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EFF: Open Letter to House Judiciary - Investigate Patent TrollsEFF: Open Letter to House Judiciary - Investigate Patent TrollsPosted Feb 27, 2013 20:26 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)Parent article: EFF: Open Letter to House Judiciary - Investigate Patent Trolls I would guess that the trolls would respond by creating shell corporations that have no assets other than the patent, so that if they lose they can just declare the corporation bankrupt rather than paying. But the patent would necessarily be an asset so they'd have to sell it for what they can get.
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EFF: Open Letter to House Judiciary - Investigate Patent Trolls Posted Feb 27, 2013 21:02 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] Which might well be zero, since one of the loss modes is "patent invalid".
EFF: Open Letter to House Judiciary - Investigate Patent Trolls Posted Feb 27, 2013 21:23 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Under UK law, I suspect such behaviour would pierce the corporate veil - just make sure that the legislation says that - if the purpose of the corporation is to enable the lawsuit to proceed with no downside, then the downside is that the corporation's officers are liable for the corporation's debts ...
Cheers,
EFF: Open Letter to House Judiciary - Investigate Patent Trolls Posted Feb 27, 2013 21:55 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I believe they are already doing that, so it wouldn't change anything.
EFF: Open Letter to House Judiciary - Investigate Patent Trolls Posted Feb 28, 2013 13:27 UTC (Thu) by HenrikH (guest, #31152) [Link]
Is it not customary for the court to require both sides to put a certain amount in escrow before starting the trail on cases where the loosing side will pay all the costs?
EFF: Open Letter to House Judiciary - Investigate Patent Trolls Posted Feb 28, 2013 19:46 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
it's extremely unusual for the loosing side to pay the costs of the winning side (it usually requires significant misbehavior from the loosing side), so no, it's not usual to require amounts in escrow before a case.
In fact, winning a case is only the beginning of the collection process, if the loosing side doesn't pay up, you may have to go to a significant amount of expense to get your money.
EFF: Open Letter to House Judiciary - Investigate Patent Trolls Posted Mar 2, 2013 1:38 UTC (Sat) by HenrikH (guest, #31152) [Link]
Yes I know that this is unusual in the US (over here all civil trials is looser pays all costs) but if this proposal would be law then it would of course be usual :).
And would it be such a stretch to imagine that in such trails when the defending side argues to the judge that they don't think that the other side would pay due to being a shell company, that the judge would order an escrow?
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