Patent Troll update: “Don’t respond to demands or threats…..”

[prwhite]

Dr. Harvey R. Levenson—Professor Emeritus and former Department Head of Graphic Communication at Cal Poly—has an update on his White Paper about the patent trolls lawsuits.

There are 2 new cases: Shipping & Transit LLC and Freeny Brothers. Dr. Levenson advises not to respond to payment demands or threats from either of these 2 patent troll cases. If you are contacted, he advises to continue doing “business as usual.” Banding together as a team could likely lead to the same Court outcome of the CTP and HQPI cases: DISMISSAL, at a great loss of time and money to the patent trolls and their legal representatives.

Although threatening letters from patent trolls are intimidating, trolls typically have nothing to do with developing technology. On the contrary, they work against our industry by extorting funds that are better used to grow companies and invest in R&D. View the entire White Paper at the link below.

 

[gordo]

I've only seen one patent troll extortion letter - the one from CTP Innovations LLC (which I've attached for reference). It would be helpful if Dr. Levenson included one in his white paper.

The key things that struck me about this letter is that it is not only intimidating e.g.e "regarding your obtaining a license and avoiding the necessity of CTP's filing a lawsuit in federal court for patent infringement" but it puts the onus on the print shop to self incriminate. I.e. they do not know if you are guilty, in their eyes, of infringement unless you provide them the details they need in order to prosecute their case.

The letter also uses what are referred to as "weasel" words - they imply but do not actually accuse the printer - as doing so would likely expose the troll to possibly being sued by the printer. Here are some of the weasel words used: "Notice of Likely Infringement" "publicly available information suggests that you are the correct person" "it is highly likely that you infringe one or both of the patents"

Here's the link to the letter: Patent troll.pdf

N.B. I am not a lawyer so take what wrote with a dose of spray powder.

 

[prwhite]

Use this link for Dr. Levinson's White Paper
http://theprintplanet.com/pdf/troll-white-paper.pdf

 

[michaelejahn]

for any of you using variable data, you would be pretty surprised as to how many patents are held related to that by one person.

http://patents.justia.com/inventor/forrest-p-gauthier

 

[gordo]

for any of you using variable data, you would be pretty surprised as to how many patents are held related to that by one person.

http://patents.justia.com/inventor/forrest-p-gauthier

I'm pretty good at predicting the past too.

 

[MailGuru]

Gordo, you beat me to the punch.

Even though he may have applied, and, been granted, the patent, it would be relatively easy to show that those methods have been in use for many years prior to his application, and, are basically part of the public domain.

I've been working on a patent for an internal combustion engine that ignites gasoline in a compressed cylinder which makes a piston move up and down and rotates a drive shaft. Mmmmmmm, I probably need to send that in soon.......... LOL

 

[prwhite]

"Even though he may have applied, and, been granted,...."

You're right MailGuru. As I recall, many of those patent applications were declared to be "prior art" and disallowed.

 

[MailGuru]

Seriously, many, many years ago (back in my Junior High School days) - and, that's waayyyyyyyback, I did a science fair project that would basically be an internal combustion engine that ran off of water. The theory was simple: I placed the positive and negative cables of a car battery on opposing ends of a small fish tank filled with water. The electrical charge of the battery in to the water was able to break apart the hydrogen and oxygen molecules of the water (H2O = 2 parts hydrogen to every 1 part oxygen). The separate hydrogen and oxygen gasses made bubbles that rose to the top of the tank where they were collected by a sort of "cone", and stored. Hydrogen and oxygen are both highly-flammable elements.

I then routed those gasses by tubing in to a single cylinder piston that would compress, and then ignite the gasses which would create a miniature explosion to blow the cylinder back to it's upper position. The beauty of it was that unlike a gasoline engine, the waste byproduct of burning hydrogen and oxygen is "steam" (not carbon monoxide).

It was a simple engine, but, the potential to create an energy source than ran off of something as plentiful as water with no harmful exhaust was pretty cool.

Unfortunately, the technology did not exist back then to be able to electrolyze water fast enough, and, in a high enough volume to make it a viable energy source. I've often wondered if the technology exists today. I mean, that was 50 years ago. It probably does. If so, I'm sure the oil companies have pigeon-holed the patents so as to protect their turf.

 

[michaelejahn]

Seriously, many, many years ago (back in my Junior High School days)

you will LOVE this then..

http://www.zajacmotors.com/