New Tool Lets You See How Often A Patent Has Shown Up In Litigation

from the quite-useful dept

A few years back, a patent attorney made a simple suggestion to me, asking that, whenever I write about patent lawsuits, that I include the US patent number on the patent within the text of the article. He explained that for those sued, one of the most useful things is to find other lawsuits regarding that patent, and it's actually not that easy, so having stories list the patent numbers becomes a big deal. In many cases, when companies are sued, their lawyer does a general search to see if the patent has been used in litigation before -- and it's that general Google Search, which is why the request was made to me to include patent numbers. However, for companies or individuals sued by patent holders, having a lawyer sit there and do a Google search can cost you an extra $500 to $700 per hour of lawyers' fees. Many lawyers have argued that the system needs to be much better.

Thankfully, the folks over at Patexia have recently launched a new feature on their site that makes it much easier to look up such things. For example, here are the Patexia results for lawsuits involving US Patent 6,857,067 which is held by Uniloc, who recently used it to sue X-Plane, Mojang and others. While, in that case, you can see all the recent lawsuits come from Uniloc (who could be searched via Pacer), it may not be as complex. But when patents get passed around a lot, following the trail isn't always so easy. No matter what, this seems like it could be a useful tool, especially for those sued by patent trolls.
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Filed Under: litigation, patent trolls, patents
Companies: patexia


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 Apr 2013 @ 3:51pm

    The Patent Office Should Have this Info

    Whenever a patent litigation is filed, notice is supposed to be sent to the patent office, which is then made publicly available. This information is available on Public Pair: http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair/

    Granted, the info isn't as pretty and it doesn't give any synopsis of the case, but useful nonetheless.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Ophelia Millais (profile), 19 Apr 2013 @ 8:31pm

    Can't wait to see what patents are infringed by this tool :)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    James McArdle (profile), 20 Apr 2013 @ 8:31pm

    Re: The Patent Office Should Have this Info

    You're right, it should (in fact it's legally required to), but it doesn't seem to [have the data].

    See this recent study: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2247195

    Found that the PAIR data was incomplete/inaccurate > 30% of the time.

    Disclaimer: I work for Patexia.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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