Forgent Patent Troll Loses Again

anagama writes "Forgent Networks, a patent troll, got the slap down by a TX jury in May when it invalidated a patent Forgent held regarding video teleconferencing over telephone lines, and today, its motion for a new trial against EchoStar was denied. In fact, the court awarded EchoStar $90k in costs. Forgent probably isn't crying that much though, it already extorted $28m from other defendants. Some of you may recall that Forgent made a business out of cheating companies for jpeg use — till their patent was largely invalidated on that front as well."

Re: Patent reform

[D4C5CE]

I don't care whether it can be logically demonstrated. It's been around for quite a while, so the question isn't "logically, should this work", but rather "has this been observed to *actually* work". And I kinda get the impression that the answer to that is "it depends" and "somewhat, but not as well as we'd think".

Links to lots of insightful analysis on this question have recently been posted here [slashdot.org].

Either you really don't understand....

[Nursie]

...or you're the troll. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now. You make the mistake of assuming that patents are filed by genuine inventors and that the patent office actually give a crap about what they pass.

The scenario you describe is NOTHING like what we see in real life. Dr. X in your situation is absolutely not a patent troll.

Now, Mr. Y on the other hand, he spends his time (with Mr Z, his IP lawyer) thinking up as many spurious and badly worded patents as possible. He tries to make them vague, but kinda new sounding. Occasionally he likes to throw in something someone else has already done.

Mr Z sends these off to the US patent office who take his money and grant his patents without researching what they mean or what they really cover.

Later, Y and Z take companies to court over products which may or may not infringe on these really badly worded patents. These companies are using things that are either standard, obvious or their own invention. A lot of them pay up to avoid court, especially given how rare it is for costs to be awarded to defendants.

This is exactly what Y and Z want, this is what makes Y and Z trolls. They haven't invented a thing, yet they try to extort money from those that do.