Twitter Makes The Case That Trolls Should Have To Pay Legal Fees For Bogus Lawsuits
from the minor-bit-of-reform dept
Last year, we wrote about how Twitter won a ridiculous lawsuit against a patent lawyer, Dinesh Agarwal, who claimed to have patented "A method system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people," also known as US Patent 6,408,309. The jury pointed out that Twitter didn't actually appear to infringe at all, which is all too common in these kinds of cases. At the very least, it was nice to see Twitter willing to fight this out. The way patent trolling works is that the trolls usually make it much cheaper to just pay them to go away than to actually fight it out in court. Twitter's Ben Lee is now writing about how ridiculous this is, and suggesting that it's time to fix this aspect of the system:According to the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)’s 2011 survey, an average patent lawsuit costs between $900,000 to $6,000,000 to defend. In the last month and a half alone, Twitter has received three new patent troll lawsuits. The law currently does not allow us to recover the millions of dollars in fees we spent to defend ourselves — nor does it compensate us for the time spent by many Twitter employees who worked on the case. The law only allows us to ask for certain types of minor fees, which is why the court was only able to order this particular patent troll to pay us $10,447.85.Lee is writing more specifically to try to drum up support for the SHIELD Act, which we wrote about earlier this month, which would allow companies to ask for their attorneys' fees to be paid in cases, like this one, where there was no merit to the lawsuit at all. That bill has started to pick up some attention, and while it's doubtful it's going to go anywhere this year, hopefully with the new Congress next year there will be sufficient interest in at least fixing this one small part of the patent system. I've still yet to see any reasonable explanation for why this bill is a problem, since it would only impact completely bogus patent lawsuits.
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Filed Under: legal costs, patent trolls, patents
Companies: twitter
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Punish the trolls heavily
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Re: Punish the trolls heavily
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How can this be right? So if you own a patent you can effectively ruin a business just by involving them in a lawsuit.
This is the most ridiculous thing I have every heard, I have always thought you can recoup all cost from failed law suits...
how is the even close to fair????
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As a result if that, plus Canadian judges that actually take time to understand what they are looking at, legal trolling is nonexistent in Canada.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Oct 10th, 2012 @ 5:14pm
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Trolls
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Re: Trolls
Both sides are scum, but I didn't see them running to keep the government from shutting down. They enjoyed running the country to the brink to prove they were better... We need elected leaders who behave like adults not like 10 yr olds in a pissing contest.
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Re: Trolls
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On just about everything else including IP, copyright, internet, security, freedoms, etc. they're so close as to be indistinguishable.
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Re: Trolls
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Re: Trolls
Actually, since most "patent trolls" are companies supporting Republicans, only Democrats can save us now!
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Troll Toll
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If they have no merit (like this one) you should be able to get it dismissed long before a trial. Obviously, the judge found merit.
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The judge himself/herself cannot invalidate a patent without a trial. So a judge willing to hear the case doesn't automatically mean he/she think the patent holder have merit.
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That's a lot more difficult (and expensive) in patent cases for a variety of mostly procedural reasons. It happens, but it's rare for patent cases to be kicked out on a motion to dismiss.
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Making it significantly harder and riskier for a rights holder to try and enforce their rights isn't exactly a positive thing. You have to remember in these lawsuits the plaintiff also has expenses, they have to build the case and such. It's not just a $100 filing and have a nice day. For the most part, if they are actually filing the lawsuit (rather than just sending a legal letter) they are convinced enough of their rights that the feel they can win.
Again, this is a story that gets back to the issue of the legal process in the US, and not about patents or copyright. It's just too expensive to go to court, it's too complex, and the lawyers too expensive. Address the issues of the complexity of defending in a lawsuit like this, and you resolve most of the issues at hand.
It's a double win, because if you find a way to lower the costs of defending against such a lawsuit, you also end up taking away the "it's cheaper to settle" angle that true patent and copyright trolls play in.
Mike, perhaps you want to re-aim your politican power towards changing the legal system, rather than putting more band-aids on it.
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Making them enforce their rights has always been a problem, they want everyone else to foot the bill for it. They scream they lost all sorts of money but you have to pay to fix it for them.
Patent troll whine how much money they lost by their patent being infringed upon, but they did nothing beyond file it and wait for someone to get close. They are not in the market and merely hold an "idea" hostage with poorly worded documents rubber stamped by people who couldn't find prior art with both hands and a map of their ass.
Lawyers make it worse, selling the idea your losing imaginary dollars that they can help you get back. Maybe its time to make the loser pay, invalidate patents, pass a law saying if you paid fees for a patent declared invalid you get your cash back.
The system is broken, this might not be the perfect fix but to pretend we don't currently have patent lawsuits used as weapons by big business and trolls is silly. Or do you not read news about Apple.
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Very interesting suggestion. This could be a great way to beat some sense into the patent office!
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laws passed
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Why just pick patents?, the author asks: "In other words, the bill’s premise is that the protections and remedies under existing law – which for years have protected against fraud, abuse and bad faith – are now considered inadequate!" This is indeed just what the premise is, and it seems correct. Patent trolling is a big problem, where defendants are forced into settlements, because the costs of the lawsuit are too high (often millions).
So this law is a surgical instrument to remedy a particularly egregious canker.
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Just because you allege its less severe doesn't make the act any less of a "surgical instrument." I don't see how that makes any sense. It would be less surgical if perhaps it didn't do what it was intended to do and caught others out. Maybe it SHOULD bring risk to these people who hold monopoly power over ideas. Then they wouldn't be so quick to sue, and maybe, just maybe, bring suits that absolutely have merit and they will think twice about bringing them.
Greater access to courts is also bad? For who? The defendant or the plaintiff?
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because the entire IP system itself is bogus and its entire purpose is to be bogus.
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Bogus IP law suites
The actions of companies is the direct responsibility of the board, and they should not be able to dodge responsibility by hiding behind the company. Also lawyers should be held responsible for bringing suites that have no merit, as they should have advised their clients of this fact, and refuse to simply obey orders.
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Treat the cause not the symptom
Plus large corporation have budgets for legal departments. They don't just pay these suits to file suits, they pay them to actively look for loopholes and alternate interpretations of existing laws. They won't just assert that black is white, they'll assert that white is merely a different shade of black - and if they can get a judge, jury and few dozen lawyers to argue over that long enough to drain a company or individual of all their resources then that's good money well spent.
It's practically guaranteed that within 5 years either the same trolls or some entirely new trolls will have found a way to use this new INSERT ACRONYM Act to either suppress competition or convert it to danegeld.
What's needed is to deal with the underlying causes of what creates trolls in the first place. Such things as 'owning' ideas without needing to invent anything. Allowing said ideas to be traded for money. Classifying abstracts as property. Start there.
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Masnick Seeks More Money and Power for his Wealthy Overlords
It is a defendants law, lobbied by wealthy. large corporations and further tilts an already all to tilted playing field to lock out small start-ups and individual inventors.
Large companies frequently win patent battles because they have deep pockets to pay for an overwhelming legal advantage. Companies that do so can lose having brought the plaintiff to the brink of bankruptcy. Where is the opportunity for enhanced fees recovery in the Shield Act for the plaintiff?
Twitter like most things was invented by one person I believe. Now that it is a business success it wants a government right to discourage small entities and individuals from seeking compensation for their respective inventions. That's called UNFAIR ADVANTAGE Twitter and you can't have it, and if you had any sense of justice you would not ask for it. Seek a balanced approach that rewards valid inventors and valid defenders equally.
Troll is just a name Masnick and other prevaricators of the big lie campaigns have made up to try to malign inventors whose works have not been acquired by large corporations or universities or other high paying Masnick clientele.
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you call that an AVERAGE figure ??? idiots, how on earth could anyonen claim that is an average figure !!! it's a range of costs, but it's not an average..
please masnick try to stick to the facts, if you can.. or go back to school..
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Masnick, can you do anything right ? why are you not questing your own 'sources' for accuracy ??
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"Average" in this case means "typical" rather than a mathematical average. Meaning, a typical patent lawsuit costs $900,000 to $6,000,000 to defend.
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why not contempt?
I'd love to see that, but I don't know if there is precedent for civil court judges to do that sort of thing.
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