Patent Troll Targeting Users of Scanners; Wants $1000/Employee 227
New submitter earlzdotnet writes "A new patent troll is in town, this time targeting the users of technology, rather than the creators. They appear to hold a process patent for 'scanning a document and then emailing it.' They are targeting small businesses in a variety of locations and usually want somewhere between $900 to $1200 per employee for 'infringement' of their patent. As with most patent trolls, they go by a number of shell companies, but the original company name appears to be Project Paperless LLC. Joel Spolsky said in a tweet that 'This is organized crime, plain and simple...' I tend to agree with him. When will something be done about this legal mafia?"
Huh?? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does this hold any legal water at all? Isn't the manufacturer of a product liable for patent infringements, not the end user?
Re:Organized crime (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I RTFA (bad form) and I missed the part where the government is extorting money from people for scanning and emailing documents. But thanks for your "F the gubberment!!!"" post which is always good for some cheap mod points. If that's what you're into.
Question 1: Who develops and maintains the patent system that not only allows, but seemingly encourages this sort of trolling behavior?
Question 2: Assuming a correct answer for question one, do they who maintain the patent system profit from this sort of trolling behavior?
I fail to see how anyone who answers those questions honestly can absolve the government of blame.
When will something be done about this legal mafia (Score:5, Insightful)
When will something be done about this legal mafia?
Nothing will ever be done because every major company is playing the game.
Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM . . . . . every big company with deep pockets has been hit by patent trolls. So why don't they all get together and use their considerable lobbying power to demand that congress change the law? Why? Because they don't really want the law changed. They want to be able to whack somebody with a patent lawsuit when it suits them.
Bogus patents are the new nuclear weapons. Everyone knows they are bad and destructive, they serve no useful purpose and should be eliminated. But nobody is willing to actually do that because some day they might need a weapon to use against a competitor. That's the new business model. Litigation instead of competition.
Re:first post! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just 100 dollars? :D
He's European. They use the '.' where we Americans would use a ','.
Re:35 USC section 271 - Infringement (Score:4, Insightful)
Just as I thought. It's not the legal mafia that is at fault here. It's the intellectual property system that is the law of the land.
The fault is shared equally with both our imaginary property system AND the sociopathic assholes who choose to abuse it like this.