4 ms·
A Pyrrhic victory; they are out $12k and the troll is free to go harass the next company.
by tinus_hn 5y ago
A Pyrrhic victory; they are out $12k and the troll is free to go harass the next company.
- kiba 5y agoPerhaps, but it did impose a cost on the troll which makes their venture less lucrative and hopefully more importantly, a psychological and emotional cost on the lawyers who's working to extort people.
- tyingq 5y agoThey did produce a fairly good pattern for the next company approached by Altair Logix. Including links to prior art, counterclaim documents, etc.
- freejazz 5y agoThat's all standard in a patent litigation and is by far the least expensive element of what you'd be paying an atty to do. That is to say, it's basically trivial to get an atty to say that you should contend invalidity via a counterclaim (especially in light of how §101 is treated lately). What costs is getting an atty to actually find the invalidating prior art, draft up the counterclaims, etc.
- tyingq 5y agoSorry, I'm confused. If Altair Logix sues some other party, for the same patent, why is this linked list of invalidating prior art and counter claims not useful in reducing cost?
- Talanes 5y agoThis is what I got from reading your comment: Least Expensive Element: Invalidating prior art, counterclaim documents. Actually Cost Money: Invalidating prior art, drafting counterclaim documents.
- freejazz 5y agoWell that's because you neglected the part where the Least Expensive Element is an attorney telling you that those things should be done, not atually doing them.
- YetAnotherNick 5y ago> Altair Logix Do you think those kind of company keep their name same for more than few years
- caf 5y agoThe patent number stays the same though.
- rvnx 5y ago"We’ve sold 221 units over the entire time we carried the pcDuino. You want to sue us for $500 worth of made-up royalties to use your bogus patent? Sure. Come get it." I think it's not the 500 USD they are looking for, but rather to win a court case against someone who has not the ressources to defend himself, so they can reuse this case as an example in a more lucrative litigation.
- CalChris 5y agoPyrrhic victory? $12k is cheap. Generally, patent litigation is the sport of kings. That $12k means that Altair Logix gave up quickly, which in itself is useful information. $12k means that small cap companies should fight these trolls.
- inetknght 5y ago> $12k is cheap Not to real people it isn't.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y agoWhat price your principles?
- creeble 5y agoAlso missing from the article is an explanation of why they spent $12k defending against an expired patent?
- awillen 5y agoBecause you don't just automatically win because the patent is expired. You have to hire a lawyer to research the patent and find out it's expired, then, at minimum, your lawyer has to go to court and prove that the patent is expired.
- creeble 5y agoBut patent terms are 20 years. It had clearly been more than 20 years. Why didn’t the lawyer simply state this in their counterclaim? I don’t actually see it anywhere in the counterclaim.
- josaka 5y agoYou can, in some cases, sue for damages accrued up to six years in the past. You don't have to sue for those before the patent expires. You just stop accruing new damages when the patent expires. Past damages is what was allegedly at issue here. (Which is why the attorneys were talking about "marking," as it's a factor in whether you can get pre-suit damages for some types of claims in some cases.)
- creeble 5y agoThank you for this!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- charcircuit 5y ago>You have to hire a lawyer to research the patent and find out it's expired You can do this yourself though
- drewzero1 5y agoFree maybe, but at least not funded as a settlement would have.
- danhorner 5y agoOn the contrary, this patent could now be useless even if it doesn't get invalidated: It's expired for future use, and according to Sparkfun's response it can't be asserted against prior infringers because Huawei owned it and shipped devices without marking the patent on them.