China’s Patent-Lawsuit Profile Grows - Troll Tolls Too - WSJ

China’s Patent-Lawsuit Profile Grows - WSJ:

China as a focal point of Intellectual Property, in the patent office and in the courts.

This law suit by WiLAN is interesting to see how the "assertion" of patents can move and shift.

Here's a little background on WiLAN from Wikipedia.

As you can see the company originally developed stuff so it would not be categorized as a Non-Practicing Entity (NPE), or Patent Troll in the ungracious term that is sometimes more appropriate for NPEs. WiLAN seems to be moving more steadily into the troll category.

Now with a war chest of some 3,000 patents+pendings, WiLAN is a strong international force.

In 2013 Daniel Fisher describes the Texas case where WiLAN had its core patents to the suit invalidated in "how to bag a patent troll". The stock (on the Toronto exchange) fell 33% to $3.25. In 2014, Apple won again in California.

Apple has won several law suits against WiLAN including a 2016 verdict. Look at the 6mo & 10yr stock chart on Yahoo, where it dropped from $3.40 to $2.30 in a few days at the end of July 2016. It now trades at $1.80.

The Investor profile is not so good, even with the Samsung licensing deal last year.

WiLAN continues to build its patent portfolio.

One of the things that a Patent Troll never wants to do, is actually go to court. Patents can be invalidated, remedies can be diminished, and the golden goose can give up the ghost.

Gotta love the trading symbol that starts with WIN (WIN.to).

There are several things that WiLAN could do to make it a much more legitimate player, and less of a troll. But those involve capital investments in R&D to invent, manufacturing to produce, sales and marketing to sell. That's a different business model. As long as investors are happy with investing in trolls, the trolls will rein supreme within their little serfdom of bridges.

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Toll of the Patent Troll

The Wall Street Journal has a great article about Patent Trolls and the Toll the cost on an innocent economy. Here's the excellent WSJ Article: America’s Biggest Filer of Patent Suits Wants You to Know It Invented Shipping Notification, By RUTH SIMON and  LORETTA CHAO, Updated Oct. 27, 2016 1:11 p.m. ET.

Small(er) companies are targeted by a non-practicing entity (NPE), sometimes ungraciously referred to as a Patent Troll. IPZine previously discussed Patent Trolls in their various forms. Efforts to kill the trolls, or at least send them back under the bridge have moved forward with mixed success. In the US, the court costs have been paid by both parties historically, so winning in court, might still be losing. It might be better to simply pay the fees that would go to lawyers and be 100% certain of the outcome. A court ruling in 2014 has shifted this court cost dilemma. (See Wikipedia article on Patent Trolls.)

Imagine a portfolio of patents related to predictive arrival. That is, when will a product, person or thing arrive. The patent portfolio has 60 some patents with about half still active. That affects almost every business concept from shipping, manufacturing, service and more. It certainly hits on most of the activities that occur on the internet as well. Airlines, shippers, buses, and school buses -- government and private -- have fallen prey to the transit NPE.

So a small(er) business, attempting to do business, gets suddenly clobbered by legal notices and maybe even law suits. WHAT!!!??? The company probably has no patent attorney, so they scramble to find one. The patent attorney advises, at say $500 per hour, on the options and the potential costs. Litigation will cost $250,000, unless you lose; then it gets expensive!.

So, what's a small firm to do? This fight is like taking a pocket knife to a gun fight. Might be better to pay some fee, say $25,000-$50,000 and possibly a licensing fee (say a small % of sales), then to risk the bankrupting if the business. 

All agreements are confidential, so it is hard to see who paid what licensing fees, and how much. The big shippers of FedEx and UPS have, apparently, full licensing for them and their clients. So a small company that uses their services, and only their services (of shipping and notification), might be in the clear. 

The big NPE in this Simon & Chao article is Shipping & Transit LLC. About 10 years ago, the company tried to do a product for buses and shipping (Bus Stop and ArrivalStar). But neither worked out. So now Shipping and Transit sit around suing companies. 

Not a single law suit has gone the distance. Consequently, none of the patents have been really tested. This is interesting since many of the patent claims are rather obvious and arrival/queuing goes back 50-100 years. 

It seems like some type of a class action suit would be possible and force the issue against the NPE. The secret to the success of the Patent Troll, however, is to pick off the prey a few small targets at a time. Then, those victims who survive, are signed into an iron-clad agreement that cannot be breached under penalty of death. The airlines, FedEx and UPS are not talking, but what an interesting conversation that would be. 

The Jones gang of Shipping & Transit, way back in the day (circa Y2K) of ArrivalStar were ruthless. Doesn’t seem like much has changed… 

Keywords: NPE, Patent Troll, licensing, PLA, patent licensing agreement, economic development, 

Readying a Patent Portfolio for Sale

In years gone by, companies with extensive patent portfolios were loathe to sell these assets, strongly preferring to license them.  These Patent Licensing Agreements (PLA) came in several flavors, most had some form of royalty payments for the licensor and the fundamental was that ownership of the patents remained with the original owner, i.e., the company granted the patent(s).

While not totally different today, much has changed in the disposition of thousands of US patents.  Patents are now sold in much greater numbers than in decades past.  Some of the reasons for this are:

·         Corporate decision to shut down or sell of an operating division

·         Near term need to financially rescue another part of the corporation

·         Shift in corporate direction/strategy

·         Pay a court imposed penalty

Patent sales are now so commonplace that online IP reporter sites like www.IAM.com recently devoted a webinar to the patent selling process.  This process, as one can see, includes seven steps.  The assumption here is that the seller completed a validity check to the extent possible on each patent offered for sale. 

It is noteworthy under Step 6 that the biggest buyers of patents review around 1,000 seller packages per year.  This clearly puts the onus on the seller to develop a first class patent package.  It also suggests that this is a buyers’ market putting more of a burden on the seller to find ways to get the most value for its assets.

Keywords: patent, patent portfolio, licensing, PLA, Patent Licensing Agreement, commercialization. 

Maria Pallante out of Copyright. Unified IP?

Maria Pallante: out of Copyright Office

Great article by Dennis Crouch over at Patently-O. (But then aren't they all great over there.)

Apparently Pallante is out as Chief of the Copyright office. And the clamor is up as to why we don't have a unified IP at the patent and trademark office, kind of a US PTOC. (I guess that would be pronounced Pea-Talk, or PeeTalk, if you wanted to talk dirty.)

Back in 2012, Crouch recommended creating an integrated US Intellectual Property Organization, or USIPO (you sip oh) akin to WIPO for the world of IP.

The argument for an integrated IP approach "...  is that many operating businesses relying upon intellectual property (IP) rights typically do not focus on a single form of IP rights but instead take a layered approach that includes some combination of patent, trademark, copyright, contractual, employment, trade secret, and design rights, for instance."

With all the changes happening, or potentially happening, in the IP world this integration seems like a great idea when the time has come.

Let's go with USIPO, not PTOC, on this one.

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Photographer Files $1 Billion Suit Against Getty for Licensing Her Public Domain Images

Photographer Files $1 Billion Suit Against Getty for Licensing Her Public Domain Images [UPDATED] - Hyperallergic:

Wow. Getty was selling public domain photos to everyone, including the photog herself.

Getty was notifying people with the images that they must pay money to keep using them (on their own web sites, etc.). So the copyright owner, Carol Highsmith, gets a $120 bill for using her own picture on her own web site.

Highsmith had donated the pictures to the library of congress for use by the general public at no charge.

Getty says, no, we were simply providing a service by selling these photos to people.

You say "potato", I say "Stolen Tomato".

Oh, by the way,

Highsmith is a really, really good photographer.

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Olivier Scalabre: The next manufacturing revolution is here | TED Talk | TED.com

Olivier Scalabre: The next manufacturing revolution is here | TED Talk | TED.com:

Yes. It is here. The next generation of manufacturing.This is an absolutely spot on TED talk related to the world of manufacturing.

Everyone in the USA wines and complains about the flight of manufacturing from the USA. We don't make anything any more. That's not really true. We still make a lot of stuff, but the percentage of the workforce that makes stuff is a much, much lower percentage.

After 3 major industrial "revolutions" that have lasted 50-60 years each, we are due for another breakthrough technology/process/approach. It has now been about 50 years of slowing productivity. And the next revolution is already here.

Monsieur Olivier has very profound arguments for manufacturing to return onshore. One of his arguments is mass customization that is best done near to market (onshore), especially with the latest technologies.

There's another massive argument that pertains to the US, and not Europe (France). With new technologies of fracking & horizontal drilling, the US is swimming in cheap oil and (nat)gas. A huge proportion of manufacturing has to do with the cost of electricity -- cheap and clean(er) now with the major switches away from coal (toward NatGas and renewables). Transportation is cheap and more efficient. Plus, almost everything manufactured uses oil, particulates and natural gas. All plastics can, and should be manufactured at home.

We have been flaring about half of the NatGas in the US. All we have to do is set up an electric plant (run electric transmission lines) and/or a plastics factory next to the oil fields to capture some of this free energy.

Also, in 2015 and 2016, renewable energy has broken through that foggy glass floor. Without considering any of the externalities of coal, wind and solar are now cheaper for electricity. If the true costs of coal, considering all externalities are 2 to 3 times the price at the meter, then cheaper, better and cleaner energy is available at home. Far better in all respects than any factory in China or India.

Watch the assumptions and assertions in Olivier's presentation and see how much and how quickly it all comes to pass.
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PTO 101 worst management Practices. Workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds - The Washington Post

Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds - The Washington Post:

The USPTO wins, hands down. They have implemented 101 of the all time worst management practices, all at one time.

It may be worthy of a method patent application since no one has ever considered implementing all know mis-management practices at once in one organization.

In reading the Washington Post article by Lisa Rein, you move from groan and wonderment, to GROAN and bewilderment, to actual PAIN and anger.

All processes are broken as designed. It is reasonably hard to manage with a Union. There is no good rationale for unionization within government, really. Combine that with a cozy relationship where there is no accountability and no direct responsibility.

To accommodate the new technology and new ways possible of working (telework, computer record searches, cloud computing, etc.) they regressed to pre-computer processes, measures and methods.

People who work at home, don't have to log in to work. People who come to work have to time-clock in, but never clock out. People who don't work much during the week, log in huge amounts of overtime and receive big bonuses.

When you read a report like this, you assume that you are likely reading the worst of the worst. This seems to be so prevasive, however, that it is embedded in the culture and the protocols, i.e., standard operating procedure (SOP, or in this case SOL). It appears that this is only a sample, so the problem is likely approximately a multiple of the problem. That is, the report is not a measure of the problem, but can be used to generate a huge estimate of how BIG the problem really is.

WHATTTT!

This is painful to read at so many levels. This is a case study of government failure, management structure decay, and leadership incompetence. It is all the best of bad leadership practices integrated into one office.

We at SBP love innovation and want to see the USPTO do the best job possible for the world of innovation. We at SBP love telework, and believe telecommuting is one of the easiest, fastest, and bestest ways to start improving our carbon footprint (while savings massive amounts of time and money doing so).

The only bright spot in the whole report is that poor performers are monitored (read managed) and consequently only 4% of the identifiable problems of fraud come from the poor performers. Good news, poor performers don't do a very good job, but they also don't do a spectacular job of cheating taxpayer, either.

Managers are obviously a huge part of the problem in so many ways and at so many levels. This whole environment is not salvageable; congress needs to kill off everything USPTO related, and rebuild the organization with proper structure and incentives.

Oh this is ugly...
Painfully, UGLY!

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