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Court Throws Out $533 Million Verdict Against Apple Over Data Storage Patent (9to5mac.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit made a decision today to throw out the verdict of a two-year old legal case against Apple based on data storage patents. The original verdict reached by a Texas jury stuck Apple with $533 million in damages. Smartflash LLC targeted game developers who largely all settled out of court in 2014, but Apple defended its use of data storage management and payment processing technology in court. Reuters has more on the new developments: "The trial judge vacated the large damages award a few months after a Texas federal jury imposed it in February 2015, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said on Wednesday the judge should have ruled Smartflash's patents invalid and set aside the verdict entirely. A unanimous three-judge appeals panel said Smartflash's patents were too 'abstract' and did not go far enough in describing an actual invention to warrant protection."
They should be respected by technologists.
...if the appeals court could somehow sanction the lower court for repeatedly finding valid patents that are clearly bogus. I'm just waiting for IBM to sue Microsoft for their new "vacation email" patent.
The Eastern District of Texas court needs some swamp draining.
F patent trolls
if that were true, how would they have gotten the patents in the first place?
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When Apple was awarded 1 billion/598 million over things that included round corners?
The Federal Circuit didn't "throw out" a penny of damages. They were already gone nearly two years ago. The summary even correctly reflects this when quoting the Reuters article -- the district court itself threw out the original damages verdict, and all the Federal Circuit was deciding was whether there could be any liability at all. If it hadn't ruled like this, the case would have gone back to the district court for a new trial on damages.
I'm curious to know why the east district of texas has gotten this notorious for being a patent troll's best friend? Not the statistics, we've seen the statistics. I want to know why it keeps happening?
My first kneejerk expectation is that money is somehow at work here. Are there kickbacks? Are the trolls paying someone upfront (and/or under the table) that's in a position of power? Or are they funneling money into the TX court systems somehow? Keeping an otherwise very unnecessarily large panel of judges employed? Have some sort of strong patent troll lobby or PAC in TX? Comedically high filing fees for these cases? What's the angle here?
And after that's sorted... is there anything the feds can do about this? I'd imagine the US Court of Appeals is just as tired of this BS as we are - moreso probably. They're systematically wasting the appeals court's time. Can they do anything to stop it? Somehow sanction judges? Mess with their funding somehow in an effective way? Affect their decisions or their power somehow? Get these (elected?) judges impeached or at least start some formal inquiries that could lead to impeachment? "Send a message" somehow? (but messages do little good if you have no teeth and they know it)
Or are there some folks down sahth that just enjoy being a spectacle and are hamming it up for all all the media attention they keep getting every time this happens?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Texas, we had no problem with your peculiar behavior, including the provocative "don't mess with Texas" line and then you started fucking over the rest the rest of us with your insane ideas on patents. So fuck you Texas and have your independence because we don't want you.
-The rest of the country.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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I'm curious to know why the east district of texas has gotten this notorious for being a patent troll's best friend? Not the statistics, we've seen the statistics. I want to know why it keeps happening?
My first kneejerk expectation is that money is somehow at work here...
Nope, it's easier than that:
(i) all patent law is federal, so all patent trials have to be in federal district court. That narrows things waaaay down.
(ii) venue is appropriate for a patent infringement suit any place in the US a product is offered for sale. Given internet sales, national broadcasting, etc., that's pretty much everywhere. It's also arguably central between East Coast and West Coast.
(iii) nothing happens in Eastern Texas. So there are no other, higher priority cases to get in the way. Like, if you brought a patent infringement suit in the Southern District of New York (i.e. New York City), good farking luck getting it heard. It's going to be bumped behind any federal criminal case, because those have a requirement of a speedy trial, and between financial crimes and interstate crimes, New York has a ton of criminal cases. Go to Eastern Texas, on the other hand, and they haven't had a federal murder case in years. So, ED Texas gets a bunch of patent trials because they're fast, and as a result, they also have a lot of experience with patent trials. If it wasn't Texas, it would've been someplace else boring, like Wisconsin or Idaho or something.
And after that's sorted... is there anything the feds can do about this?
Yep. #2 above is considered less powerful these days. It's much easier to get a case transferred out of Texas now than it ever has been, and under the AIA, trolls can't sue Microsoft in Seattle and Joe Shmuck, ordinary citizen, in Miami, and argue that Texas is halfway between so it's most convenient for everyone. That used to be the standard, but now, joint defendants have to be engaged in business together, and that ended that loophole.
I'm curious to know why the east district of texas has gotten this notorious for being a patent troll's best friend? Not the statistics, we've seen the statistics. I want to know why it keeps happening?
The patent attorney who answered you covered a lot, but there's one more thing. From July 2015 regarding a lawsuit filed by a patent troll against NewEgg:
The Federal Eastern District is wildly corrupt. From the Newegg filing:
Further evidencing the unreasonableness of the delay in Newegg’s case is the most recent Civil Justice Reform Act (“CJRA”) Report for Judge Gilstrap, which indicates that as of September 30, 2014, Judge Gilstrap had only a single civil case pending for more than three years, and that he had no motions pending for more than six months.
That's from Newegg's argumentation that a 20 month delay in issuing a ruling is ridiculous. What they tacked on in the footnotes is fascinating:
Curiously, although TQP’s case against Newegg (filed May 6, 2011) had been pending for more than three years, and although Newegg’s JMOL motion (filed February 17, 2014) had been pending more than six months at that time, neither the case nor the motion were listed in Judge Gilstrap’s September 2014 CJRA Report.
Gilstrap wants to punish Newegg for daring to go to trial at all over the patent lawsuit, and further for daring to be right when they proved they weren't infringing, and finally for making a mockery of the idiot east Texas jury that found infringement and awarded millions for it, completely in contradiction to the law, other case law, and the plain reading of the text of the patent. And he wants to get away with it by hiding it from the CJRA Report. And he's doing it.
In other words, a law was passed by Congress to evaluate the performance of judges, specifically to catch malpractice like this, and he got a fraudulent report created that hides his misbehavior.
Newegg has the discretion to call that "curious." The rest of us call it criminal. Impeach the bastard.
None of that seems to explain though why the trolls win in this lower court so often? Especially in stupid cases like this where on appeals all the judges are looking at each other like "HOW did this possibly make it to us? no. just NO. Now go away."
If it all came down to "they have the time to deal with it and have the most experience", you'd expect better and more consistent judgements. Or are some of the defendants just doing stupid things? (I can't imagine Apple/IBM/MS sending incompetent lawyers to a patent trial)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Well, there is nothing else in the East TX district, so patent law is a major economy.
Sensible judgements will push these cases away, disrupting that economy.
People like a good economy, keep electing judges that will keep it there.
East TX benefits, everyone else suffers.
Federal district court judges are appointed by the president for life terms (terminable only by way of impeachment if they really screw up).
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None of that seems to explain though why the trolls win in this lower court so often? Especially in stupid cases like this where on appeals all the judges are looking at each other like "HOW did this possibly make it to us? no. just NO. Now go away."
If it all came down to "they have the time to deal with it and have the most experience", you'd expect better and more consistent judgements. Or are some of the defendants just doing stupid things? (I can't imagine Apple/IBM/MS sending incompetent lawyers to a patent trial)
Well, in this particular one, this is a changing area of law. The Alice Corp. decision only came out last year, and this trial started before that.
Additionally, there's a bit of a selection bias. Plaintiffs don't file million-dollar lawsuits on patents they know will lose, and they certainly don't proceed through trial and appeal on those patents. But even still, the average last year was less than 50%.
I guess that makes sense. Even with a 10% or 20% success rate, the patent trolls could conceivably still come out ahead, as long as the price of acquiring patents is less than the money they can make litigating with them. It doesn't matter that we don't hear about the cases the trolls lose, because as long as they are winning any cases at all, there is still a problem.
I guess that makes sense. Even with a 10% or 20% success rate, the patent trolls could conceivably still come out ahead, as long as the price of acquiring patents is less than the money they can make litigating with them. It doesn't matter that we don't hear about the cases the trolls lose, because as long as they are winning any cases at all, there is still a problem.
Pretty much. Look at it this way - this was originally a $550 million dollar decision, and they probably paid $2M to pursue it, so a net gain of $548M. A litigator can send out a "settle or we'll sue" nastygram for what, $5000? Even if they end up filing the complaint, and later withdrawing it, that's gonna be less than $20k. Heck, say they take them all through trial, never withdrawing a single case, and even spend the same amount (which is absolutely nuts, mind you, no one does that). They can lose 274 cases before they eat up their winnings from this one win.