Patent Troll Apparently Didn't Appreciate Being Called A Piece Of Shit, Sues Over Basic Location Functionality

from the if-the-name-fits... dept

Just yesterday I was talking to an entrepreneur who told me that one of his strategies in dealing with patent trolls once they got annoying was to send back a rather graphical and obscene insult, just to make it clear that he wasn't going to settle quickly. In many cases, he claimed that this made the trolls walk away, because they're looking for easy settlements. That reminded me of Fark's Drew Curtis explaining his strategy for beating a patent troll, which included making it clear that you'll fight like crazy and that "you'll make the process as annoying and as painful as possible." While that appears to work for some folks, it didn't quite work (yet) for Chris Hulls, CEO of Life360, a social network for families that just raised $50 million. Big VC money raises are often like catnip to patent trolls, as they directly target those companies.

In a moment of refreshing honesty, Hulls (against the advice of his lawyers) sent a letter to the patent troll, calling the troll "a piece of shit" and wishing bad karma on him, as Paul Carr at PandoDaily highlighted in the link above:

Dear Piece of Shit,

We are currently in the process of retaining counsel and investigating this matter. As a result, we will not be able to meet your Friday deadline. After reviewing this matter with our counsel, we will provide a prompt response.

I will pray tonight that karma is real, and that you are its worthy recipient.

Chris

Rather than scaring the troll off, it apparently embolded the troll to file a lawsuit which actually included Hull's note. If you're curious about the patents in question, the first is US 7,031,728 for a "cellular phone/PDA communication system." Basically it's a patent on the idea of using a GPS-enabled phone to figure out where other people are located. Like many crappy patents, this is one of those things that has been incredibly obvious for quite some time, since well before this patent was granted. The reason this sort of thing wasn't available years ago had more to do with the state of phone technology itself, rather than the idea. That is, to make this work, you needed more smartphones with GPS in them. Once those became common, this was one of the most commonly talked about ideas for what could be done on such phones.

That's part of the problem with so many of these patents. The "inventors" (and I use that term loosely) weren't inventing anything here, but were rather looking at where the underlying technology was clearly heading, and then patenting ahead -- recognizing all of the obvious apps that just about any programmer would be able to implement once the underlying tech was there, writing the patents, and then waiting for someone else to do the real work... and then shaking them down. Given that, it seems that Hull's description of the troll is all too accurate.

The rest of the patents in the suit are basically variations on this theme of using GPS and phones to locate others. The second patent is US 7,764,954 for a "Method of providing cell phones in a cell phone signal strength chart of multiple cell phones in a communication network." The third is US 8,126,441 for a "Method of establishing a cell phone network of participants with a common interest." And the fourth is US 7,672,681 for a "Method of renaming soft switch controls in all participant's cell phones by an administrator."

And yes, unlike many patent trolls, the company behind this lawsuit, Advanced Ground Information Systems, Inc., does apparently make an actual product, but it's not even remotely competitive. They make products for first responders and the military to help them communicate. They're not competing in any way with Life360's family social network, and Life360 certainly didn't "copy" the work that AGIS did. Because they didn't need to. Location-based information services, connecting local people is an idea that was talked about at great length going way back. I remember detailed discussions about "people finder" apps in the 1990s. Lots of people were thinking about this stuff, and it's yet another indictment of the patent office that it granted a bunch of obvious patents, and AGIS and its lawyers looking to tax an entirely different business is equally as lame.

Just another sign of how broken our patent system is. Congress could fix it... but probably won't.

Filed Under: chris hulls, location services, patent trolls, patents
Companies: agis, life360