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Crazy Patent Troll Suing Devs For Posting Apps To Google Play (technobuffalo.com)
Developer Austin Meyer is fighting back patent trolls after he was sued for putting his flight simulator app called X-Plane on Google Play. TechnoBuffalo reports: A few years ago, he uploaded the app to the Google Play Store and was very unexpectedly hit with a lawsuit from Uniloc in 2012. The firm claims it patented the idea behind the app market. That's right, Uniloc isn't going after Meyer for making a flight simulator; it's going after any company that uses Google Play. It's already targeted a bunch of other popular apps, including Minecraft. So Meyer did a bit of digging and discovered a few pretty shocking details. It turns out the judge in that district may have a direct relationship with the prosecuting lawyer in many of these cases. The judge, Leonard Davis, is apparently known for almost never throwing out patent lawsuits. Meyer claims that his son, Bo Davis, is the lawyer representing many of these patent trolls.
But now that he's retired, there's nothing that can be done, and either the problem has been resolved (in which case he was the problem) or it hasn't (in which case he wasn't).
What do you mean? Retirement does not mean you are no longer subject to the possibility of disciplinary action by the ethics enforcement body.
Also, if they figure out that his son was the prosecution on all these cases, and a clear conflict of interest wasn't even disclosed...:
It can generate a cause for appeal, and possible charges against the former judge.
That might even result in some settlements being cancelled and prior rulings overturned, Although, I doubt one judge and one lawyer were allowed to do THAT much damage...
One of the big company defendants' investigation teams surely would have noticed any pattern like that, right?