Posts Tagged: "patent troll"

Big Tech’s Great Patent Troll Smash and Grab

Big Tech’s patent troll narrative is really just the great Big Tech smash and grab. Jean Ann Booth explains in the Waco Tribune what patent trolls are by taking Big Tech’s cartoonish characterization as her own: Patent trolls are rich investors who buy up patents from failed startups just so they can sue companies commercializing the invention in order to extort their money. Extortion – that’s what patent trolls do. And they are wrecking U.S. innovation to boot. They sure sound scary. Patent trolls are indeed frightening. Flush with big bucks, Big Tech lobbyists pushed the patent troll narrative on Congress, the administration, and the courts, demanding that we gut U.S. patent law (the same U.S. patent law that drove over 200 years of American innovation) if we are to save American innovation. Government bureaucrats and politicians complied by smashing the U.S patent system. Now Big Tech can grab whatever technology they want.

Becoming Harder to Justify a One-Size-Fits-All Patent System

Meanwhile, all patents— good, bad, revolutionary, and stupid— have eroded to the point where continued use of the U.S. patent system must be questioned. Despite the statute saying that patents are to be treated as property rights, the Supreme Court has ruled that patents are merely government franchises that can be stripped at any point in time during the life of the patent regardless of how much time or money has been invested by the patent owner. It simply cannot make any sense for all patents to become increasingly worthless simply because of the victimization of large multinational corporations who are incapable of crafting a strategy that solves the nuisance litigation problem that does not destroy the entire system.

How One ITC Initial Determination Highlights the Links Among a Strong Patent System, Jobs and International Cooperation

An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) at the International Trade Commission (ITC) recently determined that Samsung Phones violate key patents on magnetic emulator technology for contactless payment systems from Pittsburgh’s Dynamics, Inc. We have been collaborating for years in the academic and public sectors on issues raised in that case, and are consulting consult with Dynamics because we think these issues are vital to our innovation ecosystem, our national economy, and our commitments to international partners. It is especially illustrative of the serious risks facing these vital public interests that far too frequently when there has been a full and fair adjudication determining that there has been infringement of multiple patents and that those patents are neither invalid nor unenforceable, the headline more than suggests that the infringer has been cleared of responsibility.

Managing the Perils of Public IP Company Ownership

The movements of IP-centric business have never been easy to appreciate. With technology patent and licensing values slowly returning to higher levels, it is a good time to revisit a business model which has been a lightning rod for criticism: the public intellectual property company or PIPCO. PIPCO is a term coined by this Intangible Investor columnist in 2013, when there were 30 or more publicly held patent licensing companies with a collective market capitalization of about $9 billion. That may sound like a lot to some, but when you look at the largest patent licensing company, Qualcomm, whose market cap is currently $136 billion, you realize almost everyone else in this group is or was relatively small, typically a micro-cap, with a market value under $1 billion. These companies’ lack of size, unpredictable quarterly revenue and attractive but unpredictable assets positioned them below the radar of most institutional investors. When it comes to weathering financial storms, like ocean-going vessels, sizes matters.

Unified Patents Jumps the Shark with Patroll Contest to Invalidate KinectUs Patent

In early October, social networking firm KinectUs LLC filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Texas alleging claims of patent infringement by Bumble Trading, LLC, the operator of the popular Bumble dating app. In the suit, KinectUs accused Bumble of infringing upon claims of six patents that protect systems and methods for connecting mobile device users via a collaboration system that enables users to connect with other users based on search parameters like common interests or location data. KinectUs’ infringement allegations focus on Bumble’s platform, which allows mobile device users to connect with others based on similar parameters. While the actual analysis of whether Bumble’s user matching system infringes claims of the ‘428 patent would normally require at least a Markman hearing and some discovery, certain members of the U.S. patent community would prefer to harness the power of crowdsourcing to make this determination. IP litigation risk management firm Unified Patents is hosting a Patroll contest seeking prior art to invalidate the ‘428 patent owned by KinectUs. U