Are you kidding? IBM invented the tech patent shakedown.
As Gary Reback recounts an encounter with IBM lawyers:
Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun’s technology infringed even that one.
An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. “OK,” he said, “maybe you don’t infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?”
h/t TechDirt
I’m not sure any company that snaps up the bits of IBM could actually be a worse trol than IBM itself has been. Not that they might not try, it’s just hard to out do IBM in the field of IP troling.
(Edited to intentionally miss-spell a word that was being rewritten)
