Surely, Kapersky can't be bigger than Microsoft and other companies mentioned in the article? If they can fight it out, why can't the big guys fight it out? If only the big guys took a stance, and fight these trolls, it'll be nice.
Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
11–20 of 27 posts
Re: Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Order indicates that Kaspersky won summary judgment on noninfringement grounds, not invalidity grounds. e: Not sure about this, but the Order also suggests that some of the Troll's claims survived summary judgment and are proceeding to trial, so it's not clear to me how complete of a victory this is. I'll check the underlying order (this ruling was on a motion for reconsideration) and the PACER docket and see wha…
The public documents in this case are heavily redacted, because the relevant underlying facts involve confidential or sensitive information about licensing agreements. That, plus my unfamiliarity with the underlying technology, makes it tough for me to put together a complete picture of how this litigation actually unfolded. But, as best as I can tell from a brief initial review of the papers: The Troll was alleging…
"plus my unfamiliarity with the underlying technology, makes it tough for me to put together a complete picture of how this litigation actually unfolded."
If you can't get the big picture, what chance does a lay jury have?
Isn't it time the US moved to a specialised patent court, as is found in many other jurisdictions?
Re: Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
#13Surely, Kapersky can't be bigger than Microsoft and other companies mentioned in the article? If they can fight it out, why can't the big guys fight it out? If only the big guys took a stance, and fight these trolls, it'll be nice.
It's very expensive. Kaspersky almost certainly paid its lawyers much, much more to take this case through summary judgment and trial prep than Microsoft paid the Troll to go away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm with you. But...it's easy to pontificate on the virtues of taking a principled stand against trolls when you're not responsible to greedy shareholders.
Does anyone know who owns Kaspersky? It would be interesting to note who was on the Board that OK'd the decision to open the company coffers to fund a fight against a patent troll.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Order indicates that Kaspersky won summary judgment on noninfringement grounds, not invalidity grounds. e: Not sure about this, but the Order also suggests that some of the Troll's claims survived summary judgment and are proceeding to trial, so it's not clear to me how complete of a victory this is. I'll check the underlying order (this ruling was on a motion for reconsideration) and the PACER docket and see wha…
The public documents in this case are heavily redacted, because the relevant underlying facts involve confidential or sensitive information about licensing agreements. That, plus my unfamiliarity with the underlying technology, makes it tough for me to put together a complete picture of how this litigation actually unfolded. But, as best as I can tell from a brief initial review of the papers: The Troll was alleging…
Kaspersky won on noninfringement grounds, but they structured their noninfringement argument in a very elegant and powerful way that essentially renders the patent-in-suit toothless while still technically valid.
Can you expound upon this point a bit? Does that mean that they were able to argue for a favorable claim construction, or was it something else?
Re: Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
#15Kaspersky is undoubtedly one of most interesting companies in the antivirus space, if not the one. They do a lot of research and they push things forward instead of just scaremongering their userbase into buying annual subscriptions to a bloatware like Symantec does. That being said, they do ship some really buggy stuff that is an absolute pain to deal with. For a couple of years I had to deal with support of a netwo…
Their competitor, Symantec, just bluescreened a lot of corporate XP machines the other week, so it doesn't take much for Kaspersky to look good in comparison.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
The public documents in this case are heavily redacted, because the relevant underlying facts involve confidential or sensitive information about licensing agreements. That, plus my unfamiliarity with the underlying technology, makes it tough for me to put together a complete picture of how this litigation actually unfolded. But, as best as I can tell from a brief initial review of the papers: The Troll was alleging…
"plus my unfamiliarity with the underlying technology, makes it tough for me to put together a complete picture of how this litigation actually unfolded." If you can't get the big picture, what chance does a lay jury have? Isn't it time the US moved to a specialised patent court, as is found in many other jurisdictions?
I think a good trial lawyer would probably be able to get a jury to a level of at least rudimentary understanding of the technology over the course of a multi-day trial. But I agree with the spirit of what you're saying. Reliance on trial by lay jury is just one of the many, many ways the American patent system is broken.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The public documents in this case are heavily redacted, because the relevant underlying facts involve confidential or sensitive information about licensing agreements. That, plus my unfamiliarity with the underlying technology, makes it tough for me to put together a complete picture of how this litigation actually unfolded. But, as best as I can tell from a brief initial review of the papers: The Troll was alleging…
Kaspersky won on noninfringement grounds, but they structured their noninfringement argument in a very elegant and powerful way that essentially renders the patent-in-suit toothless while still technically valid. Can you expound upon this point a bit? Does that mean that they were able to argue for a favorable claim construction, or was it something else?
I didn't look at the claim construction order so I don't know if anything particularly remarkable happened at that stage, but based solely on the SJ order, it looks like they did get a very favorable construction in light of Ricoh v. Quantas. They were able to get all of the claims construed in such a way that their own behavior wasn't covered.
This then allowed them to deploy a very elegant (IMO) "fork" tactic. Having established, in light of the the claims and the Ricoh case, that they couldn't possibly be direct infringers, they were also able to make winning arguments based on an RPX license (unfortunately redacted) that established that none of their users could possibly be infringers.
So they were able to cement all of the legal bricks together into a solid wall that completely closed off any path to victory the Troll could have taken.
Really wish I could see the redacted language from the license agreements.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
#18Surely, Kapersky can't be bigger than Microsoft and other companies mentioned in the article? If they can fight it out, why can't the big guys fight it out? If only the big guys took a stance, and fight these trolls, it'll be nice.
It's very expensive. Kaspersky almost certainly paid its lawyers much, much more to take this case through summary judgment and trial prep than Microsoft paid the Troll to go away. Don't get me wrong, I'm with you. But...it's easy to pontificate on the virtues of taking a principled stand against trolls when you're not responsible to greedy shareholders. Does anyone know who owns Kaspersky? It would be interesting to…
Unofficially, it's believed that Eugene Kaspersky holds the controlling block of shares.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very expensive. Kaspersky almost certainly paid its lawyers much, much more to take this case through summary judgment and trial prep than Microsoft paid the Troll to go away. Don't get me wrong, I'm with you. But...it's easy to pontificate on the virtues of taking a principled stand against trolls when you're not responsible to greedy shareholders. Does anyone know who owns Kaspersky? It would be interesting to…
Unofficially, it's believed that Eugene Kaspersky holds the controlling block of shares.
Seems consistent with what we're seeing in this case. Very hard to imagine any VC greenlighting this sort of "it's the principle" litigation; very easy to imagine a founder doing so.
Re: Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll
#20Surely, Kapersky can't be bigger than Microsoft and other companies mentioned in the article? If they can fight it out, why can't the big guys fight it out? If only the big guys took a stance, and fight these trolls, it'll be nice.
It's very expensive. Kaspersky almost certainly paid its lawyers much, much more to take this case through summary judgment and trial prep than Microsoft paid the Troll to go away. Don't get me wrong, I'm with you. But...it's easy to pontificate on the virtues of taking a principled stand against trolls when you're not responsible to greedy shareholders. Does anyone know who owns Kaspersky? It would be interesting to…
"It's very expensive."
What I don't understand is why more companies don't band together to share the cost of fighting against a patent troll. The article lists more than a dozen companies being sued by this patent troll. If they banded together their cost would be a fraction of the cost of a solo fight against a patent troll, while the patent troll would have to bear all the cost of proceeding with the suit.
It seems to me that if more companies did this, it would shift the balance of power away from the patent trolls, and make then think twice before proceeding with a lawsuit, especially if their patent is weak.