How A Camera Patent Was Used To Sue Non-Profits, Cities, And Public Schools
from the stupid-patent-of-the-month dept
Patent trolls are everyone’s problem. A study from 2019 showed that 32% of patent troll lawsuits are directed at small and medium-sized businesses. We told the stories of some of those small businesses in our Saved by Alice project.
But some patent trolls go even further. Hawk Technology LLC doesn’t just sue small businesses (although it does do that)—it has sued school districts, municipal stadiums, and non-profit hospitals. Hawk Tech has filed more than 200 federal lawsuits over the last nine years, mostly against small entities. Even after the expiration of its primary patent, RE43,462, in 2014, Hawk continued filing lawsuits on it right up until 2020. That’s possible because patent owners are allowed to seek up to six years of past damages for infringement.
One might have hoped that six years after the expiration of this patent, we might have seen the end of this aggressive patent troll. Nope. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted Hawk Tech another patent, U.S. Patent No. 10,499,091. It’s just as bad as the earlier one, and starting last summer, Hawk Tech has started to litigate.
Camera Plus Generic Terms
The ‘091 patent’s first claim simply claims a video surveillance system, then adds a bunch of computer terms. Those terms include things like “receiving video images at a personal computer,” “digitizing” images that aren’t already digital, “displaying” images in a separate window, “converting” video to some resolution level, “storing” on a storage device, and “providing a communications link.” These terms are utterly generic.
Claim 2 just describes allowing live and remote viewing and recording at the same time—basic streaming, in other words. Claim 3 adds the equally unimpressive idea of watching the recording later. The additional claims are no more impressive, as they basically insist that it was inventive in 2002 to livestream over the Internet—nearly a decade after the first concert to have a video livestream. Most laughably, claim 5 specifies a particular bit rate of Internet connection—as if that would make this non-invention patentable.
In order to be invalidated in court, however, the ‘091 patent would have to be considered by a judge. And Hawk Tech’s lawsuits get dismissed long before that stage—often in just a few months. That’s because the company reportedly settles cases at the bottom level of patent troll demands, typically for $5,000 or even less. That’s significantly less than a patent attorney would request even for a retainer to start work, and a tiny fraction of the $2 million (or sometimes much more) it can cost to defend a patent lawsuit through trial.
The patent monetization industry includes the kind of folks that can be counted on to sue a ventilator company in the middle of a pandemic. Even in that context, Hawk Tech has taken some remarkable steps.
Hawk Tech has sued a municipal stadium that hosts an Alabama college football team; a suburban Kentucky transit system with just 27 routes; non-profit thrift stores and colleges; and a Mississippi public school district that serves an area with a very high (46%) rate of child poverty. That last lawsuit is one of at least three different public school districts that Hawk Tech has sued. These defendants would be hard pressed to mount a legal defense that could easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One type of company you won’t see on the long list of defendants is a company that actually makes camera systems. Instead, Hawk Tech finds those companies’ customers and goes after them. For instance, Hawk Tech drew up an infringement claim chart against Seon, a maker of bus camera and GPS systems; then used that chart to sue not Seon, but the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK), based on a Seon pamphlet that pointed to TANK as a “case study.” Instead of suing camera company Eagle Eye, Hawk Tech sued the city of Mobile, Alabama, likely after seeing a promotional video made by Eagle Eye on how the city’s stadium used its camera systems.
The problem of what to do about patent trolls that demand nuisance-level settlements is a tough one. What may be a “nuisance” settlement in the eyes of large law firms can still be harmful to a charity or a public school serving impoverished students.
That’s why EFF has advocated for strong fee-shifting rules in patent cases. Parties who bring lawsuits based on bogus patents won’t be chastened until they are penalized by courts. We also have supported reforms like the 2013 Innovation Act, which would have allowed customer-based lawsuits like the Hawk Tech cases to be stayed in situations when the manufacturer of the allegedly infringing device steps in to litigate.
Right now, there are two different parties seeking to invalidate Hawk Tech’s ‘091 patent and collect legal fees. One is Nevada-based DTiQ, a camera company whose customers, including a Las Vegas sandwich shop, have been sued by Hawk Tech. Another is Castle Retail, a company that owns three supermarkets in Memphis. Let’s hope one of those cases gets to a judgment before Hawk Tech files off another round of bogus lawsuits against small companies—or public schools.
Reposted from EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series.
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Filed Under: non-profits, patent trolls, patents, schools
Companies: hawk technology
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Would we made, and were selling our system before this patents priority date be sufficient to get it invalidated?
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Re:
It certainly couldn't hurt, might be worth getting in contact with the groups trying to gut the patent mentioned at the end of the article.
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Have we checked the bottled water dispenser at USPTO for lead?
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Re: brain damage
"Have we checked the bottled water dispenser at USPTO for lead?"
Kool-aid methinks.
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Re: Re: brain damage
No kool-aid in it, the workers are just not allowed to access it if they don't fill their quota...
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Oh look, legalized extortion courtesy of our lovely legal system
The fact that they even can threaten to sue the users of a system rather than having to go after the company that sold the product shows just how insane and broken the patent system is, along with exposing them as nothing more than patent extortionists only in it for a quick payout rather than actually trying to 'defend' their patent from violations.
If the goal was to stop infringements upon a patent then you obviously go after the company violating it, stopping it at the source, the only reason to go after the customers is because they are more likely to pay out rather than be dragged through the courts where even if they 'win' they'll still be out far more than they would have if they folded and paid the extortion demand.
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Copyright Lawyer: Where did you learn to do this?
Patent Lawyer: …
Copyright Lawyer: WHO TAUGHT YOU TO—
Patent Lawyer: You, okay?! I learned it from watching you!
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Re:
Realistically, though, I don't see either lawyer being particularly distraught in that scenario.
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Re: Oh look, legalized extortion courtesy of our lovely legal sy
Yeah this right here.
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You guys realize who is doing most of the trolling here and who is at the Helm of the Hawk Technology troll litigation right? That is everyone's favorite troll Keith Lipscomb who was the head of the Malibu Media troll litigation, the same troll who Malibu Media sued for not sharing the profits from the trolling scheme with Collete and her hubby over at X-Art their porn studio
Your story: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160628/20362334857/malibu-media-sues-former-lawyer-over-missing- funds-breach-bar-rules.shtml
Old Lippy started this scheme with Hawk before the Malibu thing came crashing down ( guess needing a need revenue stream to keep the easy money coming in was needed before the house of cards that was Malibu Media fell to the ground
It's funny how the trolling for easy money shakedown lawsuit game always has the same names popping up over and over and over. Lippy should remember, John and Paul thought if they kept refining their litigation scheme to keep more of the profits that it would work out too... and they are both behind bars... Keith is a little smarter than them... but not that much
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'Once scum always scum' for some people
Can't say I would be at all surprised if one of the parasites involved in copyright extortion would shift over to patent extortion as the playbook is basically identical you just need to swap a few words out.
That said if it is indeed Lipscomb running this I'm somewhat surprised that he's able to, given the article you linked to talks about him basically stealing a bunch of his client's money I'd have expected the hammer to have been brought down hard on him as that seems like something that the various bars actually would care about
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I just patented internet bandwidth you all owe me a trillion.
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nice post...https://provistechnologies.com/
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