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."

Comments

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I love newegg... sue the bastards... unfortunately I don't see newegg getting financial compensation.

Re:LOL

[dreamchaser]

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.

Re:LOL

[RenderSeven]

Maybe, maybe not. I for one will make it a point to shop on Newegg just a little bit more.

Re:LOL

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:LOL

[sunderland56]

Well I for one will buy more stuff from Newegg. When most other companies are just looking for the bottom line, NewEgg is actually working to make the world a better place.

Re:LOL

[jbmartin6]

I thought the same thing, aside from other benefits it is great marketing for Newegg among folks who are likely to become valuable repeat customers.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Idea for anti-troll group

[the_povinator]

A group of companies should form a NATO-like pact, binding the companies to employ scorched-earth tactics whenever sued by a patent troll.

Carthage must be destroyed!

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[MightyMartian]

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.

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[penguinoid]

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.

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[teg]

A group of companies should form a NATO-like pact, binding the companies to employ scorched-earth tactics whenever sued by a patent troll.

Carthage must be destroyed!

Your suggestion doesn't help much. Avoiding things like this is one of the reasons you put patents into an NPE - they don't have any other business or valuables you can come after. Put one patent in each sub-entity, and you avoid any chance of losing more than the patent - and if you lost, it wasn't that valuable anyway.

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[rickb928]

"Utter and complete destruction and the disbarment of their lawyers should be the proper goal."

Sounds nice. But lawyers sometimes merely represent their clients. What is good for the patent troll would need to be applicable to the driver injured by a faulty seat belt, the coed harmed by a defective hair curler, the parent whose child was suffocated by a badly designed crib. Lawyers facing disbarment for being identified as facilitating spurious or frivolous prosecution might be saying no to all kinds of cases.

Put the blame squarely where it lies. Punish the plaintiff.

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[Firethorn]

From what I understand, the courts get pissed about this and have started to break through such 'protections' if it's obvious that the company was set up simply to 'shelter' the parent company from judgements against them.

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[penguinoid]

Not so much, the patent office gets paid to grant capricious patents, which are then used to harm legitimate businesses. So they're abusing bad patents for their own profit and screwing over innovators in the process.

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[hey!]

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.

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[UnderCoverPenguin]

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.)

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[Zontar The Mindless]

Sounds good, but could you work some "lamentations of their women" into it somewhere?

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[HiThere]

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.

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[HiThere]

What he was pointing out was the the shell company fronting the suit wouldn't have any resourced to recover damages, or even lawyers fees, from.

Re:Idea for anti-troll group

[MightyMartian]

From what I can tell, most of the patent trolls are just legal firms.

Re:Geeks rejoice (using your dollars)

[MightyMartian]

Their restocking policy still pisses me off, but yeah, they're a better bunch than the vile disgusting subhumans who try to extort money via a flawed IP system.

The patent

[Qzukk]

https://www.google.com/patents...

I'm kind of curious to see someone explain how this invention is different from all the other daisy-chain serial bus connections that were in use in 1995 when this was filed.

Re:The patent

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The patent

[suutar]

Not certain it's relevant. The claims never use the term daisy chain, and that's where the legal force is.

Re:The patent

[SharpFang]

Branchable?

That's the gist of the patent - a branchable serial bus.

Rosewill is part of Newegg?

[sims 2]

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.

Re:Rosewill is part of Newegg?

[cmdr_klarg]

On all searches there is a choice for "New Egg Only".

It would appear

[DaMattster]

Minero Digital awoke a sleeping giant. Once that is done, it's wrath is felt. I like how Lee Cheng said, "... Now that they have started the litigation, it would be irresponsible for Newegg to not finish it."

Re:It would appear

[suutar]

failure to sufficiently research your target is a major failure in any attack.

Re:It would appear

[Zontar The Mindless]

"Minero Digital awoke a sleeping giant" is completely correct.

If you're implying that the verb "awake" can't be used transitively, you're wrong. But don't take my word for it--check the dictionary for yourself.

Furthermore

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the lawyers have been disbarred, all parties involved should then be brought on criminal charges of extortion:

The obtaining of property from another induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.

Re:Furthermore

[Dutch Gun]

Once the lawyers have been disbarred, all parties involved should then be brought on criminal charges of extortion:

The obtaining of property from another induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.

You're obviously not a lawyer. That's both a criticism of your suggested legal tactics and an endorsement of you as a human being.

This isn't a first for Newegg. Also, great fakes

[raymorris]

>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?

Finally, a lawyer I can understand!

[QuietLagoon]

... its patent is not only expired but would suck even if it wasn't expired....

PC Part Picker helps.

[Futurepower(R)]

I recommend PC Part Picker.

like attacking smoke

[bloodhawk]

If it is anything like a normal patent troll then this lawsuit is pointless, it will be a shell company that will just trade the patents to a new shell and evaporate leaving newegg with extra legal bills for no purpose. The whole business model of a patent troll is to have no real assets or employees to risk, just lawyers in a shell company.

Re:Always used to use Newegg

[nwf]

I've found that searching for components on NewEgg is much easier. It's almost impossible to search for anything on Amazon that's not totally mainstream. I just put together a PC for a media server, and I purchased everything from NewEgg. They were either cheaper or I could actually find the products quickly. I don't really want to read page "1 of 234" containing random products with no relation to what I searched for. Thanks amazon.

I hate all their "marketplace" sellers (although NewEgg is doing this crap, too.) Amazon is becoming crap of late. Reviews are useless in many cases, partly because they group tons of similar products into a single "product" (especially bad with movies.) I was searching last night for LotR on Blu-Ray and their descriptions don't even say what's on the extra discs. Useless. And marketplace sellers sell cheap knockoffs that mess up reviews of genuine products. I've ordered a product based the description only to get something else. The seller then says "oh some other seller changed the description." What's the point of having descriptions, then, if any idiot can change them?

NewEgg is still pretty decent to deal with and getting someone to help you is MUCH easier than with Amazon. Everyone I've done a chat with at amazon was totally clueless. One even re-ordered my order for no apparent reason, which I then had to return. Amazon is becoming the Mos Eisley of shopping anymore: a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Good luck trying to find decent coin batteries, Lion batteries, chargers, etc. They sell them, you'll just never find them.

Re:This isn't a first for Newegg. Also, great fake

[hairyfeet]

That is funny, as the only time I have ever gotten a fake was from Newegg marketplace. The few times I needed help from Amazon? I got what I paid for or the cash put back in my account almost the same day, when I got a fake from Newegg? Despite a dozen emails they wouldn't do shit, I ended up getting nothing but a pile of garbage for my money.

Ironically I was about to pull the trigger on nearly 2K worth of parts on some new builds but after fucking me over for $40? Amazon got that cash along with every purchase from the shop ever since. Say what you will about Amazon but when things go wrong? I always get my money or my parts, with Newegg I found out there support is pretty much file it in the can and call it a day.

Re: Geeks rejoice (using your dollars)

[bill_mcgonigle]

heh, I was going to post the same reply. They charged me about $250 to return an unopened switch (after I paid shipping) for a project where I had bought one too many. Sorry, that's food from the babies' mouths for a small business when Amazon does free returns.

It's a bet on all the subs coming in on spec. vs. ordering too little or too much. Better to not have to worry about such things, and arbitrary fees means worrying.

I do admire NewEgg's "never start a fight but always finish one" legal approach though. At least my restocking fees are going to good attorneys.

Re:compensation

[bloodhawk]

and who exactly is going to compensate them? they are a patent troll company, they would almost certainly be a shell company with zero assets and the directors with no direct liability. I am all for punishing the pricks that do this, but it aint happening under current laws.

Congressional & Court, not PTO, Problem?

[Koreantoast]

I was told though that this isn't the fault of the Patent Office per say but of Congress and the courts' interpretation of the law. I think the PTO itself recognizes this weakness, but it would require legislation to change.

Re:Yeah MARKETPLACE is any random seller

[hairyfeet]

Except with Amazon market its backed by Amazon and will fix the problem, with Newegg? It might as well be eBay. Between their shit customer service and the way they throw Newegg market results with their own? I'm sorry but they are no longer a trustworthy company IMHO.