I used to work with the legal department of T-Mobile. One of the challenges they had was some companies existed for the sole purpose of reverse engineering other companies’ hardware, finding what functionality was not patented, then patenting it and suing the company for patent infringement.
It can be a lucrative business.
Sounds like what this company does. No products, no employees. They just own patents.
It used to be first to invent, though now it is first to file. If first to invent, a stunt like that would be impossible.
Actually, no, this one seems legit, at least insofar as Samsung is implicated.
From the lawsuit:
22. In or around the beginning of 2002, Patrick Racz, one of the co-inventors of the patents- in-suit, collaborated with Britney Spears to commercialize the technology covered by the patents-in-suit.
23. Mark Steverson, one of Ms. Spears’ lawyers, was involved in these commercialization efforts.
24. Mr. Steverson contacted Samsung Richardson and eventually gave a presentation to Samsung Richardson about the technology covered by the patents-in-suit and Mr. Racz’s plans to continue developing the technology for reader player devices and cell phones.
In the scenario you describe the patent applications should fail the novelty test. I.e., no patent for YOU!
Even if it flies by the examiner in the first stage, there are remedies to nullify a patent that shouldn’t have been granted in the first place.
If that fails and it goes to some incompetent judge/jury - good luck!
You said ... “Sounds like what this company does. No products, no employees. They just own patents.”
Yep, it’s happening all over the place to many companies. It’s time to fix the problem ... in the law!
Yes, they are called “patent trolls” in the electronic industry.
I thought that once a product hit the market, anything not patented in the product was not subject to lawsuits. This works two ways ...
1> The company that sells the product cannot patent anything after release (assuming there is no patent pending associated with the product).
2> Someone cannot prior state of the art ... if the company was reverse engineering an existing product, how can they patent anything if the product is already being sold?
I am aware of companies that buy failing companies for pennies on the dollars just to get a hold of patents and sue their way to prosperity. What kills me is that the people doing the suing usually have no idea what they’re talking about ... they usually pay a consultant a sick amount of money to translate the patents for the leeches to issue the lawsuit.
I’m torn over this ... one one hand, they legally own the IP, but on the other hand, there are so many of these lawsuits filed frivolously. Taxpayers pay for that.
I’m no Apple fan, but I’d bet good money they’re getting screwed here. I don’t care if they’re worth a quadrillion dollars ... it doesn’t sound like anything mentioned in this article is patentable.
We really need a better system for patents ... one idiot at a mid sized company I worked at filed patents for some of the most insane, indefensible, indescribable crap I’ve ever read. He always managed to go directly to lawyers when various engineering teams weren’t available for peer review. He made something like $300K off that scheme of his. He laughed all the way to the bank exploiting the bonuses he somehow earned, but you’ve got to be a special breed of scum to make a living filing nonsense all day long. The Patent Office reviewed and approved his garbage though ... doesn’t say much about them too.