Stuart Freen is a J.D. candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and is taking the Patent Law course. Non-practicing entities (NPEs) are rarely depicted in a positive light. Particularly in the IT sector, NPEs or “patent trolls” as they are often called are characterized as opportunistic extortionists, amassing large and strategic patent portfolios without actually conducting […]
Virgil Cojocaru is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Using various processes or technologies is a minefield. Patent trolls or non practicing entities (NPE) are a large part of the problem. Knowing how to deal with their likes becomes a matter of legal tactics and strategy. However, before getting into potential solutions, we […]
Amanda Carpenter is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. On September 21, 2009, The New York Times featured an article entitled “Patent Auctions Offer Protections to Inventors”. This article is about the story of a small-inventor firm called Zoltar Satellite Alarm Systems and their battles with big corporations over its patented inventions. In […]
On Monday, July 13th, Mosaid Technologies Inc. filed a suit against IBM Corporation for patent infringement concerning six of Mosaid's United States patents. The suit was filed in the United States District Court in the District of Delaware. Mosaid, an Ottawa-based company, is well known for developing semiconductor technology. The patents involved in the suit […]
In her research paper titled "Of Trolls, Davids, Goliaths, and Kings: Narratives and evidence in the litigation of high-tech patents," Assistant Professor Colleen V. Chien, at Santa Clara University School of Law, provides a snapshot of U.S. patent litigation that could not only inform current efforts to reform the patent system, but could also serve […]
Ever wondered who is the most responsible for flooding the US courts with frivolous patent litigation suits over the past decade? While most fingers will inevitably point towards the so called “patent trolls”, the recent study proposed by Nathan Myhrvold in collaboration with the Stanford University Law Professor Mark Lemley is determined to bring the […]
The first thing that strikes me about this article is that the term “patent troll” carries many different meanings. The definition of patent troll suggested in the article “Rise of the Patent Trolls” by Joe Beyers[1] is “a company or business function whose primary business activity is to acquire patents for the purpose of offensively […]
A patent is a bundle of exclusive rights. This allows an inventor to make, use, and sell a novel invention, without the threat of competition. It may seem odd, then, to acquire a patent without any intention of using or making that patented invention. But a new breed of company, the conspicuously named “patent troll”, […]
I agree that the “predator” patent trolls can be potential lethal to companies who make and sell products, but I do not agree that their function is futile or unethical. The strongest argument against patent trolls is that they have not contributed to the inventions on which they claim patent infringement. They have, however, usually […]