SoylentNews

Clicker Heroes Maker Compares New Lawsuit From “Patent Troll” To Extortion

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 04 2018, @11:36AM   
from the trolls-я-us dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In a Thursday blog post, the CEO of Playsaurus wrote that the company that sent him the letter, GTX Corporation, is a “patent troll.” CEO Thomas Wolfley called GTX’s demands to avoid “costly litigation” over Playsaurus’ use of electronic “Rubies” in its games “meritless.”

In a brief phone interview with Ars on Friday, Wolfley told Ars that receiving the demand letter was disconcerting.

“I kind of feel like it’s as if someone walked into my home with a knife and asked me for $35,000, except it’s legal,” he said. “I’ve been stressed out this whole week.”

[...] In the blog post, Wolfley continued that GTX’s legal efforts were “abusive and unethical,” noting that $35,000 was half the annual salary of an employee. He also wrote:

As I am a major owner of Playsaurus, I see this as a personal attack, and the cost in my own time and well-being has already been significant and draining. It is a shame that the United States legal system can’t provide a quick and easy way for us to punish them for these actions.

---

Original Submission

• Someone's done some digging... Someone's done some digging... (Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday March 04 2018, @12:06PM (1 child)

  by c0lo (156) on Sunday March 04 2018, @12:06PM (#647591) Journal

  On hacker news

  If you google "US patent 7,177,838", you see that it's somewhat of a holy grail for the patent trolls. It was used to sue Amazon, Apple, Visa, News Corp, Starbucks, and the whole alphabet of multinationals.
  ...
  The patent was filed by Marvin Ling on Jan 26, 2000. Already in May it was reassigned to GTX. A family or an acquaintance? Let's see: the current CEO is Andrew Ling. From the foundation until 2008, however, the president was Marvin Ling, including the year 2000 when the patent was filed and reassigned. Andrew Ling appears to be a lawyer in Arizona; his LinkedIn profile confirms that he is the right person: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlingattorney. [linkedin.com] And the website actually exists where it's supposed to be, just not liked by Google: http://www.gtx.com/about/press/aml_president_pr.asp. [gtx.com]

  The patent itself was reassigned to Pay By Click (sounds like an entity materially interested in the patent) in 2002, after which the annual report filing became irregular. In 2005, GTX received a notice with a threat of the license revocation; same happened in 2013 and 2014. It became better after that which coincided with the reassignment of the patent.

  Summary. It looks like it's not a proxy set up by lawyers to sue. It appears to be an old family business which was dormant for a while and now wants to capitalise on an old patent that either someone else or a different structure used to shake down a few giants.

  --
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+3
  Interesting=1, Informative=2, Total=3
  Extra 'Informative' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		5

• Re:Someone's done some digging... (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 04 2018, @12:16PM

  by c0lo (156) on Sunday March 04 2018, @12:16PM (#647594) Journal

  Shit, the linky didn't make it the first time. Here's in its naked splendour:
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16508145 [ycombinator.com]

  --
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  Parent