Cisco Lawyer Outs Self As "Patent Troll Tracker"

DustyShadow writes "Slashdot previously discussed the $10,000 bounty (since raised to $15,000) that was put on the identity of the Patent Troll Tracker author by a law firm that represents patent holding 'shell' companies. After he received a threatening email last week, the author identified himself as Richard Frenkel, a director in Cisco Systems' intellectual property group. According to law.com, many patent litigators have followed the Troll Tracker closely and are worried that it may now be discontinued. According to the lawyer who offered the bounty, it has not been claimed."

Bounty

[The Ancients]

Does he get it if he outed himself?

Re:

[The Mighty Buzzard]

He'd better, it's usually a bad idea to stiff a lawyer.

Re:

[sm62704]

is there a patent on this troll? [timewarp-toys.com] It must certainly have a copyright. Maybe Tami [slashdot.org] should sue; it bears an uncanny resemblance to her. Except she's usually not smiling and she has more hair.

Re:Bounty

[yog]

Shame, it sounds like he was making a valuable contribution to the discussion on patent reform. I read his blog but I still don't understand why he outed himself. What could this anonymous person have done to him that could possibly be "unpleasant"?

Someone please explain :(

I hope we can get rid of patent trolls soon, they really annoy me!

Re:Bounty

[provigilman]

What could this anonymous person have done to him that could possibly be "unpleasant"?

RTFA dude...

From the Article:

Facing an e-mailed threat of being named, Richard Frenkel, a director in Cisco Systems' intellectual property group, identified himself on Saturday as the author of Patent Troll Tracker

Someone probably found out who he was, and may have even been trying to extort money...something like "I'll get 15K for saying who you are, you pay me 5K and I'll keep quiet."

At the very least though, he basically got an e-mail saying "Richard, I know who you are...come clean, or I WILL".

Re:Bounty

[Anonymous Coward]

"The clear threat in the email is that he would do it in a way I wouldn't be happy about. I don't know what that means, but as I have been growing weary of anonymity anyway, here I am" ... RTFB

Re:

[Oktober Sunset]

A flash anim where he floats out of Goatse guys buthole I assume.

Re:Bounty

[Minwee]

"I'll get 15K for saying who you are, you pay me 5K and I'll keep quiet."

Of course what he really meant was "I'll get $15K for saying who you are. You pay me $5K and then I'll have $20K in total."

Re:

[Citizen of Earth]

"I'll get $15K for saying who you are. You pay me $5K and then I'll have $20K in total."

And now, by going for the $20K, he gets nothing.

Re:

[trolltalk.com]

1. Forward the link
2. PROFIT!!!
3. there is no step 3.

Re:Bounty

[orclevegam]

Actually he had been told that if he revealed himself and did a public debate with the guy offering the bounty that the money would be donated to a charity (I believe of his choice, but not sure). According to TFA he hasn't responded to that offer either before or after he outed himself.

Re:Bounty

[baboo_jackal]

I wonder what Ray Niro (the Patent Troll) could possibly expect the outcome of that debate to be...

"Let me explain to you how abusing the patent system is a 'Good Thing,' because it prevents me from being poor... And you won't like me when I'm poor... *starts turning green and growing*"

I dunno. That's all I could come up with.

Depends.

[jd]

If the patent trolls thought they could get away with dipping the dollar notes in poison (similar to what was done to Donald Woods' children) [nytimes.com], I'm sure they'd have no problem with paying him. Although they're stupid enough to destroy the patent system, I doubt they're that stupid. On the other hand, I could see them paying the reward to Cisco to dump the guy. Employment in the US is "by will" and there are no IT unions, so the employee has no protection against malicious termination of employment. (The patent trolls could, quite legally, make it extremely difficult for him to ever be hired again.)

Re:Depends.

[MasterC]

Employment in the US is "by will"...

Unless, of course, the guy has an employment contract.

Re:Depends.

[TooMuchToDo]

Which, from a quick Google search of him and reading his blog and the comments of others in the patent litigation field, is quite likely. I doubt Cisco is going to dump their top IP lawyer because of some tool in Chicago wanting to out him.

Cisco's interests

[xant]

Moreover, his actions were very likely in Cisco's interests, and directly related to his job duties at Cisco. Cisco is not a patent troll afaik, they are more likely to be the victim of frequent patent trolling by companies wanting to profit from their products.

Cisco probably patents a lot of stuff, but like most big patent holders, they presumably use them defensively.

Feel free to do my research for me, but I say the above with a fair amount of confidence. :-)

Re:

[evanspw]

Well, Cisco did once patent the base2 logarithm.

Re:Depends.

[kharchenko]

Can you please explain why running an informative blog on patent reform suddenly renders him unfit for employment. Did he disclose some private information that was trusted to him? Did he undermine the interests of his employer? How come noone would look at this and see a talented layer with a knack for identifying abusive patents?

Re:

[Eskarel]

He didn't do anything that renders him unfit for employment. However this is the united states we're talking about and while you might have to pay out a severence package if you do there's nothing legally to stop you from firing someone for pretty much any reason that doesn't violate affirmative action. Which is a bit odd I always thought. It's not ok to fire someone because they're a woman, but it's perfectly ok to fire a woman because you don't like the way she cuts her hair.

Re:

[jd]

In the eyes of super-rich patent trolls, informative blogs are an extremely good reason to eliminate employment (and possibly the individual). There doesn't need to be a legitimate reason to sack someone - most employees sign papers stating that terminating employment needs no reason at all - and it doesn't take much for an organization to inject added commentary to background checks. Some "discrete" disqualifying comments (it's not as if individuals can get hold of those background check reports - or chall

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Yes, they are going to pay Cisco 15K to dump an employee. Cisco isn't a corner grocery. They're a BILLION dollar company....Hell, my company wouldn't fire an employee for that cash...because we are ethical. It' not even worth 15K of his bosses time to consider the question....What are you thinking?

Bonus question: Explain how exactly patent trolls could make it hard for him to be hired again...What are they going to do, expose him as an IP lawyer who has some ethics?

Your BS also ignores the fact tha

Re:

[bluefoxlucid]

Your BS also ignores the fact that his boss knows about his blog! Don't just RTFA, actually think for 2 seconds before posting.

K, fine. You're a bunch of cock suckers, and my boss does not care that I'm letting everyone know. Was there a point to asking my name?

Re:

[libkarl2]

I don't think anyone is going to collect on the bounty, even if they do come forward. or... Niro secretly paid the informant, and simply claimed that nobody came forward to collect (as part of a possible precondition). Heck, the "threatening email" could have been a simple social engineering trick by someone who suspected Frenkel but wasn't 100% sure. Actually, Godzilla wanted Frenkel out of the way so he could go ahead with an infringement suit against the Cloverfield Monster. "Use of Deep Ocean Origina

Sad

[Steeltalon]

I can only hope that this doesn't ruin the guy's career at Cisco. His actions have probably helped many businesses and products but I have to wonder if he may have violated the terms of his employment. I hope not, at any rate.

Re:

[Nefarious Wheel]

I'd say he added valuable input to the community in the profession he followed. If I were a Cisco exec, I'd be pleased to take credit for it and honour his disclaimer. IANAL but sometimes I try to think like one.

Re:

[bluefoxlucid]

Lawyers are not logicians, they're law students.

Re:Sad

[sjames]

He is an experianced lawyer, I'm sure he considered that very carefully before even starting his blog.

Re:Sad

[microbee]

Well, his direct manager knew about this, so he cannot be in violation of his terms of employment. I mean, if he did, and his manager was still OK, it's his manager's fault more than his own, and if Cisco fires him, he could sue the heck out of this, couldn't he?

Now, I said the above purely from a logistical point. Having worked at Cisco before (as an engineer), I feel Cisco is a pretty open-cultured company, and given the positive publicity of this blog, I'm pretty sure Cisco wouldn't mind it.
 

Re:Sad

[orclevegam]

TFA says Cisco has gone on record as saying that employees are allowed to have private blogs so long as they follow the business code of conduct. So, short of violating some law, or trying to claim Cisco is somehow involved they'll leave him alone to do his thing.

Re:

[networkBoy]

Which is good.
I try to be careful and simply don't blog about charged subjects related to my industry.
GP noted that his manager knew and did not stop him, in CA that is grounds for telling the employee to stop and firing the manager (if they want to go that far), but since the manager tacitly OK'd it, then they can not fire the employee, else the employee will be very wealthy via the court system.
-nB

Re:

[Ziest]

I second that. I have also worked at Cisco as an engineer. Cisco is a very big fan of Linux and FreeBSD. You can count Cisco as among the white hats. You can also be sure that Rick Frenkel cleared this with his management and they support him.

No bounty on the offerer of the first bounty?

[Egdiroh]

Gee, to me the obvious way to fight the sort of bullying that the offerer of the first bounty is to counter bully by offering a bounty on evidence of unethical activities by the guy that would get him disbarred or a bounty on prior art for patents specifically held by his company, and make the bounty good only as long as the first bounty is valid.

Re:No bounty on the offerer of the first bounty?

[somersault]

I agree! It's always best to blow everything out of all proportion and start an arms race!

Re:

[somersault]

It's Captain Antartica!

Re:

[Ogive17]

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Seems somewhat fitting...

Re:

[Trogre]

Bah, I knew the patent scene wasn't really a scene.

Patent system is too expensive for taxpayers

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent Troll Tracker said: ...the number of claims being examined has quintupled in recent years, while the average years of service of the examiner core has been decreasing.

Clearly the US government and US taxpayers can no longer afford the patent system as it stands today. It must be changed, simplified, and streamlined to a level of activity that the taxpayer can afford, and is willing to pay for.

Re:Patent system is too expensive for taxpayers

[Corpuscavernosa]

Correction. The patent system is self funded through filing fees. The real problem is that Congress is actually the taking of PTO funds to support other non-patent endeavors.

As a consequence, examiners get burned out because of increased workload and the inability to become real subject-matter experts, and there's your lack of experience in examiners.

I have three friends with scientific backgrounds who graduated law school in 2006-5 who immediately took jobs at the PTO. As of now, none are still working there, citing the above reasons.

Re:

[zippthorne]

Wouldn't the "average years of service" also drop if the USPTO was increasing the size of the "examiner core" to match the increase in claims since the newbies, by definition, have zero years of service when they join?

Re:

[Retric]

That depends on the rate of increase and the rate of turn over.

Start with 100 people av. 10 years exp.

Over 1 year 4 people that average 10 years exp leave and 10 people with 0exp join. And the 96 people that stayed gained one year of experience.

New average is (96 * 11)/105 = 10.06 years exp which is slight increase with a 5% annual growth rate.

To cduffy

[kanweg]

From the previous discussion on this subject on Slashdot:

"Hmm -- that's a somewhat different scenario. See, I've spent the last five years at a startup (also in Austin) making highly specialized software that does some really darned nifty things within our vertical -- and among our company's assets are some patents. They certainly make it easier for us to get investment money -- so why do I think they're a bad idea?"

I think it would also have been easier for you to get investment money if there were no soft

No good deed

[TheDrewbert]

goes unpunished...

Destroying the patent system from the inside.

[miffo.swe]

I think theese patent trolls are doing us a great service. Its just a matter of time before one of them get greedy and steps in the wrong wasps nest. If anything it shows with utter clarity that the EU should in no way allow software patents. The problems by far outweights the benefits since the patents are seldom used to produce something, they are just ownership of pretty obvious ideas. Most patents for software is just about doing something really old, but on a computer.

I say the more patent trolls the better, let them ruin a broken system. The more companies that get burnt the more they will lobby for reform. Since the US is pretty much run by big companies thats the only way the politicians will do something.

Re:

[jmv]

I agree. [slashdot.org]

I am Spartacus

[punterjoe]

Now if only a few hundred more people would "confess" to being the Tracker, we could be back where we started. :)

Wrong guy

[Trogre]

No I'm the Troll Tracker and so is my wife.

Re:

[mengel]

No, I'm Spartacus -- er -- Troll Tracker!

Sign me up

[Travoltus]

Make me the Patent Troll Tracker next week.

There won't be a need for a third tracker.

Idiot

[adamkennedy]

As an good EVE Online player knows, the optimal strategy when faced with a sizable bounty on your head is simply to create a new alt character on a trial account (if you aren't one of those crazy people with multiple accounts already), then log in both, fly the bounty out into space and then kill yourself with the alt to collect it.

In real life, I guess the equivalent would be to find another instance of your DNA (family) or someone you trust otherwise (friends) and have them drop a "drama bomb" and out you.

Once it's over, at least take their money!

You are ALL wrong

[unity100]

I am the troll tracker. Cisco lawyer is a friend of mine who agreed to take all the bullets for me for a while.