Red Hat and Novell fend off a patent troll

[Posted May 1, 2010 by corbet]

LWN covered the IP Innovations patent infringement suit back in 2007. Now Groklaw reports that defendants Red Hat and Novell have won that suit by virtue of having invalidated the patents. "This is the result we expected and we are gratified that the jury recognized the tremendous innovative value of open source software. The jury knocked out three invalid patents that were masquerading as a new and important inventions, when they were not".

Red Hat and Novell fend off a patent troll

Posted May 1, 2010 18:17 UTC (Sat) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link] (5 responses)

Calling them trolls seems unjust towards the poor real fantasy trolls. They aren't so unpleasant!

Red Hat and Novell fend off a patent troll

Posted May 1, 2010 21:49 UTC (Sat) by leifbk (guest, #35665) [Link] (4 responses)

Litigious basterds.

Red Hat and Novell fend off a patent troll

Posted May 3, 2010 13:19 UTC (Mon) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (3 responses)

Please let's verify our spelling. You meant:

Litigious Bastards.

Red Hat and Novell fend off a patent troll

Posted May 3, 2010 13:32 UTC (Mon) by rriggs (guest, #11598) [Link] (1 responses)

Please stay current with pop culture references: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748/

Red Hat and Novell fend off a patent troll

Posted May 4, 2010 5:45 UTC (Tue) by leifbk (guest, #35665) [Link]

That's a reference to prior art if ever there was one.

Red Hat and Novell fend off a patent troll

Posted May 3, 2010 15:13 UTC (Mon) by ds2horner (subscriber, #13438) [Link]

I thought he meant

Litigious Barristers.

('till I saw the reference below)

Red Hat and Novell fend off a patent troll

Posted May 2, 2010 8:16 UTC (Sun) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link]

more like freeloading scumballs

Was interesting to be involved....

Posted May 3, 2010 2:58 UTC (Mon) by jg (guest, #17537) [Link]

I dug through a lot of old bits I have, and was able to give the counsel working on the case lots of good explosives to blow up the patents.

The patents being litigated were intended to just protect Xerox Rooms; they tried to apply them to multiple desktops. As the suit was pressed, the prior art was very to provide (once I found the right bits for each claim). One of the advantages we had was the the code and email was open and therefore no copyright problems. This made the X prior art particularly nice, though, of course, lots of other prior art also existed. Not to mention since the patents were about Xerox rooms, we didn't infringe (the double win). We had the code, line for line, and did not have to rely on descriptions or memory.

So once I understood what was needed, it wasn't terribly difficult (in this case).

Note that I do *not* know if others provided ammunition as well; others may well have contributed to the victory. It would be interesting to get to read a transcript of the trial, having been on the information providing side.

My thanks to Red Hat and Novell for standing up for community, and to all of you to have been part of X's long history...

Moral of the story: I had to go back to files I have from 1984; it was 2009. Never throw anything away....

Red Hat and Novell fend off a patent troll

Posted May 3, 2010 12:25 UTC (Mon) by danielpf (guest, #4723) [Link] (1 responses)

From Groklaw account, it seems that a major reason to reject the plaintiff accusations is that their damage calculations were not based on sound economic arguments and much too high.

"Patent Prospector calls this attempted royalty inflation simple greed."

So I wonder to what extent this argument, or the patent validity weighted the most in the final judgement. Would a patent troll more motivated by harm against FLOSS than greed be more successful next time?

Strength of the defense.

Posted May 3, 2010 14:05 UTC (Mon) by jg (guest, #17537) [Link]

I'd be surprised if the overreaching on damages was much effect to the jury on their decisions (underimpressed the judge, of course, who apparently is really quite good and aware of the problem of how to apportion damages.

Having prepared (at least some) of the materials used in the defense, I believe the materials were very strong indeed; this is reflected by the decision which was both on non-infringement and invalidity.

The patents were taken out by Xerox for their rooms work in an era that the patent office was even less clue full about prior art than now; the trolls who ended up with them were trying to cast a wide net (another sign of greed).

So I don't think it reflects very much on the decision: as PJ put it, the "cherry on top" was the judge, who also had already limited damages, long before the jury decision came back.

Devil's Advocate

Posted May 3, 2010 20:18 UTC (Mon) by bucky (guest, #53055) [Link] (2 responses)

Let's say I applied for and received a patent. Let's say I litigated against a company which infringed the patent I was awarded.

If the patent is subsequently invalidated, I feel like the patent office should refund me my money, since it improperly awarded me the patent in the first place.

If I applied in good faith, then that seems the very least they could do. I might have a whole business relying on a patent that I thought was real.

If the patent office is doing its job, such remittances would only be the tiniest fraction of their overall business. But if it isn't, then the money that they have to pay back out because becomes punitive. Having a crushing workload is an explanation, but given that every patent potentially represents an inventor's livelihood, it's no excuse.

Devil's Advocate

Posted May 4, 2010 11:54 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

There could quite easily be a secondary market in patent insurance (a security that pays out if a patent is invalidated) if there's demand for it. But it doesn't make sense to add the costs of providing the insurance onto every patent application fee, whether it's wanted or not.

(All this has no bearing on the main question, which is whether patents should be granted on computer programs in the first place.)

Devil's Advocate

Posted May 4, 2010 21:45 UTC (Tue) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link]

Well, maybe you shouldn't have made an invalid patent application in the first place! Good faith or not, you wasted the patent office's time, and now they're going to have even more expenses removing the patent from their files. Frankly, I think you're getting off light! :)

Cost?

Posted May 4, 2010 15:44 UTC (Tue) by nelljerram (subscriber, #12005) [Link] (1 responses)

What is the cost of losing, for the troll?

What is the net cost of this case for Red Hat and Novell?

I don't mean goodwill, ability to market future products, etc. Just plain money now.

Cost?

Posted May 6, 2010 13:30 UTC (Thu) by jg (guest, #17537) [Link]

Dunno if they can be productively sued to return money or not; I've asked PJ exactly that question. But I suspect it is hard: the main company is Acacia, but it is a shell subsidiary called IP Innovations that actually sued; I suspect part of that is so you can't go after the deeper pockets of the corporate parent easily.

They do lose the ability to continue to hold other people up for money, though, so those patents just lost their value to them. Maybe next time they will choose an easier (commercial) target in other litigation.