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Kaspersky Lab Forces 'Patent Troll' To Pay Cash To End Case (arstechnica.com)
In October, Kaspersky Labs was sued by a "do-nothing patent holder in East Texas who demanded a cash settlement before it would go away," reports Ars Technica. Today, founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky said his company has defeated five patent assertion entities, including the infamous claims from Lodsys, "a much-maligned patent holder that sent demand letters to small app developers." The patent-licensing company who sued Kaspersky Labs in October was not only defeated, but they ended up paying Kaspersky $5,000 to end the litigation. From the report: The patent-licensing company, Wetro Lan LLC, owned U.S. Patent No. 6,795,918, which essentially claimed an Internet firewall. The patent was filed in 2000 despite the fact that computer network firewalls date to the 1980s. The '918 patent was used in what the Electronic Frontier Foundation called an "outrageous trolling campaign," in which dozens of companies were sued out of Wetro Lan's "headquarters," a Plano office suite that it shared with several other firms that engage in what is pejoratively called "patent-trolling." Wetro Lan's complaints argued that a vast array of Internet routers and switches infringed its patent. Most companies sued by Wetro Lan apparently reached settlements within a short time, a likely indicator of low-value settlement demands. Not a single one of the cases even reached the claim construction phase. But Kaspersky wouldn't pay up. As claim construction approached, Kaspersky's lead lawyer Casey Kniser served discovery requests for Wetro Lan's other license agreements. He suspected the amounts were low. Wetro Lan's settlement demands kept dropping, down from its initial "amicable" demand of $60,000. Eventually, the demands reached $10,000 -- an amount that's extremely low in the world of patent litigation. Kniser tried to explain that it didn't matter how far the company dropped the demand. "Kaspersky won't pay these people even if it's a nickel," he said. Then Kniser took a new tack. "We said, actually, $10,000 is fine," said Kniser. "Why don't you pay us $10,000?" After some back-and-forth, Wetro Lan's lawyer agreed to pay Kaspersky $5,000 to end the litigation. Papers were filed Monday, and both sides have dropped their claims.
Every software patent. If you can't make a good case as to why you should have the patent, it's gone. I think we'd lose 99% of the patents, because 99% of them are bogus.
We need evil Russians, that's the only way we can keep the content of leaked DNC emails buried under a thick layer of mass hysteria. They're also very convenient as a distraction for people who still have their panties in a bunch because they lost their elections to a reality TV star.
lucm, indeed.
Mostly because its difficult to knock off the patent trolls that nobody wants, without also inadvertently harming the big patent holders such as Microsoft, Intel, IBM, etc who all hold hundreds if not thousands of patents that they don't actually practice in addition to the hundreds or thousands that they do practice.
So you can't just add a law like "non-practicing patents are not actionable" or anything like that without pissing off those big campaign contributors and you end up in kind of an "I know it when I see it" scenario where its usually pretty obvious when someone is a patent troll, but writing it up in legal language that's both strong enough to matter and still specific enough to only harm the abusers.
Of course the real solution is to just not issue shitty patents in the first place, or at the very least be more willing to invalidate them when its shown that they're shitty. That has the same issue of inadvertently harming the big political contributors though so its even less likely to happen since its basically the same solution just kicked up the line a bit.
*ahem*
I don't disagree with what you wrote, but you seem to have missed the point.
This is not about non-practising patents. This is about Software Patents, which are utterly immoral and should not exist in any form.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Please do explain how allowing Comcast to limit traffic from services like Netflix will give them any incentive to provide a better overall internet service.
How dare they try and undermine such an upstanding and fine American institution as patent trolling!
They didn't. They made the patent troll part with $5000. A responsible company would have gone to court and get all the patents invalidated to prevent the troll feeding on other victims.
They don't want 3Com and Intel because those companies would happily fight this thing to death in court. You got targeted because you are small potatoes, and presumable don't have the stamina or cash to go to court. For a big fish it makes financial sense to fight; for small fry it makes financial sense to pay up, the fee is probably less than your legal bills would be.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I do give Kaspersky a lot of credit for standing their ground. Unfortunately the patent was not invalidated in the process and the troll can legally continue to extort money from smaller and less successful companies. Since the case was settled out of court, the court judge never had a chance to rule and legally invalidate the patent. Trolls don't just go away when they still smell money. Its a real shame Kaspersky couldn't take it one step further and put them out of business completely.
...they didn't take this court, win the case, and demand not just their fees and costs (which surely totalled more than $10K) but also asked for a punitive damages amount for this bullshit. That right there would have sent a message to these patent trolls that their particular brand of assholism could end up being costly. Would have been a nice PR boost for Kaspersky to be the ones to back down one of these fools.