Showing posts with label patent owners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label patent owners. Show all posts

Friday, July 14, 2017

A patent lawyer switches teams; Crain's Chicago Business, July 8, 2017

Claire Bushey, Crain's Chicago Business; A patent lawyer switches teams

"Unlike a ​ traditional law firm, Blackbird is structured as a limited liability company, not a partnership, and it has no clients. Instead, it acquires patents from inventors or small businesses. Blackbird then sues companies for patent infringement on its own behalf, and it shares an unspecified percentage of any settlement or judgment with the original patent owner.

Blackbird filed 107 lawsuits between September 2014 and May, including against Amazon, Fitbit, Netflix and kCura, a Chicago company that makes software used by law firms. It has settled with Amazon. The other three cases are ongoing.

Three months ago it sued San Francisco-based Cloudflare, and in May the website infrastructure company blasted Blackbird as "a dangerous new breed of patent troll" and launched a scorched-earth campaign against the 11-person business. Cloudflare, valued at $3.2 billion and with a seven-employee Champaign office, offered to the public a total of $50,000 for evidence that would invalidate any of 35 patents Blackbird holds. It also lodged ethics complaints with legal disciplinary bodies in Illinois and Massachusetts, and it was successful in prompting Illinois Rep. Keith Wheeler (R-Oswego) to introduce a bill that would outlaw Blackbird's business model...

A lawyer at Intel coined the epithet "patent troll" in 2001 to refer to Anthony Brown, a one-time Jenner & Block partner turned serial patent lawsuit filer, and his Chicago lawyer, the late Ray Niro. A troll asserts a patent of dubious quality, hoping the company will settle the infringement lawsuit quickly for maybe $50,000 to avoid spending millions on litigation. Detractors often slap the label on patent holders who do not manufacture a product, so-called nonpracticing entities."

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

If You Buy It, You Own It!; HuffPost, July 12, 2017

Darryl S. Weiman, MD, JD, HuffPost; If You Buy It, You Own It!

"The lesson learned from this decision was “the sale transfers the right to use, sell, or import because those are the rights that come along with ownership, and the buyer is free and clear of an infringement lawsuit because there is no exclusionary right left to enforce.” (Impression v. Lexmark) The buyer will not be sued for enfringement. In fact, all patent rights will “exhaust” after the sale. The next in line of a sale, in this case Impression, is still a buyer and the protection applies to them, also.

A patent owner must take into consideration the monopoly rights to his “invention” when he sets the price to purchase the item. He will not get another bite of the apple—the apple being the right to bring an infringement lawsuit—once that sale has been made. In other words, the only thing that matters is the patentee’s decision to make a sale. Any post sale restrictions that the patent owner wants to impose can only be enforced through some other action, such as breach of contract if a contract has been signed. If we buy it, we own it! This is a good decision."

Monday, May 22, 2017

Justices Make It Easier for Companies to Defend Patent Cases; Associated Press via New York Times, May 22, 2017

Associated Press via New York Times; 

Justices Make It Easier for Companies to Defend Patent Cases


"The Supreme Court on Monday made it easier for companies to defend themselves against patent infringement lawsuits in a ruling that places strict limits on where such cases can be filed.

The justices ruled unanimously that patent owners must bring lawsuits only in states where the targeted company is incorporated. The issue is important to many companies that complain about patent owners "shopping" for favorable courts in other parts of the country to file lawsuits."