More Questionable Activity From Patent Attorneys Wielding Patents
from the this-is-a-problem dept
Joe Mullin has been covering the story of how patent attorneys have been jumping into abusing the patent system with a fervor over the past few years -- either getting patents themselves on trivial concepts or buying up patents and aggressively suing over them. The classic case of this involved Scott Harris, who not only got a bunch of patents himself, but those patents were then used in lawsuits against clients of his own law firm, Fish & Richardson. Think about that for a second. Harris lost his job, but it appears that as long as you do the same thing while not still working for F&R, perhaps it's ok. Mullin has the story of a former F&R lawyer, who bought up a bunch of patents and has been suing a ton of big name companies. In some of the cases, he's been using Fish as his lawyers. In others, he's been suing Fish clients (though, not using Fish as his lawyers in those cases). Basically, this all just becomes a huge tax on innovation. A bunch of lawyers get extra wealthy while companies that are actually innovating are forced to fork over millions of dollars to the lawyers who think they're playing a game. I recently had a dinner with a young patent attorney who said the system is sickening from the inside (he's looking to get out of the patent business). You see these top patent lawyers who are making millions by abusing the system, and they absolutely love the fact that they're abusing the system. It makes them rich that they find the whole thing to be a joke. They don't care that it's harming companies and American innovation, just so long as they can buy expensive cars and houses.
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Filed Under: lawsuits, patent attorneys, patents
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You paint what I view as a broad generalization that bears virtually no resemblance to the vast, vast majority of patent practitioners. Moreover, I could not disagree more with your using the word "top" to describe these miscreants. I would use the word in association with many colleagues who like me view the actions of these very few with utter disdain.
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Attorney principles=money
X could be any form of protectionism, government approved or otherwise. The obvious point is that attorneys tend to specialize, and are paid for their specialty. Whoever has the most money to pay attorney for X gets the most attorney time. In addition to tort reform (frivolous filers should pay back the tax dollars they use up in the court system, for example), the protection racket the attorneys work within requires either reform or abolition. In the case of copyright and patent protection rackets, I vote for abolition.
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Re: Attorney principles=money
I guess these attorneys are paying themselves ?
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American Patant lawyers
But apart from that...may today be a good day for you.
Joseph
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Mike, how many patents are there? How many lawsuits? What is the percentage of patents used in this manner? How big of a problem is this?
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Um, lawsuits are a *tiny* part of the problem. You are ignoring licensing demands that never go to court, you are ignoring chilling effects.
If you think litigation is the only issue you clearly haven't worked at a tech company.
though is not alleged, because copying is more difficult to prove than infringement, and as an experienced litigator has told me, why allege something that you need not allege?
That's wrong. You actually have a much stronger case, especially for willful infringement, if you can show it was copied. If it was copied, you have a tremendous incentive to claim it and to prove it. Acting otherwise is simply wrong.
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No worries
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small? pointless?
if some one kills a "small" number of people would it be a waste of time to fix the problame?
those "pointless" abuses cost milloins of dollors and slow inovasoin
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However, what you FAILED to consider is that the mistakes, while fatal for the estimated 40,000 people, have HELPED MILLIONS of people. Patents are not any different. A very small percentage of patents, less than 0.5%, may have led to a small, apparently immeasurable slowing in innovation, but the other 99.5% seem to be doing what they do best, revealing information to the world and providing incentive for more innovation.
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Quite simply, if there are 10 million patents, and a dozen lawsuits a year, overall, the system is more effective than most everything else on the planet.
Heck, you have higher packet loss on your internet connection. Perhaps you should disconnect to avoid disappointment.
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That would be an interesting statistic to see.
The real number of people affected by patent lawyers is actually more likely to be far higher as litigation usually costs more than the "settlements".
I am unsure of what you are trying to say. Can you articulate that better? Do you have examples? Statistics?
There are far more medical issues than 1.75 million, most of which go unreported so that the mistakes probably end up being far less of a percentage than your misleading data all of which is unsubstantiated.
There are many sources for my "unsubstantiated" data. I give you one web site that provides a nice summary of deaths due to medical errors...
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/mistakes/common.htm
Patent lawsuits in America are a joke. Much of the legal system in America is a joke.
This argument is so well supported.
There is no equality for the poor as the law system is predicated on who can afford the best defense.
A sweeping generalization is always a good substitute for reasoned logic and facts.
In a system where using a laser light to entertain a cat can be patented and people can be sued into debt for using a legal image.
The patent is expired. However, who would you have asserted it against? It is clearly not something worth in money. Further, the thing would never have stood up in court, because cats inherently follow the light from lasers, as well as from flashlights, and other sources of light. It was a funny, stupid patent, that made no economic sense whatsoever.
People cannot be "sued into debt" for using a legal image, unless they challenge the ruling that the image is legal. I would enjoy seeing the article about the person sued into debt for using a legal image.
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That would be an interesting statistic to see.
Because you only care about measurable data, right? I don't know how many patent cases are settled out of court prior to filing, but I see threats of litigation influence business all the time. I can't tell you how many times I've read about a false DMCA takedown request unfortunately working, or a large company settling a lawsuit for millions just because it is cheaper and easier than going through the courts. The unquantified effects of overbearing litigation are far larger than the quantified.
The real number of people affected by patent lawyers is actually more likely to be far higher as litigation usually costs more than the "settlements".
I am unsure of what you are trying to say. Can you articulate that better? Do you have examples? Statistics?
I think it is blatantly obvious that he's referring to the huge cost of paying lawyers and fighting in court, which is a monetary vacuum. Do you need statistics to see that it costs a lot of money in legal fees to fight lawsuits?
There is no equality for the poor as the law system is predicated on who can afford the best defense.
A sweeping generalization is always a good substitute for reasoned logic and facts.
Are you disputing that affording the best defense will lead to more favorable outcomes? So I can walk into court against Microsoft without wasting money on expensive lawyers and actually get an injunction and payment from them if I have a valid patent dispute?
In a system where using a laser light to entertain a cat can be patented and people can be sued into debt for using a legal image.
The patent is expired. However, who would you have asserted it against? It is clearly not something worth in money. Further, the thing would never have stood up in court, because cats inherently follow the light from lasers, as well as from flashlights, and other sources of light. It was a funny, stupid patent, that made no economic sense whatsoever.
Right, it's never the legal system's fault, because who cares that you might have to spend thousands fighting this patent in court? At least you'd win in the end, right?
People cannot be "sued into debt" for using a legal image, unless they challenge the ruling that the image is legal. I would enjoy seeing the article about the person sued into debt for using a legal image.
So can just keep using the image then? Even if you are clearly protected under the law, you have to waste huge amounts of money retaining lawyers to utilize it.
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Says a guy that provided nothing of that sort himself, while continuing to be an AC.
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Legal fees are a complete and total waste of resources; you might as well flush the money down the toilet or use it to start a bonfire for all the good it does society. Over-legislating and over-litigating creates huge inefficiencies in the economy, which is exactly the thing we should be trying to avoid. Ideally, all lawyers would be out of a job. Obviously this isn't possible, but I've noticed that even most lawyers that aren't particularly abusive have become conditioned to value their colleagues' importance and necessity as far higher than it needs to be, as if all disputes require legal intervention.
It's the same mindset found in supporters of strict IP laws in general; they believe that production, innovation, and profit will not occur if everything is not covered by a 70-year copyright. And the same mindset found in supporters of government spending and intervention, who seem incapable of believing that anything will happen without the government. If people cannot see the explicit process by which a process will occur, they seem to assume it won't happen. For change to occur, we need to get into the general mindset that it's okay to have the bare essentials with regards to government, IP, litigation, etc. People will adapt, and life will go on.
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F#$%^&* techdirt retards
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Re: F#$%^&* techdirt retards
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stop the shilling!!!
Figure it out. If others own the patents that means your pals are not the ones innovating. All they are doing is "borrowing" others inventions.
Patent reform is a fraud on America...
Please see http://truereform.piausa.org/ for a different/opposing view on patent reform.
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True Reform?
Try "inventing" a web site with a background that doesn't totally interfere with the text, so humans can actually read it. At least I could see the blue text links, which all seem to point to other internal rants, rather than any external or impartial sources. The only view I see on that site is that everyone who disagrees with your viewpoint is wrong. I see no difference there from any other AC poster here -- you didn't have to register any new domains to accomplish that at all.
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Scott Harris
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citation ?
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