[hga]

Heh. More evidence for something I've been hearing for a while, the mass quantities of patent lawsuits in this "rocket docket" has had the side effect of educating everyone in it about this area of law, and it's getting harder to win a bad case.

[Alex3917]

All of the software patent trolls are pretty much going to be out of business in the next 12 - 18 months. It costs millions of dollars to run these operations, and most of them haven't been making any income for 2+ years now. All the smart trolls have moved on to trolling PTAB, and the dumb ones are just holding out hope that they either hit one last jackpot or else find some other way to monetize their portfolio.

[WildUtah]

"It costs millions of dollars to run these operations"

It costs millions on the defense side. The plaintiffs don't have any documents to discover and the attorneys are usually the partners in the scam, so it's almost free to them. That's the whole point of trolling in East Texas: the court rules make it even more expensive to be a defendant and cheaper to be a plaintiff.

[devit]

What does "trolling PTAB" mean?

[tacon]

>Scott McKeown has identified what he believes are some instances of parties not involved in a case of patent litigation using the inter partes review (IPR) procedure to squeeze money out of patent owners who’ve won court cases but haven’t yet received a check. Since IPRs are conducted by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) you could call these operators “PTAB Trolls.”

[1]http://www.ipnav.com/blog/ptab-trolls-going-after-patent-own...

[devit]

If patent trolls are moving to this, it seems to be a great development for society, since it makes patent trolling itself by both NPEs and PEs less profitable or unprofitable.

The legal system still seem to be broken, because it should offer a large reward to the "PTAB troll" to be paid by the patent owner so that instead of settling they would go through and invalidate the patent, while still getting money from the patent owner, who would also lose the money from the (non-)infringer.

[adebtlawyer]

> It costs millions of dollars to run these operations

Are you sure? Litigation isn't always expensive if you're doing it in-house.

[ww520]

Lawyer fee is expensive. Discovery is expensive. Patent discovery can run from weeks to months of expert time. Those can quickly add up.

[adebtlawyer]

I said 'in-house.' That means lawyers on staff on salaries, not fees to outside counsel.

Work costs money, sure, but I'm skeptical of 'millions of dollars.'

[throwawaykf05]

Or even on contingency. That is, lawyers will do this for free and take cut of the payout, if any. The good thing about this model is that nobody wants to waste resources on a fruitless lawsuit, so they will only go ahead with cars that have more merit relatively.

[kanzure]

> All of the software patent trolls are pretty much going to be out of business in the next 12 - 18 months

Sounds like an opportunity to me. They might have existing licensing revenue and they are going to be wondering what to do if patent trolling ain't the name of their game anymore.

[mtgx]

Seems Microsoft made the patent "deal" with Google just in time. Soon they wouldn't have had any leverage to "threaten" companies with patent lawsuits.

[monochromatic]

This is a decision from Judge Gilstrap though, not from a jury. So it doesn't have anything to do with "educating everyone."

[dragonwriter]

Federal judges are not created with deep and intimate practical knowledge born of experience of the ins and outs of every area of federal law; they get educated by experience like anyone else.

[monochromatic]

Well, sure. But this is the Eastern District of Texas, where it's a reasonable guess that the judges are pretty patent-savvy.

[dragonwriter]

Its EDTX, where the judges (and everyone else, including the local jury pool) have over time gotten more patent savvy, because of the propensity to file patent cases in that district.

Which is kind of the point of the "educating everyone" statement, as I understand it.

[monochromatic]

I guess. I dunno, I just always see lots of comments about how the EDTX judges are awful/pro-patent/getting kickbacks/whatever. So the idea that, hey, they just needed to be educated by presiding over a few cases... it's odd.

[hga]

A lot of the comments I've seen to that effect are rank bigotry (I suppose I should disclaim I myself am from flyover country, extreme SW Missouri, which is culturally part of the South, and for that matter my mother is Cajun).

What's so difficult to believe about people being able to learn through experience? If any of these EDTX judges got reversed on appeal, that would have been a learning experience ^_^.

And dragonwriter's understanding is correct.

[bitwize]

The community of attorneys and jusges handling patent cases didn't have the technical know-how to understand the breadth and depth of fuckery-duckery going on in the realm of obvious software patents, allowing trolls to pull a bankable fast one.

Enough fast ones get pulled and they start catching on. That's who's being educated: the courts and legal community.

[monochromatic]

The attorneys handling patent cases damn well better have the technical know-how to understand the subject matter they're litigating. As for the judges, this is the Eastern District of Texas.

[hga]

I was alluding to reports I've read that others, including jurors (I imagine the practical pool is fairly small), are also learning.

[Zikes]

Hopefully this means folks will have more opportunities for appeals on cases that were managed under less knowledgeable judges.