If You're Going To Sue For Patent Infringement, It Helps To Say What Actually Infringes
from the pro-tip dept
Last year, we wrote about a guy, Greg Bender, who holds a patent (5,103,188) on a "buffered transconductance amplifier," that he's decided is infringed upon by pretty much any electronics device. He filed a ton of lawsuits claiming that his patent was infringed on by makers of computers, cell phones, hard drives, DVD players, HDTVs and MRI machines. However, it appears he failed when it came to providing specifics. Joe Mullin points to the news that Bender's lawsuit against Motorola has been dismissed for failing to state a claim. Specifically, the lawsuit was so vague and general that it wasn't clear what he was suing over. In the lawsuit, Bender claimed the following were infringing:products [including], without limitation, cell phones, computers, network drivers, high definition television sets, ultrasound machines, MRI machines, lab equipment, arbitrary waveform generators, audio amplifiers, video amplifiers, hard disc drives, ADC/DAC converters, DVD-RW players, DSL modems, CCD cameras, satellite communication technology, and other products where high performance, high speed analog circuits are used, and/or components thereof.With such a broad list, the court noted that no one had any idea what was actually infringing:
Nowhere in the Amended Complaint does Plaintiff identify, with the requisite level of factual detail, the particular product or line of products, that allegedly infringe the '188 Patent. Instead, Plaintiff merely claims that the infringing "products include, without limitation, cell phones, computers . . . and other products where high performance, high speed analog circuits are used, and/or components thereof." [P]laintiff has done nothing more than recite a laundry list of electronic devices. These cursory allegations are insufficient to give the Defendant fair notice of the claims being alleged against it.
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Filed Under: greg bender, patent infringement, patents, vague
Companies: motorola
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Specific?
On a side note - ADC/DAC converters. I hate it when people use the acronym and then use the last word from the acronym.
NIC card, DVD disk, LCD display... It immediately makes me think the person has no idea what their talking about.
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Re: Specific?
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Re: Specific?
Its called PINS syndrome (PIN Number Syndrome....Syndrome) :}
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome
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Re: Specific?
Perhaps you would not need to be specific in a lawsuit if you did not need to be specific in a patent. However, you need to disclose an invention to the level of detail that permits someone else to practice the invention, and your lawsuit has to be sufficiently specific that the nature of the suit can be defended.
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anyone know?
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Re: anyone know?
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Microsoft tactics
Don't, under any circumstances, come clean about exactly what it is you're suing over because then it will be easy for the defendant to find prior art etc.
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Re: Microsoft tactics
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Re:
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maybe obvious?
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Re: maybe obvious?
You're crazy. The merits of this particular patent's claimed invention aside, what you fail to notice is the filing date of the patent in question, which is in 1989. What may be commonplace now may not have been commonplace or obvious back in the late 80's or early 90's. It is not fair to judge the obviousness of a claimed invention by what happens after the fact.
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shut up, stupid techdirt punks
It's also very old and already expired
apparently last minute attempt by inventor to collect any money from infringers
well, better late than never...
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His other invention
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idiocracy
That;s what happened to this shitty blog and will soon happen to this entire country
Eat your nuggets and watch the movie, punks
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Patent suits without specificity
That's why I do small entity patenting - you have to have an invention, and it will be described so clearly that "experts" are not needed - so, if you do have to go to court, and hopefully that won't happen with so much clarity,
you will be out a few thousand - and if I did MY job right, you will win (I don't help people "work" the system).
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Microsoft has done the same thing.
What MS was successful in doing, was to generate enough FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) that it scared a number of companies to sign agreements with them (LG, and others) so if the infringements ever came to court (which it never will), they would not be affected.
These scare tactics are despicable.
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