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A Patent Troll Backs Off
From SparkFun [sparkfun.com]
A Patent Troll Backs Off [sparkfun.com]
We scared them off... this time.
You can read our first post about this troll and other forms of extortion here. [sparkfun.com]
Lesson #1) Find an attorney that’s as pissed about this as you are. [...] I had emailed the EFF on a Hail Mary and to my surprise, got a response! EFF [eff.org]
Lesson #2) Fight like hell. Every time a company settles it just funds the trolls to wreak more havoc.
[....] A good attorney will be able to dig up all sorts of patents that pre-date the troll’s patent. Here is our counterclaim response and affirmative defense to the original lawsuit. Things of note in the affirmative defense is the provenance of the patent ownership in Counterclaim 3: Failure to Mark.
[....] Things of note: Altair Logix was formed June 12, 2018, or three months after the patent expired on February 27th, 2018. Patents are really screwed up investment vehicles that change value over time. In this case, Jason, smelling potential money, purchased an expired patent ‘434 from Huawei and then formed a shell company to start suing people.
From the link [sparkfun.com] in the article text above, here is a bit more about what it is about:
Sal is basically saying, "Hey there. We noticed you have a website. We have patents that deal with websites. We’ve managed to (supposedly) shake-down Foot Locker and Northern Tool. You should probably call us to discuss this.”
