This American Life Followup On Patents Reveals Intellectual Ventures Is Even Slimier Than Previously Believed

from the well-of-course-they-are dept

Nearly two years ago, This American Life did an incredible episode about patents and patent trolling, which really got the issue of patent trolling into the mainstream. At the center of that episode was an exploration into Intellectual Ventures, the world's largest, most obnoxious patent troll. The story revolved around one single patent (5,771,354), which Intellectual Ventures itself had held up as an example of how they were really just helping the poor, brilliant, lone inventor who was being ripped off. In that story, This American Life reporter/producer Alex Blumberg and NPR New reporter Laura Sydell tried to follow the story of that patent to exonerate Intellectual Ventures and show that, indeed, it was helping small inventors get their due. But the story turned out to not stand up to even the slightest amount of scrutiny. Because when they went in search of the inventor, Chris Crawford, he refused to respond to them, and then IV itself noted that it had "sold off" the patent and it was currently engaged in litigation. The entity doing the litigation was a company called Oasis Research, which had an empty office in Marshall, Texas with no employees, but had sued over a dozen internet companies for broadly doing online backup.

In a hilarious exchange, IV's Peter Detkin, the guy who coined the phrase patent troll but now likes to delude himself that he's not an executive at the world's largest troll, pretended that it was some sort of "ambush" when Blumberg simply asked him to explain when IV bought the patent from Crawford and then when and to whom they sold it, based on the data on the US Patent Office's own website. Hilariously, Detkin insisted that he hadn't looked at the USPTO website, so he didn't know what was going on.
Detkin: I won't be able to tell you, probably, from looking at this. I mean I'd have to talk to... I'm not even an expert in... You're looking at the USPTO website? I haven't looked at this particular website in a while. I don't know how it's organized....

Alex Blumberg, from TAL: Wait... are you telling me that you're the... (long pause)... you run a patent company and you were the head counsel at Intel in the patent department, and you don't know what the Patent Office website is... you don't know how to read this...?

Detkin: (Frustrated) Look, I can look at this if you want, but I haven't looked at this particular website and I don't now how it's organized, and I'm not exactly sure what it is you're trying to get at... and I'm happy to answer questions, but if you're going to cross-examine me on the record about a patent website, I don't quite think that's fair...
And then a PR person jumped in and tried to kill the interview. Later they went back, and Detkin "explained" the details, claiming that it had bought the patent from Crawford in 2007 and then sold it off to Oasis Research more recently. When Blumberg quizzed him about how the patent is now being used to shake down companies for money (exactly the kind of thing that led Detkin to coin the term patent troll), Detkin insisted that IV had nothing to do with the patent any more, and had no control over these third party entities once it sold off the patents. They then pointed out to him that in the legal documents, Oasis Research had listed Intellectual Ventures as having a financial interest in the outcome of the case, and he brushed it off as an aside -- basically saying, "oh sure, perhaps we receive some royalty from future monetization." Specifically, he said "we get some percentage of the royalty stream down the road that is generated from the monetization of these assets."

Uh huh. So, This American Life has now done a follow up on that first episode, in which they finally get a bunch of answers that eluded them when the first episode aired -- and it's in part because two companies, out of 18 that were sued, fought Oasis Research and won by invalidating the patent. The other 16 likely settled, and hopefully are kicking themselves for giving in to a patent troll and paying the fees. The episode replays some clips from the original episode, including the interview with Detkin above, but what they revealed when all was said and done suggests, yet again, that Detkin was being less than forthright in that interview. The "ongoing royalty"? Apparently Intellectual Ventures got 90% of the net profit from the patent. 90%. That's not an ongoing royalty. That's basically someone who still owns the patent and is using a shell company to pretend that it's not involved in the "dirty business" of demanding exorbitant fees from companies who actually do something.

This American Life also estimates, based on how much Oasis Research demanded from Carbonite ($20 million), that Oasis probably got over $100 million in settlements from the companies that did settle. They also found out that IV paid back to Chris Crawford a nice chunk of change as well. They originally bought the patent for $12 million from him (via a series of shell companies), and then they paid him another 17.5% of any of the money that they collected.

And all this over a bogus patent. Not only was it bogus, but as later came out in court, Chris Crawford apparently filed for the patent by copying someone else's idea. The details are a bit involved, so it's worth listening to the whole thing, but the short version is that Carbonite and EMC tracked down Crawford's "boss" from way back when, and discovered that two other entrepreneurs had come up with the basic idea of backing up data via a network on computers, and they'd hired Crawford to help out. But what they discovered was they were unable to actually make the idea work, for a variety of reasons. They disbanded the company, but Crawford, who took notes at the meetings, later filed for a series of patents using the ideas from that company, and never bothered to tell the guys who were his "partners." Even though the other partners testified that the whole thing had been their idea in the first place, and not Crawford's, patent law is so stupid that Crawford still might have been able to keep the patents if he hadn't made one mistake. Among the piles upon piles of documents he filed with the patent, one of them mentioned one of the original entrepreneurs, and noted that it was that guy's idea.

In a hilarious bit of tape from the deposition of Chris Crawford, he tries to explain away the fact that he used an apostrophe "s" after the entrepreneur's name, to pretend that it had really been Crawford's idea, even though the notes clearly stated otherwise. He argued that he's not very good with grammar, so sometimes he uses an "'s" when he doesn't mean to. But that's even more nonsensical, because if was just a regular s, meaning plural, then the sentence wouldn't make any sense.

While that bit of evidence was damning enough to get the jury to knock out the patent, as the report notes, the jury still wouldn't accept the direct testimony of the other three partners in the business with Crawford, saying only that the patent (which is completely bogus in its own right) probably should have gone to the one guy who was named in Crawford's notes. If that doesn't show how bogus the patent system is, I'm not sure what else to show people at this point.

Remember a few months ago, when Intellectual Ventures said that there was nothing at all nefarious about their 2,000 or so shell companies? Perhaps they knew what was coming... which was a pretty clear expose of how Intellectual Ventures is very much the same sort of entity that Peter Detkin once claimed were hellbent on holding up innovation. Except, now he's profiting from it. Massively. While pretending not to.

It's clearly time to fix the patent system, and this is just yet another example of a bunch of lawyers shaking down companies that actually do stuff. This is just one little bogus patent, and yet it took $100 million or so from companies who actually innovate and build products that the market wants, and handed it over to lawyers like Peter Detkin to be used to buy up more such patents and sue more people. And this patent probably would have been used for even more similar efforts if Carbonite and EMC hadn't been able to find that one document and its rather important apostrophe s. These lawsuits and these kinds of battles are a massive shift of money from actual innovation... to lawyers and those who failed to build things that people wanted. It's an economic disaster.
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Filed Under: alex blumber, chris crawford, laura sydell, patent trolls, patents, peter detkin, shell companies
Companies: carbonite, emc, intellectual ventures, oasis research


Reader Comments

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  1. icon
    Rikuo (profile), 3 Jun 2013 @ 12:40pm

    "Alex Blumberg, from TAL: Wait... are you telling me that you're the... (long pause)... you run a patent company and you were the head counsel at Intel in the patent department, and you don't know what the Patent Office website is... you don't know how to read this...? "

    In other news, the chief of surgery at a random hospital held up a scalpel and asked "qu'est-ce que?"

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    out_of_the_blue, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:14pm

    Ya know, IF ya had more than a handful such...

    ya might put it down to inherent in patent system, rather than just specific grifters.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:17pm

    Re: Ya know, IF ya had more than a handful such...

    Brilliant insight from in denial "anomaly of the hour" Blue.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:18pm

    Re: Ya know, IF ya had more than a handful such...

    More like incoherent patent system enabling grifters.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    Rikuo (profile), 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:22pm

    Re: Ya know, IF ya had more than a handful such...

    Here Nappa, this might help you.

    http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=patents

    Not just specific trolls, but articles about the patent system itself in general.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:22pm

    'It's an economic disaster' it's also a damn good reason why Congress wont try to fix it. it's so broken, so fucked up, in such a total muddle, they wouldn't know where to start! i would suggest scraping it and starting at the begining, but i doubt very much if they could even find that, unless, of course, there was a $100 bill tied to it!!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:30pm

    Chris Crawford should be charged with criminal fraud

    Crawford should be charged with criminal fraud for what he did.

    Assume this was a valid patent. He basically stole it from the guy who should have owned it, and stole AT LEAST $12 million dollars from him, plus the 17.5% of the estimated $100 IV got from patent trolling with it.

    The fact that the patent wasn't even on something valid to patent just makes his fraud even worse. He should go to jail.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    Fake Shill, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:31pm

    "Slimier "

    See mike, calling people slimy. That's what makes your blog such a big joke, all the name calling.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:32pm

    Re: Chris Crawford should be charged with criminal fraud

    crap, I met to say of the $100 Million that IV got from patent trolling, not $100.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:38pm

    "This American Life Followup On Patents Reveals Intellectual Ventures Is Even Slimier Than Previously Believed"

    Said the incredibly dishonest and slimy man who is too chickenshit to defend anything he writes.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. icon
    Mike Masnick (profile), 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:45pm

    Re: Ya know, IF ya had more than a handful such...

    Ya know, IF ya had more than a handful such...

    56% of patent cases filed last year.

    http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2013/04_-_April/Non-practicing_entities _filed_majority_of_patent_suits_in_2012/

    Handful?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:45pm

    Re:

    Wait, you wrote the title?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    jackn, 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:47pm

    Re:

    Said the incredibly dishonest and slimy man who is too chickenshit to defend anything he writes

    Said the slimy poster who uses the name Anonymous Coward.

    Defend? whats to defend. the fax is there.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. icon
    DannyB (profile), 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:52pm

    Re: Re: Ya know, IF ya had more than a handful such...

    Give poor out of his mind a break.

    Can't 56% of patent cases qualify as an anomaly?

    :-)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. icon
    DannyB (profile), 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:53pm

    Re:

    > i would suggest scraping it and starting at the begining

    How about just stop at the scrapping it part?

    Ditto for copyright.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  16. icon
    ChrisB (profile), 3 Jun 2013 @ 1:54pm

    Re: Chris Crawford should be charged with criminal fraud

    Enough of this "owned it" talk. He's not going to jail, and the reason is patent law is screwed up. The solution is to kill patents, not to try and layer on more convoluted nonsense about who owns an expression.

    The reality is successful ideas are built on hundreds of almost successful ideas, not one unique special-snowflake of an idea. As a mechanical engineer, I have never once seen a unique idea appear without a precedent.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  17. icon
    Trails (profile), 3 Jun 2013 @ 2:21pm

    Re: Re: Ya know, IF ya had more than a handful such...

    Well yes, although technically he was referring to Galactus' hand.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  18. identicon
    PRMan, 3 Jun 2013 @ 2:23pm

    Re: Chris Crawford should be charged with criminal fraud

    The original owner should sue him for 75% of his take and then give the other 25%s to the other guys.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  19. identicon
    gnudist, 3 Jun 2013 @ 4:03pm

    Re: Re: Ya know, IF ya had more than a handful such...

    So 56% of patent lawsuits are anomalies? :P

    link to this | view in thread ]

  20. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2013 @ 4:20pm

    Re:

    You call Mike dishonest while you yourself lie about his defense of what he writes.


    That's not pot meets kettle, that's pot calls the green plastic spoon black

    link to this | view in thread ]

  21. identicon
    Paula Chavez, 3 Jun 2013 @ 9:34pm

    Peter Detkin did not coin "patent troll"

    Peter Detkin did not coin "patent troll" even though he seems to like to take credit for it - making the story of his extreme patent trolling more interesting, I suppose. Look up Wikipedia's entry for Patent Troll to see that the term was in use long before Mr. Detkin so called coining.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  22. icon
    RyanNerd (profile), 4 Jun 2013 @ 6:07am

    Re: Peter Detkin did not coin "patent troll"

    I thought this strange as well -- after a bit of research I found this:
    http://www.iam-magazine.com/blog/detail.aspx?g=cff2afd3-c24e-42e5-aa68-a4b4e7524177

    link to this | view in thread ]

  23. identicon
    Len Jaffe, 20 Jun 2013 @ 2:07pm

    Re: fixing the patent system

    Start by abolishing software patents. They're counter productive. The idea of software is model something novel.

    Then stop issuing patents that say "we're going to hook up two things in a mundane way, but since nobody else has bothered yet, we want a patent" For example hooking a credit card reader to anything in order to charge for its use.

    If you want to create a novel way of encoding credit card data, and the reader for it, then you can patent that, but not the fact that you're connecting it to a car to enable just-in-time car rentals.

    Stop issuing patents for the idea of sending something across a network. Patent networking hardware, maybe even a new more efficient protocol, but not "a method for distributing data across a computer network."

    If there's nothing to kick or stub your toe on, there probably ought not to be a patent.

    A more likely reason that congress won't get involved is that the businesses with all the patents also have a lot of money with which they lobby congress. When legislators have to worry about how to finance campaigns, then money sets policy.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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