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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."
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.