The site layout is just so messed up now I can't find anything anymore. It was better before they started letting people post classified ads as products for sell.
If it shows up in the list of results I expect to be able to buy it on Newegg not click through to Bullshitbrandxcompany to complete my purchase there.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Trouble is, the only actual patent troll is the patent office. There wouldn't be any of the people you call "patent trolls" if they didn't have the government on their side to begin with.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
>These days I almost always find better prices on Amazon for the same stuff.
Amazon has probably the largest proportion of counterfeit products of any retailer, due to the way their business works. Some of them are very good counterfeits; the fake Otter Box from Amazon I looked at the other day had a perfect look-alike box, with the hologram sticker, very hard to tell the difference between the fake and the real thing except the fake was a bit lower quality. The rubberized button covers weren't really rubberized, so it was very hard to press the button, etc.
On the other wide, Newegg has been a leader in fighting patent trolls for years. Is it worth an extra dollar or two to be confident of getting legitimate products, while supporting a company that's fighting patent trolls?
I'm more curious to see someone explain how USB's tree-structured topology could be construed as a daisy-chain.
Daisy chains require:
- all devices must provide a pass-through for the next item on the bus (with the exception of attenuation terminators, which aren't an addressable device on the bus, but merely an electrical necessity)
- there can be no multiple-output devices or branches in the topology
If it has branching or input-only devices, it's not a daisy-chain topology. USB has both, and is therefore not a daisy-chain topology.
I could shit-can their entire patent lawsuit in less than 5 minutes with nothing more advanced than a whiteboard and marker. And that's without saying even one word about the legality of the patent itself.
It also serves as warning for other patent trolls to stay away from Newegg because they will fight back. Even if it costs them money to continue with this lawsuit, it potentially saves them significantly more in the future from all of the lawsuits that they don't have to deal with as a result of any ruling that results from this case or even showing that they have no problem standing up to the bullies of the patent world.
failure to sufficiently research your target is a major failure in any attack.
Well, as someone who has friends who are inventors and hold patents, I think they deserve compensation for the effort they put into their inventions. But the thing is, they're real inventions, not bogus ones. The bogus ones are the problem.
I was CTO of a small software developer back in the early 00s, and every couple of weeks someone would come into my office with a printout of something they'd read on the Internet, and as soon as the word "patent" came out of their mouth, I'd stop them right there.
"This is going to be one of those things where they took something people had been doing with LORAN for years and substituted 'GPS' or 'LORAN', isn't it?"
"Well, LORAN was mentioned in the prior art..."
"Stop!" I'd say, putting my fingers in my ears. "I am not going to read that thing, I'm not even going to listen to you, because (a) it's a bogus patent and (b) if I knowingly do the obvious thing in that patent we'll be facing treble damages."
The real problem is bogus patents that dress up the obvious way an experienced practitioner would solve a problem in obscure language. If patents were uniformly genuine inventions then I wouldn't have a problem with non-practicing entities buying them and enforcing them. That wouldn't be a pitfall to just doing your job as an engineer.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Not so much, the patent office gets paid to grant capricious patents
As technology has gotten more complex, the patent office's ability to properly evaluate applications has diminished. As such, the patent office has become a registry, leaving it to the courts to decide. Unfortunately, that is a very expensive and inefficient way to evaluate innovation. Although the litigants do pay substantial court fees, it would still cost taxpayers less to allocate more money to the patent office to hire more AND better patent examiners.
(Partially because corporations will just deduct court (and other litigation) costs, and partially because the cost will be passed along to the consumers. So, no. Shifting the court costs to the litigants won't save taxpayers' money, only change the route the money follows when it leaves the taxpayers' accounts/wallets/whatever.)
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
You can trace a large part of the problem back to the patent office decision to not require a working copy before granting a patent. And for software, even worse, to not require the source code.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You stopped shopping at newegg because you are the dumbass? You said they labeled it, so not false advertising, and they went out of their way to send you one when they had no obligation so since it was your fault for not reading the description. That sounds like good customer service and I would continue shopping at newegg because they did such a big favour.