Kaspersky Gets Awful Patent Troll To Pay Up To Drop Its Own Case

from the nicely-done dept

We've talked a lot over the years about the importance of standing up to patent trolls. Newegg, famously, has its "Never Settle" mantra for dealing with patent trolls. And we covered the case of Fark's Drew Curtis, a few years back, who simply refused to give in when a patent troll tried to shake him down. Part of that standing firm was that when he eventually "settled" the case, he demanded that he be allowed to reveal that the settlement was for $0 (usually trolls require a gag clause on settlements to avoid anyone finding out what happened). But it appears Kaspersky Labs has taken this up a notch.

Two years ago, we wrote about the patent troll with the somewhat on-the-nose name of Wetro Lan (get it? "we trollin'") that was threatening lots of companies. One company it went after was Kaspersky Labs, which it eventually sued in East Texas (naturally). Things didn't quite go according to Wetro Lan's plan. As Joe Mullin at Ars Technica explains, by the end of the case, Wetro Lan had to pay Kaspersky to get the company to agree to let the case die.

During discovery, Kaspersky's lawyer was able to discover the settlements that Wetro Lan actually got out of other companies, while also making it quite clear to Wetro Lan, that it's claims in this suit were completely bogus. So then it flipped the script:

"Their patent was for a firewall that's not user-configurable," Kniser said in an interview with Ars. "They knew ours was configurable. So they started taking weird positions, basically saying, 'Well, you can only configure it a little bit.' I think that would have gotten them in trouble as far as [patent] validity goes."

Wetro Lan's settlement demands kept dropping, down from its initial "amicable" demand of $60,000. Eventually, the demands reached $10,000—an amount that's extremely low in the world of patent litigation. Kniser tried to explain that it didn't matter how far the company dropped the demand. "Kaspersky won't pay these people even if it's a nickel," he said.

Then Kniser took a new tack.

"We said, actually, $10,000 is fine," said Kniser. "Why don't you pay us $10,000?"

After some back-and-forth, Wetro Lan's lawyer agreed to pay Kaspersky $5,000 to end the litigation. Papers were filed Monday, and both sides have dropped their claims.

Eugene Kaspersky, in his own blog post on the case, explains the importance of fighting patent trolls, and how this went down, noting that it was pretty clear that Wetro Lan's lawyers knew "precious little" about what they were actually suing over and also that they "appear to have an incomplete knowledge of IP law." Recognizing that once Kaspersky had the upper hand and knew it would win, any time wasted in court was lost money to Wetro Lan -- hence the offer to "settle" the case only if Wetro Lan paid them. Wetro immediately offered a $2,000 price instead, before they settled on $5,000.

And again, fighting patent trolls and being able to talk about the details of the victory are key:

Another notch on our bridge – representing the number of victories against patent extortionists. The score now: 5:0. That’s not including the 23 out-of-court settlements (crucially: in which we paid zero dollars), nor the untold numbers of ‘just try it!’ letters we’ve sent back to trolls who then promptly crawl back under their bridges.

Score: 5:0; total sum paid to patent trolls: $0.

These are very unusual results in the USA. Accordingly, they’re results that tend to keep the shrewder trolls off our back. The less shrewd, however, still keep coming, not even taking the time to find out about our successful anti-troll reputation – or even just our basic anti-troll slogan: ‘We fight them to the last bullet – their last bullet’. Perhaps if they did they too would stay away. But they don’t. So they get stung.

Kudos.

Filed Under: eugene kaspersky, patent trolls, patents, shakedown
Companies: kaspersky, wetro lan

Patent Loving East Texas Judge Clips Wings Of Largest Patent Troll

from the go-away-now dept

Earlier this year, we noted that patent trolls had struck back, filing a ton of new cases this year. The leading patent troll was a firm called eDekka: Like many patent trolls, not much is known about eDekka, but it's represented by Austin Hansley, who just happens to represent all three of the top patent troll lawsuit filers in that graphic above: eDekka, Data Carriers and Wetro Lan (you may recall Wetro Lan, for using an expired bogus patent on a basic firewall to troll lots of companies -- and also for its name (say it out loud)). eDekka, though, topped the list with a ton of lawsuits over US Patent 6,266,674, for "random access information retrieval utilizing user-defined labels."

However, in a surprise move, Judge Rodney Gilstrap, in the Eastern District of Texas, has just tossed out 168 lawsuits filed by eDekka, after noting that the '674 patent is not valid under Section 101 of the Patent Act. As recent Supreme Court rulings have made clear, you can't just take a standard thing that people have done for ages, and "do it on a computer" to get a patent. And that's the key problem that Judge Gilstrap notes in his ruling:

As summarized above, the claimed idea represents routine tasks that could be performed by a human. While the generic requirement of a “data structure” is included, Claim 1 essentially describes the common process of receiving, labeling, and storing information, while Claim 3 encompasses retrieving such information.

And thus, the patent covers nothing more than an "abstract idea," which are not patentable under Section 101.

But... that's not all. In this one single order, Judge Gilstrap says that everyone else who has been sued under this patent shall be considered prevailing parties in their lawsuits and then issued a separate order allowing all of the defendants sued by eDekka to jointly file a brief asking for attorneys' fees:

The Court ORDERS Defendants to file a consolidated brief of not to exceed fifteen (15) pages in support of any and all claims for reasonable attorney fees...

As Joe Mullin notes in his story on this (linked above), this is especially surprising from Judge Gilstrap:

Just the invite is a sign of changing times: in his four years on the bench, Gilstrap has never granted attorneys' fees to a defendant.

Indeed, as we've pointed out just recently, Judge Gilstrap had become something of a patent troll favorite down in East Texas. Perhaps that's changing...

Filed Under: abstract ideas, austin hansley, east texas, labels, patentable subject matter, patents, rodney gilstrap
Companies: data carriers, edekka, wetro lan

Expired Bogus Patent On Basic Computer Firewall Now Being Used To Shake Down Lots Of Companies

from the because-that's-how-patents-work dept

Like all of the patents we highlight in our Stupid Patent of the Month series, this month's winner, U.S. Patent No. 6,795,918, is a terrible patent. But it earns a special place in the Pantheon of stupid patents because it is being wielded in one of most outrageous trolling campaigns we have ever seen.

Patent No. 6,795,918 (the '918 patent), issued from an application filed in March 2000, and is titled: "Service level computer security." It claims a system of "filtering data packets" by "extracting the source, destination, and protocol information," and "dropping the received data packet if the extracted information indicates a request for access to an unauthorized service." You may think, wait a minute, that's just a firewall. By the year 2000, firewalls had been around for a long time. So how on earth did this applicant get a patent? A good question.

Here's how you get a patent on a firewall more than a decade after firewalls were invented. Step 1: File a description of your so-called invention that is nothing more than mundane details about how firewalls work. Step 2: Add some language saying this is totally not just a firewall. Step 3: Claim a firewall. With any luck, the Patent Office will just wave you through. 

To be fair, the '918 patent suggests a firewall system that is not "user configurable." The idea is that unsophisticated home users might misconfigure their firewalls so it is better to give them a system they cannot mess up. Just like a real firewall, only dumber! The patent also hedges its bets by claiming a system that is "substantially free from user adjustment," whatever that means. Even if that was a new idea in 2000, this is not actually a technological improvement. It's kind of like putting a padlock on the front hood of a car and then saying you've invented a new kind of car.

The '918 patent spent its entire life in well-deserved obscurity. Indeed, the original inventor chose to let the patent expire in September 2012 by not paying the maintenance fee. This is unsurprising. Why waste money keeping a terrible patent alive? Usually, that is where the story would end. Unfortunately, even an expired garbage patent can be useful in the hands of a patent troll.

In January of 2015, a newly-formed company called Wetro Lan, LLC, purchased the '918 patent. Shortly after that, it began filing dozens of lawsuits in the Eastern District of Texas against companies that provide, you guessed it, firewall technology. The troll can do this because damages for patent infringement go back six years. So, technically, it can still demand damages for alleged infringement that took place from mid-2009 until the patent expired in September 2012 (though the defendants might have a good laches defense). Wetro Lan has sued just about everyone who sells a product relating to network security, from Avaya to ZyXEL.

To take one suit as an example, Wetro Lan has sued Hacom, LLC, a small company based in Santa Ana, California, that provides embedded hardware, software, and consulting for implementation of open-source applications. In its complaint, Wetro Lan says that Hacom's Phoenix IT-100 Appliance and its other routers directly infringe the ‘918 patent. But Hacom doesn't sell anything remotely like the dumb, non-configurable, firewall discussed in the '918 patent. They sell advanced products which enable users to configure settings through a web-based interface or at the command line. In fact, since Hacom's products incorporate free software (free as in freedom), they are configurable down to the source code level.

There's no way that Hacom's products infringe a patent that, even if it were valid, would cover only the dumbest of firewalls. But if Wetro Lan is like most trolls, that's not the game here. The likely point of this litigation is to extract a nuisance settlement. We have significant doubts that Wetro Lan would ever litigate one of its cases on the merits, and win.

The attorneys behind the Wetro Lan campaign are the same lawyers who sued our client in the Garfum v. Reflections by Ruth case. We desperately need legislative reform to stop more abusive litigation from these trolls. Such reform should include fee shifting, heightened pleading requirements, and venue reform to stop shell company trolls dragging innovators to the Eastern District of Texas. Without help from Congress, trolls will keep shaking down small companies like Hacom.

Republished from the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series

Filed Under: firewall, patent troll, patents, stupid patent
Companies: wetro lan