Submission + - Small East Texas Companies Targeted by Patentees
An anonymous reader writes: In a sign that patent trolls are getting desperate to keep their cases in East Texas, some have taken to suing tiny, no-name companies that are run by East Texas residents. The hope is that the judge will keep the entire case in East Texas if at least one defendant is located there. Nate Neel, a Longview, Texas resident with a small open source software company called CitiWare, was sued by Bedrock Computer Technologies in June despite (he claims) having no customers or other meaningful operations of any kind. In response, Mr. Neel has posted a strongly worded letter to Bedrock's attorneys on his website. It will be interesting to see how East Texas judges respond to this abuse of process perpetrated against their own residents.