Patent Troll Ping!
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Posted on 06/11/2015 6:23:03 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Federal courts might have made it harder for patent trolls to sue over vague ideas, but the Eastern District of Texas (the trolls' preferred venue) just put the ball back in their court. Some judges in the region now demand that the targets of these lawsuits get permission before they file motions to dismiss cases based on abstract concepts. If the defendants don't show "good cause" for needing those motions, the lawsuits go ahead -- and historically, that means that the trolls either win their cases or extract settlements from companies unwilling to endure the costs of a prolonged legal battle.
If there's any consolation, it's that these judges will likely have to mend their ways at some point. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, defendants have both the right and precedents to ask for a motion to dismiss. Judges aren't allowed to establish rules that clash with those on the federal level, so these Texas officials are technically breaking the law. The question is whether or not there will be an effective challenge to these Eastern District rules before a large number of companies are asked to defend against patent trolls with their hands tied.
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Judge Gohmert’s Smith county office is in Tyler on the Loop. I was in Tyler back in November, wanted to stop in and just pass onto his staff that there are “Part-Time Texans” back home in Western PA that wish he was their congresscritter.
The Federal Circuit will squash this. Basically, this district is in the cross hairs of every reform law and the Supreme Court. Good luck to them.
Trial lawyers are the top political donors in Texas and the Democrat Party is their party of choice.
Some years ago, a handful of private lawyers in sweet with the Democrats got a billion dollar payout in the states’ tobacco settlement.
Die, patent trolls. They are a criminal organization every bit as much as the mafia. They just have a law degree.
The whole American Bar Association is a Democrat cabal.
Some years ago, a handful of private lawyers in sweet with the Democrats
got a billion dollar payout in the states’ tobacco settlement.
*************
Try #$3.3 billion to five lawyers.....
Given that Texas Instruments is in the state (for now), this won’t go over well.
“Some years ago, a handful of private lawyers in sweet with the Democrats got a billion dollar payout in the states’ tobacco settlement.”
That isn’t how that happened. Democrats had nothing to do with it. This group of lawyers took the tobacco case FREE OF CHARGE. If the lawyers had lost, they got nothing. They won, and got those many millions of dollars.
They came in near the end, by my recollection, they weren’t the only lawyers on the case, and they were among THE top donors in the state.
Good riddance John O’Quinn.
http://www.tortreform.com/blog/lingering-odor-texas-tobacco-settlement
The Lingering Odor of the Texas Tobacco Settlement
...Buried under the politics of fifteen years, the story is so cold that only a bolt of lightning could bring it back to life. But lest we forget, the national tobacco settlement was and remains—by far—the largest litigation money transfer in the history of plaintiff litigation. It wound up putting billions of dollars in the pockets of hundreds of plaintiff lawyers across the country, only a few of whom did much to earn any of it.
Folklore to the contrary, the tobacco companies did not cough up the billions of dollars paid to the states. Rather, under the sophisticated guidance of tobacco lawyers, bankers, and a core group of shrewd plaintiff lawyers from South Carolina and Mississippi, the litigants arranged to shift the entire cost of the settlement—trillions of dollars over the life of the settlement—not onto the tobacco companies, but onto smokers compelled to pay a de facto tax to the settling tobacco companies through price increases.
At the time, our state’s fourth estate simply swooned at the notion of dubious Sir Galahads—like asbestos litigation lawyers Walter Umphrey and Wayne Reaud of Beaumont—bringing Dragon Big Tobacco to its knees. They showered Sir Walter and the other knights of the Texas Tobacco Five—John Eddie Williams, John O’Quinn and Harold Nix—with praise in every news story.
Very few in the media noticed the questionable odor of the deal or the seemingly inexplicable provisions agreed to by the tobacco companies. For the sake of history, I will review just the high points:...
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