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A Federal Judge's Decision Could End Patent Trolling (computerworld.com)
"Forcing law firms to pay defendants' legal bills could undermine the business model of patent trolls," reports Computerworld. whoever57 writes: Patent trolls rely on the fact that they have no assets and, if they lose a case, they can fold the company that owned the patent and sued, thus avoiding paying any of the defendant's legal bills. However in a recent case, the judge told the winning defendant that it can claim its legal bills from the law firm. The decision is based on the plaintiff's law firm using a contract under which it would take a portion of any judgment, making it more than just counsel, but instead a partner with the plaintiff. This will likely result in law firms wanting to be paid up front, instead of offering a contingency-based fee.
The federal judge's decision "attacks the heart of the patent-troll system," according to the article, which adds that patent trolls are "the best evidence that pure evil exists."
The federal judge's decision "attacks the heart of the patent-troll system," according to the article, which adds that patent trolls are "the best evidence that pure evil exists."
The recent rash of clickbait on Slashdot made me expect this headline to be, "Could a Federal Judge's Decision End Patent Trolling?"
Thanks for not being a shitposting assclown. May your peers follow your example.
Not to deny that abuse of the patent-system is wrong, but things like murdering a girl after raping her seem evil of considerably higher purity.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's logical, it's practical, it has no downsides I can imagine. Why can't we have more common sense judgment like this?
according to the article, which adds that patent trolls are "the best evidence that pure evil exists."
Really? That's a little hyperbolic don't you think? Yes patent trolls are a very bad thing but let's not exaggerate their impact or how much they matter. They certainly are not evil on the scale of slavery or war or genocide or any number of other horrific crimes. I'm tempted to make some snarky Trump joke since he is (not kidding) better evidence for pure evil than patent trolls but even that would be an unfair comparison given some of the real evils of the world.
Patent trolls are extortionists and leeches on society and terrible human beings but the "best evidence that pure evil exists"? No. No they are not.
For starters, this decision is non-precedential. It was issued by a District court, and not the Federal Circuit or SCOTUS.
Secondly, per a Law360 article, the reason for the attorneys fees award against the law firm was, per a law360 article:
The court awarded attorneys’ fees against AlphaCap and its counsel, Gutride Safier LLP, on the theory that AlphaCap and Gutride Safier multiplied the proceedings in this case unreasonably and vexatiously,” McCrary wrote. “The record, however, establishes that it was Gust and its counsel, not AlphaCap and Gutride Safier, who unreasonably and vexatiously multiplied the proceeding.”
Thus, this ruling has nothing to do with patent trolling being dealt a death blow, but rather unscrupulous counsel being punished.
How about trying to keep breast cancer tests as expensive as possible for personal profit?
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yeah, so now you create lots of shell law firms.
Until the courts go after people PERSONALLY (you know, like they do every time you get a ticket) there will be no change of behaviour.
Throwing a few lawyers in jail will do so much more for the profession than fining anyone.
AC
it has no downsides I can imagine.
If generalized beyond patent trolling suits it could severely limit the ability of shallow-pocket plaintiffs to obtain legal council on a contingency fee basis to obtain redress for the torts that damaged, and perhaps impoverished, them.
The result would be that the legal system becomes accessible only to the rich.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm not a lawyer, but my best friend since college is. We're both Americans. I probably know more about how the US legal system really works as a result of this friendship than how almost all non-lawyers do. The truth is that judges don't like to award court costs nor do lawyers really like it when they do this because it discourages lawsuits and lawyers and judges both think that the system is fine just like it is and having fewer lawsuits is actually bad. Some judges won't ever award costs to the winner. Some will only do so to send a message to people they think really abuse the system. It seems to me that this is considered to be an unusual situation rather than something that will set a precedent. Also, judges often ignore anything they feel like, so the fact that court costs got awarded in case A doesn't at all mean that they will be in case B in front of a different judge even if the circumstances that led to the awarded are essentially identically.
Here's an example. Suppose you have neighbor who doesn't like you and the neighbor sues you for something really stupid and asks for a huge monetary award. Suppose that you win, but the case is extraordinarily difficult and time consuming and you end up ruined financially from having to pay the costs to defend yourself against this frivolous lawsuit. You can probably count on one hand the number of judges and lawyers who actually feel sorry for you. From their perspective the system worked perfectly. You got sued for something bogus and you won. The fact that it destroyed you financially to defend yourself is not their concern. Not at all.
Attorneys fees aren't awarded in garden-variety troll cases, and this decision does absolutely nothing to change that. Here, at a minimum, the plaintiff's attorneys:
1. Filed suit on a patent that (even by troll standards) was almost certainly invalid after the Supreme Court's Alice decision (issued the year before the suit was filed).
2. Filed suit in the Eastern District of Texas when there was not even the thinnest veneer of a basis to do so.
3. After this defendant refused to settle for small potatoes like the others, plaintiff first offered a covenant not to sue (which also would have made the current case go away), then when defendant announced its intent to seek fees, litigated the case for another year and a half in two different states and ran up defendant's costs even more.
This might give pause to attorneys taking on a handful of really egregious cases around the margins, but IMO isn't going to take very much of a bite out of the troll industry in general -- the game will just shift to the next-higher-quality tier of patents.
Now, the TC Heartland venue case that the Supreme Court has decided to take? That's the one that could significantly impact the troll community -- keep an eye on it.
In a more perfect world, a lawyer's ethical obligations would preclude him from taking on a case that is "obviously frivolous."
If a judge found that a case was "obviously frivolous" then the judge would be encouraged to fine the lawyer personally and would be required to refer the lawyer to the state bar, which would likely fine him an additional amount equal to what his client paid him for that case. Lawyers who got many such referrals relative to their peers (lawyers with similar caseloads and specializations) would see judges scrutinize their future cases much more closely, and those with huge numbers of referrals would see their license suspended or otherwise sanctioned.
In a more perfect world.
Not gonna happen. Sigh.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That's true the law firm was held liable for costs based in the actions of this law firm, the same reasoning doesn't apply to other patent suites generally. HOWEVER, 90% of patent trolling is done by just a handful of law firms, who all pretty much act the same way. So the reasoning does apply to the vast majority of patent troll suits.
Keep in mind, this ruling included misconduct on the part of the law firm beyond simply accepting the case on contingency.
Because about 90% of patent trolling is done by only a handful of law firms, who all sue on questionable patents in East Texas and generally follow a similar pattern of behavior, this certainly could have a significant effect. Heck, even knocking one of the top five troll firms out of the trolling business would be significant.
I think every member of a society should balance personal motives such as profit, against the greater good. Making a life-saving test extraordinarily expensive, and then pursuing anyone who develops a lower cost variant, particularly when the "test" as it were is simply identifying pre-existing and non-made-made genes, thus potentially harming thousands of people who the test's costs mean they cannot be tested cannot be justified save as a purely selfish and, dare I say it, sociopathic act. We should be doing all we can to get sociopaths out of any kind of corporate governance, not allowing them to game the system to our detriment and to their gain.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
how about having to pay for medical care at all?
Because enslaving doctors and nurses seems like such a better solution.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
There is only one country where the costs of medical care are generally accrued to the individual as opposed to spread out across society in general. But then there is health insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid which changes things, so I don't know what the best balance of conciseness and accuracy is. But your meme needs to die.
The problem being that no one makes money in a vacuum. The "self-made man" is a fantasy. The only self-made men I can think of are mountain men who live in the woods hundreds of miles from civilization, and even the historical mountain men still came down from the hills to trade pelts for knives.
Sorry mate, the society you live in allows you to make your money, gives you the protection necessary to keep it, gives you the infrastructure necessary for its creation and accumulation, so whether you like it or not, you have an inherent debt. Liberty is not absolute, but if you feel it is, then throw off your clothes, walk out of your house, head for the nearest vast forest and see how long you last as a "self-made man".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Aaah yes, steam engines, the number one argument against patents.
Watt gets the credit for inventing the steam engine - but he did nothing of the kind. Steam engines have been around since the ancient greeks. Getting progressively better over the centuries. By the 15th century there were more than a few steam powered mills in Britain.
What Watt did do was come up with a good mathematically concise way of measuring the amount of work a machine did, which allowed him to compare various designs for efficiency and come up with the best combination of known technologies at that time. Not a single one of the designs was his own - he merely figured out which designs for various parts were the best performing and then put them all together. Along with a wealthy financier -they then pushed steam power for trains.
Great inventions are never the work of one man or company - they are always the culmination of thousands of years of gradual improvement by thousands of people, and the INEVITABLE result of the state of human knowledge at any given time. Which is why, for any invention you wish to think off, you will find several competing claims as to who made it (besides whoever got the common credit) and generally at least 2 of them will have genuinely and independently come up with the same design without any knowledge of one another's work at teh same time.
Invention is a consequence of the collective history of all science, when the science reaches the point where an invention becomes possible it WILL happen - and it SEVERAL people will see the possibility.
So why does ONE of those people get a piece of paper saying the others aren't allowed to be rewarded for it ? Why does the government interfere with the market by giving one of those people a monopoly ?
The ostensible argument is - if you allow them to compete right away then (all) the inventors will keep the working of their products secret, which means the product could be lost when they go. This is certainly a concern - but patents are a very poor solution to that problem. Even if you do accept it, it has nothing to do with the absolutely ridiculous notion that ideas can be owned.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>Everything you do at work, for example, is "for personal profit". Would fewer or more women die, if the profiteer you are denouncing did not exist — and, consequently, his test was not available at any cost?
That scenario is impossible - and your claim is disproven by history. The correct counter-example is Jonas Salk. Created a vaccine that prevented one of the most debilitating diseases in human history (a disease which has killed at least one beloved US president by the way). Did not patent it. Did not even TRY to profit from it (was very happy with his middle-class professor's salary)... gave it to the world for free, and eradicated a disease entirely.
And since myriad are not staffed by gods knowing forbidden knowledge - had they not existed other researchers WOULD without any doubt have discovered those genes too - and NOT tried to see how many women they could kill.
You know what it's called when you tell somebody "give me a crapload of money or die ?" it's called robbery and extortion. It is definitely not called "doing honest business".
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
There is another factor - which is that wealth multiplies effect. I really spend my life trying to do good to other people, to uplift people, to help people, to empower people. You know what, all I've done pales into invisibility compared to what the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has done - and I think Bill Gates is a terribly evil person, yet he has done more good in a year than I could achieve if I live to be a thousand.
Why ? Because he has far more financial resources at his disposal, which enables him to do good that affects far more people than I ever could.
But the same goes for evil. A crazy killer may poison a well, it takes a greedy corporation to poison an entire river and killed hundreds or thousands of innocent people downstream. A crazy, evil person may become a rapist killer. How many could victims can he conceivably affect ? Even the most successfull serial killers are in the low-twenties. Harold Shipman got (probably) around 300 but he was much richer than the average serial killer and his lucrative job also gave him very good cover to hide his crimes. But the vast majority don't even get to 5 - and that's serial killers (3 or more - the vast majority of potential serial killers are caught without ever becoming serial killers).
So a few tens of victims... maybe.
How many people have been killed by wall street corruption ? How many people took their own lives after a bank corruptly foreclosed on a house in a fraudulent matter ? There were millions of cases like that just in 2009, so it's inconceivable that the death toll is not at least in the thousands.
When Katrina hit New Orleans - how much worse was the outcomes made for poor people, when the insurance companies found a million reasons not to pay their claims ? Sure the insurance companies feared they'd be bankrupted... but that was their PURPOSE - that's what htose people paid them for ! The sole reason we tolerate their existence is so that, when a hurrican destroys people's homes THEY go bankrupt instead of those people. How many more died in that floodwater thanks to greed? There is overwhelming evidence that wealthy people got prioritized rescue and other advantages which ultimately made the death toll far higher than it otherwise would have been.
When the average person commits evil - it affects only a small number of people. When the extremely wealthy commit evil - thousands suffer. Their very wealth magnifies the effect of their actions.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *