Ask Slashdot: What To Do About Patent Trolls Seeking Wi-fi License Fees?

An anonymous reader writes "My company has been contacted by certified letter by Delaware law firm. They are seeking license fees for a Wi-fi patent. I believe this is a patent troll (not that this matters in relation to dealing with this issue). This is a newly formed law firm less than 4 months old. This patent is U.S. Patent No. 5,506,866. This patent covers equipment and method related to the transmission of information involving the multiplexing information into a stream of signal points (and demultiplexing the same), and related technology. They have 'offered' to license this patent with no amounts specified. Unfortunately we are a small free software company. The company is setup as a sole proprietorship. I'm not asking for legal advise from the Slashdot community. The question is where might one look for 'legal counsel' with the expertise to answer these types of legal questions as it relates to this inquiry. I would prefer to avoid legal fees, court cases, or license fees running the company into the ground. The company is registered in New Jersey."

Offer them a percentage of profit?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a free software company yes? If so then you can offer to give them a percentage of profit from each software sale you make (being zero). You'll probably have to swing that idea by a lawyer, but I say screw them.

Re:Links?

[foobsr]

U.S. Patent No. 5,506,866

I doubt that you are competent enough to evaluate the patent givien that you are not able/willing to shoulder the burdon of three/four extra clicks to arrive at the relevant documentation.

CC.

Re:Links?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone please make this a hyperlink. I'm too lazy to copy and paste it into my url.

Nuke Them from Orbit

[Rob Riggs]

It's the only way to be sure.

Tell them you're not based in the US...

[Gordonjcp]

... and accordingly, under $other_country law, you plan to enact a plea of Incenderunt Ad Officium. Then ask them exactly *when* they'd like the five gallons of petrol delivered to their letterbox.

Re:Links?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone please phone me and read this to me, I am too lazy to read.
I'm sorry i can't be bothered providing my phone number.

Re:Links?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would someone please write this reply for me?

Re:See an IP laywer.

[citizenr]

If the OP truly believes that this is a patent troll attacking them, the best thing may be to just ignore them. It's like spam: They are seeing who bites, and then they can reel you in for a settlement. If they send a couple of letters and don't get any response (especially from a small company that may have gone out of business without notifying anyone), they'll just move on to their next possible target.

This, or hire a hitman to kill their Lawyer, and couple of lawyers that will be replacing the first one. Eventually they will stop replacing them. This will still be cheaper than litigation.

Find out where they live and kill them all

[multiplexo]

Seriously, as a Gedankenexperiment imagine what might happen if the next time one of these patent trolls set up shop every single one of them was gunned down within a week of them mailing their first extortion letter. I'd be willing to bet that you'd have a lot of people who were considering this line of business suddenly decide that getting a real job looked pretty good.