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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.
And the patent troll forgot to include non-disclosure it seems.
Obviously quality lawyering there.. Smart, Real smart.
But lets not forget, Kaspersky is EVIL now remember? EVIL RUSSIANS!
How dare they try and undermine such an upstanding and fine American institution as patent trolling!
Now we know what law firm to go to if we are ever targeted by a patent troll.
I've had a patent troll on my case before and it is one of the most annoying pitfalls of doing business in the USofA. The plaintiff was some invisible company that got ahold of some ARCnet patents from a defunct workstation maker and thought they could nail every Ethernet product maker. We were small potatoes they wanted 3Com and Intel.
Fortunately this particular claim was so specious that it didn't go anywhere. Still annoying.
What's your patent troll story?
I've long suspected that more than a few patent trolls have paid off the defendants to get out of a suit gone wrong, but always the "settlement" comes with the condition that the defendants not talk about it. What's game-changing about this one is that there's no non-disclosure agreement, Kaspersky's free to publicize exactly who had to pay how much to make the suit disappear. That opens the door for other defendants to counter patent trolls' record of "settlements" (used as evidence of the strength of their claims) with "Show how those "settlements" aren't just like the one with Kaspersky.".
If all those large patent holders lost their patents at the same time, no one would be harmed.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!