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The Supreme Court Is Cracking Down on Patent Trolls (fortune.com)
The Supreme Court on Monday limited the ability of patent holders to bring infringement lawsuits in courts that have plaintiff friendly reputations, a notable decision that could provide a boost to companies that defend against patent claims. The high court, in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled unanimously that a lower court has been following an incorrect legal standard for almost 30 years that made it possible for patent holders to sue companies in almost any U.S. jurisdiction. From a report: The justices sided 8-0 (PDF) with beverage flavoring company TC Heartland in its legal battle with food and beverage company Kraft Heinz, ruling that patent infringement suits can be filed only in courts located in the jurisdiction where the targeted company is incorporated. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the decision. The decision overturned a ruling last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a Washington-based patent court, that said patent suits are fair game anywhere a defendant company's products are sold.
I thought they always used East Texas because the people there were so intelligent?
How about cracking down on stupid and frivolous patents too?
The Supreme Court is also cracking down on gerrymandering where the GOP is using race to try to force all the black voters into a small number of districts to minimize the number of congressional seats they can have.
How can the Supreme Court "crack down" on something that is a legal, precedented activity? Are they going to actually hand down a ruling that overturns prior decisions of the lower court? (And, yes, East Texas is about as low as it gets in this field.)
Wouldn't it be easier to just order a sarin gas strike on a certain courthouse in East Texas and get it over with?
thinks that this will just create more patent infringement friendly jurisdictions, as the wealth gets.... redistributed
>> patent infringement suits can be filed only in courts located in the jurisdiction where the targeted company is incorporated
I see a bunch of high-fiving going on in the Delaware legal community (because that's where a lot if not most of targeted companies will be incorporated). Also a lot of high-fiving in corporate legal departments, who asked their companies to (re)incorporate in Delaware to take advantage of its corporate-friendly laws.
The whole east Texas crap has been the bane of the tech industry for decades.
I was involved in two patent cases (providing research rather than expert witness); both were in East Texas.
One was the Novell/Red Hat case on user interfaces, and the other was on the infamous OpenMarket patents.
One we won (the Novell/Red Hat), and the other lost (the Open Market patents, finally thrown out years later due to the efforts of New Egg.
I will note that the Novell/Red litigation was helped by the judge coming in from out of district (from the appeals court). So venue clearly mattered greatly. Don't under estimate it.
The Open Market patents were about as an egregious violation of the patent system as I can imagine. The first of the three (the original one) described the method OpenMarket used for its early shopping cart system based on URL hacking. It was obsolete the day cookies were invented (which have their own set of terrible privacy problems, something we weren't thinking about much in the early 1990's; sigh). So nobody infringed it; by the time of its issuance it was moot, as cookies made it much easier; whether there was prior art isn't clear to me, but probably; I just never found a smoking gun. The second and third patent, continued over a decade, ended up covering about half of computer science and should never have been issued due to prior art.
Thankfully, the CEO of NewEgg fought in a later case and eventually won, but not after many companies lost and were held up.
So venue matters, and fixing the patent system to not issue trash sweeping patents matter both.
How can the Supreme Court crack down on anything? Technically it interprets existing law based on cases brought before it.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
"Sorry Delaware legal community" but Patent law is Federal law under and Federal Courts jurisdiction.
Federal Courts, plural. Different district judges are known to rule differently, and rulings of the Court of Appeals for one circuit aren't binding on other circuits unless upheld by the Supreme Court.
Patents and Copyrights begin with the general post-office under a stamp, not in a registry torrens. United States Postal Service and United States Post Office(tm) are not political functions as the general post-office does.
All recent presidents from Roosevelt to Trump must be tried for treason and every Executive Order reversed and cancelled!
That Rural East Texas has lost.... (a lot of companies incorporate in Delaware....)
If the court cases were incorrectly filed and ruled on for 30 years in the wrong location -- does that mean companies who did not settle can now have them overturned and go back to court in a new location?
If the case has closed then my understanding is no, the verdict will not be overturned due to what is now incorrect venue. At the time the case was argued, the venue was correct. That the venue is now different should have no legal bearing on old cases - only current and future cases. I believe the constitutional law that prevents old cases from being reopened in this way is called double jeopardy.
Double Jeopardy only applies to criminal law.
At the very least, it appears to have violated the 6th amendment provision for a "speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed".
This ruling would seem to indicate that many of the "closed" cases were decided outside of their proper jurisdiction. If the way that the venue (and thus the jury) was chosen didn't follow the law as it was written at the time (regardless of interpretation at the time), is the ruling still valid?
I guess those crooked or biased activist judges in East Texas will have a lot of golfing to do.
Problem solved
The Sixth Amendment applies in the criminal context, not the civil context. Patent suits are civil matters.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
I must have a different definition of cracking down. You just not have to sue in the correct place. East Texas law suits have will still be a problem. Cause patent troll companies, setup offices in East Texas so they can sue from East Texas.
Perhaps this is because the court does not reflect the Executive, at least not yet.
Our current President gets a good portion of his income from rent-seeking, (licensing the Trump name) and probably considers that to be "good business." Since it's good business, I would expect him to favor that kind of enterprise, and discourage limitations on it.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
This is a tragedy! The entire economy of East Texas is based on accepting bribes from patent holders. What are they going to do now!? :D
Texas actually considers their patent troll venues as something to draw tech companies to the area:
Tyler serves as headquarters to the Eastern District of Texas federal court, a popular venue for patent cases due to its judicial expertise, plaintiff-friendly local rules, speedy dispositions, and principled jurors who understand the value of Intellectual Property (or "IP"). The East Texas area also has an abundance of legal experts specializing in patent and IP litigation.