Comments on: “Company wrests $100k payment from patent troll…”

By: Hugo S Cunningham

Hugo S Cunningham — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 14:47:11 +0000

In 2014, the Republican House passed a worthwhile patent reform, and it was taken up by Patrick Leahy in the Senate, only to be shut down by Harry Reid. Reid lost control of the Senate last year, but Congressional Republicans have done nothing since then , except propose making things worse with TPP.

Was the 2014 effort just a sham?

By: MattS

MattS — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 00:06:16 +0000

In reply to gitarcarver.

In this case, it was a corporation doing the suing.

A corporation can send any corporate agent to court, it doesn’t have to be the owner or even a CXO level executive. Most likely they send their corporate counsel.

From what I have read, a number of the big patent trolls are set up with multiple layers of shell corporations. The sole owner of the patent troll is another corporation, which is in turn owned by another corporation until you get to an offshore corporation incorporated in some small country, where it’s nearly impossible to find out who owns it.

By: gitarcarver

gitarcarver — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 20:05:08 +0000

I’m sorry, but this is confusing, or at least the reporting is confusing.

The original post says it costs “it still cost around a quarter-million dollars to win.” This appears to be based on a statement in the cited article quoting Graphiq CEO Kevin O’Connor: “We probably spent $350,000 to get $100,000. It was worth every cent. It definitely wasn’t the best investment, but goddamn, I feel good. I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for those bastards.”

The $100K comes from attorney fees awarded to the company. ArsTechnica reported on the award saying:

After hearing from both sides, Cote has settled on an amount: $302,083.63. That includes $148,592 in attorneys’ fees enhanced by a multiplier of two, as well as $4,899.63 in costs. They also have been awarded nine percent interest—a little bit better than your savings account, right?—beginning on May 30.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/patent-troll-ordered-to-pay-300k-to-findthebest-in-matchmaking-case/

An appeals court later knocked down the award to $100K

The panel’s opinion said that the lower court’s decision to double the requested fees wasn’t justified.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/appeals-court-says-first-patent-troll-hit-with-fees-under-octane-must-pay-up/

The $350K allegedly spent doesn’t match up with the actual fees of $148K awarded (and then doubled) in the case unless the case to the appeal court cost $200K.

Secondly, if you have a case like this, don’t you have the right to confront the person actually doing the suing? The person signing off on the lawsuit? How can one make a case against a vexatious plaintiff if the person can hide their name?