Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
medium.com
Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
1–10 of 83 posts
Re: Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
#2Url changed from http://gigaom.com/2014/08/11/law-students-chase-patent-troll..., which points to this.
Re: Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
#3"The Supreme Court issued 6 patent helpful patent decisions while our case was pending. In particular, Alice v. CLS Bank invalidated patents on taking mundane tasks and doing them on a computer. The patent in our case was basically for sending notification calls from a computer. Probably invalid under Alice. A second Supreme Court case, Octane v. Icon encouraged judges to impose “fee shifting” penalties in appropriate patent cases."
...
"After reading it, and weighing the recent Supreme Court decisions, the troll simply dropped its case against CarShield. After months of dedicated work, the clinic students deserved a gavel-banging judicial decision in their favor. All they got was a quiet withdrawal. But I think we can still chalk it up in the win column. The case is dismissed (for now), the students learned real patent litigation skills."
Does the decision encouraging "fee shifting" require that the case go to trial? Does it require that the fees actually be paid by the defendant? Or might the law school students still be able to receive payment by the troll for their pro bono defense? It seems like the "new standard" would be much more effective if it also applied in cases like this.
Re: Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
#4"The Supreme Court issued 6 patent helpful patent decisions while our case was pending. In particular, Alice v. CLS Bank invalidated patents on taking mundane tasks and doing them on a computer. The patent in our case was basically for sending notification calls from a computer. Probably invalid under Alice. A second Supreme Court case, Octane v. Icon encouraged judges to impose “fee shifting” penalties in appropriat…
>> Does the decision encouraging "fee shifting" require that the case go to trial?
Nope. It only requires that the case is "exceptional" -- in the sense that the plaintiff filed an exceptionally crappy lawsuit.
>> Does it require that the fees actually be paid by the defendant? Or might the law school students still be able to receive payment by the troll for their pro bono defense?
I haven't looked into this myself, but my law students tell me that we can get fee shifting even for pro bono work.
Re: Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
#5>the troll simply dropped its case against CarShield
Yet the startup and the judicial system already lost time on this. There should be a fee for withdrawing cases like this.
Re: Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
#6I love this. But, am saddened that the troll hasn't lost. The troll is free to move on to the next mark, which likely won't have a free legal team behind them.
I wonder if invalidating patents, that trolls commonly use, a good use of a law student's time?
Re: Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
#7This is why we started using law school clinics to do free legal defense. It’s a win-win arrangement: students cut their teeth on real litigation, startups get free legal defense, and patent trolls get nothing.
Bravo!
Re: Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
#8This article suggests that this is a win-win situation for the startups and law students, but, it's a pretty one-sided deal here. This doesn't work out at all in the long term without unfair exploitation of the unpaid labor of the students.
While helping out gives the students experience, it's not reasonable to consider this any sort of real option beyond an occasional situation in which a startup can solicit a law-student who takes on a single case as part of their curriculum.
Re: Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
#9I love this. But, am saddened that the troll hasn't lost. The troll is free to move on to the next mark, which likely won't have a free legal team behind them. I wonder if invalidating patents, that trolls commonly use, a good use of a law student's time?
What would be really awesome is if the BLIP clinic students decided to dedicate themselves to destroying this particular troll. Since they'd already put in the hours getting up to speed on the patent in question (and filing that likely-would-have-been-successful motion), they should reach out to the other folks who have/will be sued by 911 and offer to defend them. Troll the troll, as it were.
Re: Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll
#10This article suggests that this is a win-win situation for the startups and law students, but, it's a pretty one-sided deal here. This doesn't work out at all in the long term without unfair exploitation of the unpaid labor of the students. While helping out gives the students experience, it's not reasonable to consider this any sort of real option beyond an occasional situation in which a startup can solicit a law-s…
It's not "unfair exploitation". The students willingly sign on to get meaningful experience working on real cases. It gives them a chance to do real work and see more closely how actual law work is done.
From the sounds of the article, there is one small clinic in Brooklyn that makes this a "real option" for companies. It's not like every company that faces patent trolls can rely on it, but I don't think it would be far-fetched to think that other law clinics may begin to (or already do) offer similar services.
As I see it, it's a win-win for both parties.