Deeplinks Blog posts about Patent Trolls
The Venue Reform Bill Won’t Stop Patent Trolls, but It Will Slow Them Down
There’s a new bill in Congress that would finally address the egregious forum shopping that dominates patent litigation. The Venue Equity and Non-Uniformity Elimination Act of 2016 (VENUE Act, S. 2733) would bring a modicum of fairness to a broken patent system.
This month, we feature another yet another patent that takes an ordinary business practice and does it on a computer. Our winner is US Patent No. 8,738,435, titled “Method and apparatus for presenting personalized content relating to offered products and services.” As you might guess from its title, the patent claims the idea of sending a personalized marketing message using a computer.
Today EFF filed our response brief in the appeal of our successful challenge to Personal Audio’s podcasting patent. Back in April 2015, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruled in our favor and invalidated all of the patent claims we challenged. Personal Audio appealed this decision to the Federal Circuit.
Getting a patent demand letter from a troll can be a scary experience. The letters often include a lot of legal jargon, not to mention a patent that is often impenetrable (at least, not without hiring an expensive lawyer to translate it for you).
But suppose you are concerned that the patent may impact your business. After trying to reach an agreement with the patent owner and failing, you may be told by your lawyer that the next step is to go to court.
Unfortunately, thanks to a 1998 court case, you often can’t go to your local courthouse and get things figured out. Instead, you may be forced to go to a courthouse across the country, in a small corner of a state that you have little to no connection to.
The Trolls’ Favorite Template Has Been Retired, but Don’t Get Too Excited
It’s easy to file a patent complaint. All a patent owner has to do is say that they own a patent and that the defendant infringed it. The patent holder doesn’t even need to identify which product of the defendant’s they believe infringes the patent, or specify which claims of the patent they’re asserting. It’s an absurdly simple process, and unscrupulous patent tolls routinely take advantage of that fact.
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