Posts Tagged: "non-practicing entities"

It is truly a shame that so many have bought into the demonization of patent owners without any critical thought. In order to believe the narrative emanating from certain Silicon Valley giants you would have to believe the existence of helpless multinational, multi-billion dollar companies on their knees and wholly incapable of defending themselves against despicable independent inventors, diabolical universities, and monstrous scientific researchers. After all, looking to find a cure for cancer, or trying to figure out how to clean up the environment, or invent the next great kitchen gadget that will be the darling of QVC by definition makes someone vile, immoral, corrupt and down right sinful! A real devil in disguise!

One of the largest risks for a successful technology-based small business, startup, or individual inventor, is success itself—successful inventions invite predation by large market incumbents. The only protection many inventors have against loss of substantial investment in bringing a raw invention through the process of R&D, manufacturing, and establishing a market, is the patent system; patents provide the foundation of the market for inventions. For the patent system to work in “little guy vs. big guy” situations, the help of patent enforcement specialty firms is often required. This help must be financed, and often the best financing is through contingency arrangements, partnerships, or outright sale of the patents. For over a century, such patent intermediaries have provided important avenues for patent owners to keep control and coordinate investments and appropriate returns on their inventions. The patent enforcement-specialty firms of today are NPEs, more commonly referred to pejoratively as “patent trolls.”

Earlier today the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on patent reform. The hearing was titled The Impact of Abusive Patent Litigation Practices on the American Economy. There was a variety of diverse views presented by the witnesses, including one witness, Krish Gupta, who continued to cite the bogus and thoroughly debunked Bessen-Meurer “study” that erroneously claims that patent trolls…

The order bars the company, MPHJ Technology Investments, LLC, and its law firm from making deceptive representations when asserting patent rights. The settlement with MPHJ, announced in November 2014, is the first time the FTC has taken action using its consumer protection authority against a patent assertion entity.

The U.S. economy is full of intermediaries everywhere you look. But for some reason we have demonized the intermediaries in the market for innovation. Think of it this way. Most people buy their groceries at a grocery story. That grocery store does not grow any of the vegetables, raise the meat, nor catch the fish. It is simply an intermediary. Now I can see why from the point of view of a manufacturer the PAE may be a nuisance. But from the inventor’s point of view the PAE is a valuable intermediary.

Large companies can steal your patented technology, make a great deal of money, ignore you all together, and then have the resources, the vast resources in most cases, to delay your enforcement actions or actually destroy your patents by any means necessary. So the only recourse left for me and others like me is to bring suite to protect my invention – my intellectual property rights. However, the loser pay clause in HR 9 would be a showstopper for me. Bringing a suit against a patent infringer would be too much of a risk for me and my family now and I’ve already used my life savings and family inheritance and hard work for over 15 years plus the untold impact on my family just to develop and maintain my patents. I just do not believe the independent inventor is the problem.

Earlier today 40 economists and law professors wrote to Senate and House Judiciary leaders explaining that the data it that keeps being cited to justify HR 9, otherwise known as the Innovation Act, is “flawed, unreliable and incomplete.” The professors caution Congress to proceed cautiously, particularly given the numerous misleading and flawed studies that “highly exaggerated claims regarding patent trolls.”

There are a variety of problems with this paper, the conclusions reached and the methodology. Perhaps the largest problem is that Professors Feldman and Lemley rely on subjective evidence rather than volumes of objective evidence that contradict the self-serving responses from those who are licensing rights they are already infringing. What else would you suspect from a homogenous subset of individuals who collectively don’t like the patent system very much? Collective bias seems a far more likely answer as to why there is “near unanimity,” as the Professors claim. Even so, how is it possible that any group could ever achieve near unanimity about anything? The fact that there was near unanimity demands one to question whether there is a bias or flaw in the survey, yet no such inquiry seems to have been made.

The recent public discourse is purposely blurring the line between NPEs and trolls. Research labs and universities are all NPEs. But it would be not only incorrect but also ultimately ethically wrong to classify these entities as trolls. In fact, by taking away their right to technology monetization, we might undercut their ability to further investments in innovation, yet creating a vicious cycle. Ultimately, all companies – practicing or non-practicing – do R&D in areas where they will never bring a product to the market, and act as NPEs in specific market segments. Innovation requires multiple actors, including individual inventors. In times when R&D dollars are scarce, aggregators and patent licensing firms generate more resources to fuel innovation.

Phil Hartstein is the President and CEO of Finjan Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: FNJN)… On January 6, 2015, I interviewed Hartstein, which appears below. We had a wide ranging and lively discussion about the current state of the patent market, how the pejorative use of the term “patent troll” does nothing but attempt to denigrate innovators as second-class patent owners simply because they don’t manufacture, efforts to promote ethical licensing standards, and patent reform.

The United States District Court for the District of Nebraska ordered outgoing Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning to pay $325,000 for attorneys fees and costs to ActiveLight, Inc. and to pay another $400,000 in attorneys fees and costs to MPHJ Technology Investments, who had intervened in the matter. Bruning had demanded that the attorneys for ActiveLight and MPHJ stop engaging in patent enforcement activities in the State of Nebraska, a gross overreach of his authority as a State Attorney General and done with little or no investigation that would suggest any violation of State law.

This survey shows what those in the industry have long known — patent trolls and the need for patent reform are NOT the biggest problems facing the high tech industry in the United States. In fact, 92% of respondents feel that there are other things that are more concerning and a bigger barrier to innovation. But how can this be? The public has been consistently fed the line that patents stifle innovation. How can something that stifles innovation not be the biggest concern, particularly when so many of the tech giants from Silicon Valley have for years blamed the patent system for all their woes? The simple answer is that patents do NOT stifle innovation, and those who are intimately familiar with the industry know that to be true regardless of the lies promoted to advance patent reform, vilify innovators and lay the blame for everything at the feet of patent trolls.

To a large extent Apple, Microsoft and many other Silicon Valley innovators went along with the anti-patent rhetoric perfected by the Google machine. The Silicon Valley elite who have been bemoaning the patent system and patent trolls succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, convincing everyone of problems that don’t exist. So successful has this misinformation campaign been that now patents owned by everyone in the high-tech sector are at least worth less, if not completely worthless. By taking a short-sighted view of the litigation problems they were facing they took direct aim on the patent system, their own patent portfolios and the essence of their competitive advantage. Institutional shareholders in any company that has lobbied for patent weakening policies and court rulings should be appalled and may well want to seek out attorneys specializing in shareholder lawsuits.