Patent Trolls
This article was taken from the Venner Shipley Newsletter edition 21
Definition: companies or individuals that buy patents with the sole purpose of enforcing them against big companies to get royalty income or other financial awards. Examples are NTP and Intellectual Ventures in the US and also Inpro in Europe.
Research in Motion (RIM), the manufacturer of the Blackberry hand held device, has had real problems in the USA with litigation bought by NTP, a patent troll run by Don Stout, a US patent attorney. The case has now been settled, with RIM paying a large sum to NTP. The validity of the patents concerned however, is still in dispute at the US Patent Office.
Another troll - Inpro, has recently lost a patent action against RIM in the UK Courts. Inpro is a company set up purely to make money out of patents they have bought in for this purpose.
Research in Motion UK Limited (RIM), the UK subsidiary of the provider of the BlackBerry, sought revocation of Inpro Licensing Sarl's (Inpro) patent for a computing system that enables small computer devices to use the Internet. Essentially, the system used a proxy server to carry out much of the ‘heavy’ computing providing the portable computer with manageable content. Inpro counterclaimed against RIM and its licensee T-Mobile (UK) Limited for patent infringement. The judge held the patent invalid for obviousness.