Patent Lawsuit Silly Season: TechCrunch Sued For Patent Infringement After Critical Blog Post
Date : 09 Oct 2008 Category : Business
Techdirt
There are different levels of ridiculousness when it comes to patent lawsuits, with the lowest of the low being patent lawsuits based more on spite than on any legitimate claim. For a while, it seemed like Ray Niro's use of the infamous JPG patent, to sue a bunch companies he just didn't like, was perhaps alone in that category. But, it appears that we now have a new entrant. Apparently, some company (who we won't even name, since there's a good chance it's doing this just to get press attention) sued a more well-known competitor for patent infringement, over a location-based services patent. Looking over the patent itself it's difficult to see how it was approved. People were talking about location-based profile matching a decade ago, let alone five years ago when this patent was filed.
TechCrunch wrote a post mocking the lawsuit as a weak attempt to get press coverage (it worked!), while noting that TechCrunch itself was partnered with the sued company to provide a "co-branded community." This apparently caused the patent holder to amend the lawsuit and include TechCrunch as a defendant. Apparently, there were no threats or notification (though, the guy claims he tried to call TechCrunch). This will likely get tossed out incredibly quickly, as any judge will recognize that TechCrunch is just licensing its brand, not supplying the technology (and also hopefully question the validity of the patent itself). Already, though, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is planning to countersue, so this could get fun.
The patent holder claims that adding TechCrunch to the lawsuit had nothing to do with the original post, but that's rather difficult to believe. There's also this somewhat amusing quote from the patent holder: "TechCrunch can say whatever they want, and I applaud them. But no one has the right to infringe on a patent that I worked very, very hard for many years to bring about -- not just on paper but in reality." Yes, and thanks to a broken patent system, you now get to dump a totally frivolous lawsuit on a site that clearly did not infringe on your highly questionable patent. Just like Thomas Jefferson intended.
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TechCrunch wrote a post mocking the lawsuit as a weak attempt to get press coverage (it worked!), while noting that TechCrunch itself was partnered with the sued company to provide a "co-branded community." This apparently caused the patent holder to amend the lawsuit and include TechCrunch as a defendant. Apparently, there were no threats or notification (though, the guy claims he tried to call TechCrunch). This will likely get tossed out incredibly quickly, as any judge will recognize that TechCrunch is just licensing its brand, not supplying the technology (and also hopefully question the validity of the patent itself). Already, though, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is planning to countersue, so this could get fun.
The patent holder claims that adding TechCrunch to the lawsuit had nothing to do with the original post, but that's rather difficult to believe. There's also this somewhat amusing quote from the patent holder: "TechCrunch can say whatever they want, and I applaud them. But no one has the right to infringe on a patent that I worked very, very hard for many years to bring about -- not just on paper but in reality." Yes, and thanks to a broken patent system, you now get to dump a totally frivolous lawsuit on a site that clearly did not infringe on your highly questionable patent. Just like Thomas Jefferson intended.
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