Patent trolls Lumen View: "Calling us patent trolls is a hate crime, now you owe us even more money"

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we need more of these, we need a bunch of fights against patent trolls and just as many victories. when it’s shown you can win, more lawyers will be willing to take the case on the promise of payment when they win. and when you have more lawyers and the little people can afford them, you are well armed against the trolls.

let’s see a prenda style beat down.

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saying that calling them patent trollies is a “hate crime” (“I didn’t know patent trollies were a protected class” - O’Connor) and threatening to seek criminal charges if O’Connor doesn’t pay them a bunch of money and apologize.

Wow, isn’t that basically extortion on top of extortion? We’re going to extort you and if you call it extortion we’ll extort you on top of our previous extortion. Reminds of the mafia.

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Three interesting tidbits (IAAL):

  1. In every state that I know of, an attorney making a baseless threat of bringing criminal charges for purposes of attempting to gain an advantage in a civil matter is subject to discipline from the state bar.
    e.g. California (where Lumen View is located):
    http://rules.calbar.ca.gov/Rules/RulesofProfessionalConduct/CurrentRules/Rule5100.aspx
    Connecticut (where Aeton law is located):
    http://www.law.cornell.edu/ethics/ct/code/CT_CODE.HTM#Rule_3.4

  2. There’s an old tradition in the law-- to my knowledge, still the law in all 50 US States-- that the contents of a legal pleading are wholly and completely privileged from libel actions.

  3. California (where Lumen View is located) has very strong anti-SLAPP protections (against using a lawsuit to suppress someone’s free speech).

In other words, if you liked watching Prenda Law do its slow-motion walk into the woodchipper of FRCP Rule 11, get out the popcorn. This could get good.

(Edited to change “two tidbits” to “three tidbits”)

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What amazes me is that courts tolerate this crap in the first place. I mean a patent for “multilateral decision making”?!?!?! Give me a friggin’ break. What are those incompetents at the patent office smoking? Its long past time the patent system was reformed and every “business method” and “software” patent is thrown in the garbage where it belongs, right beside those incredibly hubristic attempts to patent human genes. For chrissakes, when is our society going to stop accepting every insane, predatory tactic businesses use to monopolize commerce and destroy innovation? Capitalism has become a metastatic cancer on humanity.

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Lumen View, eh? Did they once make endoscopes?

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FWIW, [here’s lumen view’s patent][1]

Interestingly, it’s a continuation of a patent application first filed in 1999.
[1]: http://news.priorsmart.com/lumen-view-technology-v-jobvite-l8Gk/#pat-8069073

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There’s a certain poetic beauty in this statement since “hate crime” get thrown around to the point where its original meaning has been devalued and “patent troll” is on the same train just one station behind.

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I’m a bit confused, at this point, as to why patent trolls so often aggressively and confrontationally respond to companies that are aggressively unwilling to settle. It has a strongly increasing risk for the troll of getting the patents invalidated, and destroying their ability to get future settlements from the same patents. Even before this, it gets the troll in the spotlight, and lets other companies know that someone is fighting the patent. Keeping a low profile, and going after the (many) companies that are willing to settle without a fight would seem much more profitable.

It seems a bit like running a 419 scam, except instead of moving on to the next potential victim when someone emails back that they have the means to get you arrested, sending them your real information and telling them to go ahead and try. Sure, they might be bluffing, but is it really worth the risk when there are so many easy targets?

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It appears that the US Patent Office is chiefly to blame in many of these situations. They even allow folks to patent maths. Its insane.

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Even if patent trolls (er, um, I mean ‘non-practicing entities’ or ‘members of the Patent Holding Company community’) were a protected class, how would calling somebody one be a ‘hate crime’? For US purposes, aren’t those only certain (otherwise criminal in themselves) acts motivated by somebody’s membership or suspected membership in a protected class?

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This is like when vampires attack zombies, right? They’re both souless monsters but it makes for interesting viewing.

Doubleclick, people, doubleclick.

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Eileen Shapiro (the alleged patent troll) seems like a nice lady. I mean, she went to Brown and Harvard.

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That is ludicrous.

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The US doesn’t even recognize “hate speech” as unprotected speech. All the hate crime provisions I’m aware of are essentially sentencing enhancements for violent crimes motivated by bias against protected classes.

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Denying your own crime and calling someone’s reaction a hate crime is a war crime, and for that your whole family is deported to the Hague and given Anthrax, so there!

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Yes, but calling attention to war crimes is treason, punishable by nuking from orbit.

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Your argument is akin to “babies are drowning therefore abolish water”.

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True, but the punishment for false accusation of treason and improper nuking from orbit is

Palin New hampshire sept. 5.jpg405×610 43.3 KB

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It sounded more like, “babies are drowning, let’s throw most of the bathwater out”, which sounds ok. Where most of the bathwater would be business method and software patents, which were the only things Ygret was advocating abolishing.

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