The White House report (“Patent Assertion and U.S. Innovation,” PDF) is here. Reactions: Bloomberg, Ronald Bailey, Andrew Sullivan and more, Daniel Fisher, Business Insider. Background: NPR “This American Life.”
Posts Tagged ‘patent trolls’
Apple: “Betrayed by its own law firm?”
Lawyer in Apple’s law firm turns out to have been secretly advising and investing in patent-holding entity (repped by Hagens Berman) preparing a legal onslaught against Apple. “Why didn’t Morgan Lewis … see an ethical problem in letting one of its partners invest in a patent troll, especially one specially designed to target one of the firm’s big clients? And how many other big-firm lawyers are entwined with ‘start-ups’ that are actually holding companies, created to attack the very corporations they are supposed to be defending?” [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica via @tedfrank]
Contribute to small firm’s patent defense…
… get “I Beat Trolls” t-shirt. [Ditto.com]
In other news, “Vermont Declares War On Patent Trolls; Passes New Law And Sues Notorious Patent Troll” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
Intellectual property roundup
- Sounds promising: “Peeved politicians want ‘loser pays’ rule for patent trolls” [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica] Defense of patent trolls in Wired mag [Michael Risch]
- Scènes à Faire: the copyright exception for scenes that inevitably suggest themselves [Bruce Boyden, ConcurOp]
- If the terms of service/purchase say you don’t have a right to resell the digitized book or song, maybe you don’t [The Digital Reader on court decision against ReDigi startup]
- Pay to quote a single word from a newspaper? That’s what the popup at Canada’s National Post seems to suggest [Doctorow, BoingBoing]
- Inside copyright enforcers’ “bait-car” operations [TechCrunch]
- “Firm and two of its lawyers must pay $200K over frivolous patent case” [Sheri Qualters, National Law Journal]
- “Crazy copyright bot (now suspended by Twitter) threatens those who tweet tiny poem” [Rob Beschizza via @ChrisBellNZ]
Obama on patent trolls
The president has some opinions on the subject [TechDirt]:
Obama: A couple years ago we began a process of patent reform. We actually passed some legislation that made progress on some of these issues. But it hasn’t captured all the problems.
The folks that you’re talking about are a classic example. They don’t actually produce anything themselves. They’re just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else’s idea and see if they can extort some money out of them. Sometimes these things are challenging. Because we also want to make sure that patents are long enough, and that people’s intellectual property is protected. We’ve got to balance that with making sure that they’re not so long that innovation is reduced.
But I do think that our efforts at patent reform only went about halfway to where we need to go. What we need to do is pull together additional stakeholders and see if we can build some additional consensus on smarter patent laws.
Also: RICO claim can’t shoot down Wi-Fi patent troll [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica]
Technology and intellectual property roundup
- The term “space marine” dates way back in sci-fi writing, but Games Workshop says it’s now a trademark [Popehat] “Site plagiarizes blog posts, then files DMCA takedown on originals” [Ars Technica; related, Popehat]
- D.C. suburban school district: “Prince George’s considers copyright policy that takes ownership of students’ work” [WaPo]
- New book Copyright Unbalanced [Jerry Brito, ed.; Tom Palmer/Reason, David Post/Volokh] “Copyright, Property Rights, and the Free Market” [Adam Mossoff, TotM]
- Neither doll left standing: “After Long Fight, Bratz Case Ends in Zero Damages” [The Recorder]
- “Podcasting patent troll” [Gerard Magliocca, Concur Op]
- “The EU-funded plan to stick a ‘flag this as terrorism site’ button on your browser” [Ars Technica]
- “The Most Ridiculous Law of 2013 (So Far): It Is Now a Crime to Unlock Your Smartphone” [Derek Khanna, Atlantic]
“How Newegg crushed the ‘shopping cart’ patent and saved online retail”
Backed by big-firm lawyers, a non-producing company that claimed its patents underlay the online shopping cart sued dozens of retailers and extracted tens of millions of dollars in settlements and verdicts in the Eastern District of Texas and elsewhere — until an appellate ruling declared its patents invalid. Despite its absence of products, the company’s website offered “tech support.” [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica]
Obituaries for man who invented bar code scanner
Daniel Fisher notes that they had little to say about the inveterate patent asserter who claimed in court to have invented the revolutionary device [Forbes]:
But [Ropes & Gray attorney Jesse] Jenner has one suggestion: Require inventors to prove their technology works before giving them a patent. Most countries require inventors to provide a working model, he said, while the U.S. merely requires a description.
“One way to get rid of a lot of half-baked ideas would be to require that somebody make it first,” he said. If Lemelson had been required to do that, his record as an inventor might have been a lot shorter.
IP and technology roundup
- “Conservatives awkwardly stumble toward tackling copyright” [Tim Carney, TechDirt, Cato forum last Thursday with Jerry Brito and Tom Bell, Mike Palmedo summary] Virginia Postrel on copyright reform [Bloomberg]
- More on ITU’s grab for Internet authority [Gordon Crovitz/WSJ, Jim Harper/Cato, CNet (unanimous resolution in U.S. House), earlier here, here, etc.]
- After software company sues China over infringement, hackers based in PRC nearly bring it down [Bloomberg]
- “Intel’s war with plaintiff’s lawyers who file M&A suits” [Nate Raymond, Reuters]
- Contrary to some imaginings, there’s no clear-cut contrast between “statutory” intellectual property law and “common-law” real property law [Adam Mossoff, TotM]
- “Tech’s 8 Most Fearsome ‘Patent Trolls'” [Biz Insider] Alex Tabarrok on the downside of software patents [Rev. Marge]
- Privacy law vs. e-commerce: At Calif. high court, Apple challenges online application of 1991 Song-Beverly law [Mercury-News]
September 26 roundup
- I suppose it will be said to “politicize” the Florida Supreme Court races to point out that Justices Quince and Pariente joined awful, politicized rulings on everything from liability suits to Bush v. Gore [Florida Current]
- Courtesy of the taxpayers: “TV sitcoms to incorporate Obamacare pitches?” [Jazz Shaw, HotAir]
- “Bringing out-of-state cases to Philadelphia simply for … filing fees is a wrong-headed policy.” [WSJ Law Blog]
- GM and Chrysler bailout: Steve Chapman corrects Jumpin’ Jenny Granholm and other myth-spinners [Chicago Tribune/ABJ, earlier]
- “Transit agencies may get reprieve from patent troll” [Greater Greater Washington, earlier here, etc.]
- Another view of the beef producers vs. ABC (“pink slime”) case [Steven Brill, Reuters, earlier]
- “A Fine for Doing Good: The Justice Department sues a bank for prudent lending” [WSJ editorial]