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East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

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Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#71

Post by WildUtah »

Alex3917 wrote: post #5
hga wrote: post #3

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.

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.

"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.

Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#72

Post by WildUtah »

iraphael wrote: post #22

> the patent describes (...) routine tasks that could be performed by a human. Is this a good way of defining when a patent is invalid? Isn't everything (i.e.: all computations) technically tasks that could be performed by humans alone given enough time?

In the Bilski decision the Supreme Court drew a distinction between routine logical and mathematical operations that have existed for thousands of years and complicated technical operations like linear programming, encryption, and compression that truly change the operation of hardware and go far beyond mere logic and math. [0]

Only Judge Scalia noticed the idiocy in time to stop those specific examples from being binding precedent, though the principle still is. [1]

That's the level of understanding you can expect from the courts.

0 http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf

1 http://boingboing.net/2015/07/08/tom-the-dancing-bug-judge-s...

Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#73

Post by threatofrain »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #37

Software patents are pitched as a policy choice that encourages programmers by giving them some financial incentive to invent more software. That's how they have been pitched to programmers and the American people. However, after having worked in the patent industry for a few years now, I can tell you software patents are really just a mechanism to redistribute the wealth of engineers to lawyers. Period. That's the e…

Patent or patent, I don't see how engineers are going to get a bigger slice of the pie, no more than I can see how an artist should get a bigger slice of their pie. Those with leverage get a bigger piece of the pie, like the leverage you get when you control distribution or infrastructure of some kind.

That's why most music artists make little money. It has nothing to do with what % of a production the music artist is responsible for. After production there's also marketing and distribution. The same is for many engineered products.

Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#74

Post by monochromatic »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #37

Software patents are pitched as a policy choice that encourages programmers by giving them some financial incentive to invent more software. That's how they have been pitched to programmers and the American people. However, after having worked in the patent industry for a few years now, I can tell you software patents are really just a mechanism to redistribute the wealth of engineers to lawyers. Period. That's the e…

> software patents are really just a mechanism to redistribute the wealth of engineers to lawyers

In some cases, probably true. But when big companies are duking it out, it's not the "wealth of engineers" that's getting fought over. It's wealth that would have been passed on to shareholders, directors, officers, etc.

Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#75

Post by monochromatic »

magicalist wrote: post #65
throwawaykf05 wrote: post #40

If you look past the common rhetoric against ED Texas about bring patentee-friendly and look at the data, this is not really surprising. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1597919 ED Texas did get a bad rap for being plaintiff-friendly early on, but that didn't last long at all, as the data shows. These days it seems to be favored for being a relatively fast docket and having judges with more patent-e…

> These days it seems to be favored for being a relatively fast docket and having judges with more patent-expertise. Uh, neither of those are really true, the fast docket is especially wrong. In fact, there are a host of reasons why the Eastern District is popular (your source is wildly out of date due to changes since 2010). There's a reason that 44% of all patent cases for the first half of 2015 were filed in the d…

The fact that it has patent-savvy judges is absolutely a reason why many plaintiffs file there. Ignorant judges are unpredictable.

Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#76

Post by monochromatic »

magicalist wrote: post #65
throwawaykf05 wrote: post #40

If you look past the common rhetoric against ED Texas about bring patentee-friendly and look at the data, this is not really surprising. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1597919 ED Texas did get a bad rap for being plaintiff-friendly early on, but that didn't last long at all, as the data shows. These days it seems to be favored for being a relatively fast docket and having judges with more patent-e…

> These days it seems to be favored for being a relatively fast docket and having judges with more patent-expertise. Uh, neither of those are really true, the fast docket is especially wrong. In fact, there are a host of reasons why the Eastern District is popular (your source is wildly out of date due to changes since 2010). There's a reason that 44% of all patent cases for the first half of 2015 were filed in the d…

The fact that it has patent-savvy judges is absolutely a reason why many plaintiffs file there. Ignorant judges are unpredictable.

Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#77

Post by monochromatic »

bsimpson wrote: post #39

> reformed rules would have forced trolls like eDekka to actually explain how their targets infringe their patents. However, that's not currently a requirement How is it even possible to sue somebody for something you can't show that they did?

It's a question of how much specificity you need when you're first starting the suit. Discovery is the process in a civil lawsuit that lets you figure out exactly what happened.

Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#78

Post by monochromatic »

adebtlawyer wrote: post #24
iraphael wrote: post #22

> the patent describes (...) routine tasks that could be performed by a human. Is this a good way of defining when a patent is invalid? Isn't everything (i.e.: all computations) technically tasks that could be performed by humans alone given enough time?

The key word is 'routine.' Patentable subject matter is supposed to be non-obvious, in other words, innovative.

In a post-Alice world, anyway. Pre-Alice, patentable subject matter and nonobviousness were separate requirements.

Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#79

Post by DannyBee »

WildUtah wrote: post #69
DannyBee wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike what others have said, the answer is no. Patents are governed by a specific jurisdictional statute that made this crazy. The history is detailed well here: http://patentlyo.com/patent/2007/04/patent_jurisdic.html THe TL;DR is: It used to just be: Any civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringemen…

Note that 28 USC §1400 is still in force; the Congress did not choose to remove the limits on patent case jurisdiction when it expanded other jurisdiction. It's right there in the US Code in black letters with no ambiguity. But the notoriously corrupt patent appeals court -- the CAFC -- in its first decade of existence, abolished 28 USC §1400 by fiat. The patent trolls went into business in East Texas soon after.

28 USC 1391 is actually very clear. As much as i don't like the CAFC, their interpretation of it is completely and totally defensible.

Re: East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases

#80

Post by adebtlawyer »

ww520 wrote: post #59
adebtlawyer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It costs millions of dollars to run these operations Are you sure? Litigation isn't always expensive if you're doing it in-house.

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

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.'

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