Submission + - Patent Reformer Becomes Troll, Sues Defunct OSS Co (arstechnica.com)
suraj.sun writes: A small Web development and open source software company called CityWare was recently named alongside Google, Yahoo, Amazon and other software giants in a patent infringement lawsuit. What makes this unusual is that CityWare has no products or customers and no longer exists. The company was formed by software developer Nate Neel in 2004, but folded soon after due to lack of customers.
The defunct company became the victim of a patent infringement lawsuit because it was operating in the Eastern District of Texas, a jurisdiction that is notoriously friendly to patent trolls. Bedrock Computer Technologies, the company that filed the patent suit, likely named CityWare in the suit solely to increase the chances of having the case heard in that region.
Bedrock Computer Technologies is owned by David Garrod, a former Goodwin Procter lawyer who is an active contributor to patent reform efforts. Garrod is leading an initiative against false patent markings in collaboration with PubPat, a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2003 to fight against abuses of the patent system.
Garrod contends that the technology companies infringe Patent 5,893,120, which describes "methods and apparatus for information storage and retrieval using a hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data." It's a textbook example of patent trolling: a lawsuit over a relatively broad and dubious patent executed by a company that makes nothing itself against a random assortment of deep-pocketed industry leaders.
ARSTechnica : http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/patent-reformer-becomes-troll-sues-defunct-oss-company.ars
The defunct company became the victim of a patent infringement lawsuit because it was operating in the Eastern District of Texas, a jurisdiction that is notoriously friendly to patent trolls. Bedrock Computer Technologies, the company that filed the patent suit, likely named CityWare in the suit solely to increase the chances of having the case heard in that region.
Bedrock Computer Technologies is owned by David Garrod, a former Goodwin Procter lawyer who is an active contributor to patent reform efforts. Garrod is leading an initiative against false patent markings in collaboration with PubPat, a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2003 to fight against abuses of the patent system.
Garrod contends that the technology companies infringe Patent 5,893,120, which describes "methods and apparatus for information storage and retrieval using a hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data." It's a textbook example of patent trolling: a lawsuit over a relatively broad and dubious patent executed by a company that makes nothing itself against a random assortment of deep-pocketed industry leaders.
ARSTechnica : http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/patent-reformer-becomes-troll-sues-defunct-oss-company.ars