Posted on 08/13/2014 7:00:09 PM PDT by posterchild
Patent troll stories don’t usually have a happy ending but this might count: a troll tried to shake down a start-up for $250,000 but had to skulk away empty-handed thanks to the hard work of a group of students at Brooklyn Law School.
As patent lawyer Eric Adler explains, California-based CarShield sought the students’ help after its connected-car business was targeted by a troll who goes by the name 911 Notify.
The troll, which is nothing but a shell company, put CarShield in the same terrible dilemma that confronts every other target of patent trolls: it could either spend hundreds of thousands on lawyers to fight the troll, or simply pay the troll to go away.
The law students, however, changed the financial calculation by lending their time to help CarShield challenge the troll in court. Their case was aided by a recent Supreme Court case that curtailed computer patents, and another that made it easier to collect legal fees from trolls.
(Excerpt) Read more at gigaom.com ...
What is a connected-car?
“And thanks to the failure of Senate Democrats to pass a patent reform bill, there is little to stop it from conducting these shakedowns.”
Thanks to Harry Reid for stopping non-controversial legislation for political reasons.
Harry Reid’s old white guys do nothing Senate.
Has the Rev JJ adopted a nom de plume - CarShield?
So it does *not* cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight a patent troll.
... if you can find some pro-bono law students to take your case. So the question is, do you feel lucky? Because if you can’t, you still face hundreds of thousands in legal fees (if, indeed, you’re a target).
Making frivolous suits is the “meat and potatoes” for trial lawyers.
The poor victim of such suits in normally innocent of any wrongdoing but will actually save money over the court and legal costs he would incur to fight the extortion by simply paying off the other party to drop the suit.
It’s the American way of doing things today. Lawyers get rich off of it and their “customers” now look for new opportunities to sue.
My father was a lawyer but was an honest lawyer. That’s why he never got rich.
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