> 'Apple "argued that VirnetX is improperly trying to secure an overly broad injunction so that it can be used to extract a massive licensing fee," Law360 reported.'
That's the usual dance. Normally, a non-practicing patent owner such as VirnetX would FAR prefer to have the infringement continue, and thus get a bigger payday, than to have the court order the defendant (Apple) to stop the infringement. So, the patent owner pushes hard for just such a shut-down order, to try to bulldoze the defendant into settling. Outside observers would be forgiven for thinking that there's a certain element of "playing chicken" involved. To a first approximation, this seems to be pretty much what happened in the NTP v. Blackberry case ten years ago. [0] [1]
And now I'm wondering what the repercussions of Apple actually shutting down FaceTime and iMessage with a notice saying "This feature is unavailable due to a lawsuit filed by VirnetX, Inc."
I don't think they'd actually do it. It would probably be kinda stupid to do. But it's fun to imagine.
I've often wondered if that would work. How big a market could that district be? If you made some documented effort not to sell your product there, would that be enough to argue that the case should be heard in a different venue?
There are 3.5M people in the Eastern District of Texas. However, the seat of the court is in Tyler, which has a metro area population of about 215K. Tyler will be where the majority of jurors come from, so that would be where the impact was felt most by jurors.
I wasn't really wondering about the jurors for this question. I was wondering if I received a lawsuit in the notoriously plaintiff friendly Eastern Texas district if having a company policy of just not dealing with any customers in those zipcodes would be enough to automatically (or at least very likely) allow my case to be heard in a different venue. It might actually be worth forgoing those 3.5M potential customers for that.
Every patent lawsuit involves lawyers whose specialty is removal. Similar to lawyers who specialize in juror selection, there is a specialty that specifically involves manipulating civil procedure rules to have cases removed to the friendliest venue. The only way to actively avoid that is to not only entirely avoid any connection to the venue you don't want (which includes things like using shipping providers that may pass through the venue and turn off iMessage for people visiting the venue, but to also only infringe on patents where the patent holder does no business in the Eastern District, which is not possible
> Could VirnetX sue for defamation if Apple specifically said that?
Probably not with any reasonable chance of success. At least in the U.S. legal system, if you can convince the jury that your allegation was in fact true, then that's an absolute defense to a defamation action. (There would also be other obstacles, which I won't address here.)
You can sue for anything, so yes, but in this thought experiment they would lose the lawsuit. In order for a defamation/libel lawsuit to be successful, the statement must be untrue.
"This feature is unavailable due to a lawsuit filed by VirnetX, Inc."
A necessary element for a defamation claim is that the statement be false. As this statement is 100% provably true, it is not defamation. They'd be thrown out in an instant.
> Do you get sent to jail because someone saw you, or because you were stealing stuff?
You're sent to jail because you were caught, tried, and convicted of stealing things. The act of stealing alone does not send you to jail. Same with patent infringement. The act of infringement alone does not force Apple to shut down iMessage. VirnetX is required to actually file the lawsuit, and then win, for Apple to be required to shut it down.
There are four responses here correctly agreeing that the lawsuit would fail, but they disagree on the reason. Do you have to prove that the statement is untrue for it to be possible libel, or do you have to prove it's true to defend yourself from the accusation? Who wins in the middle?
In the U.S. the burden is on the plaintiff (the person allegedly defamed) to prove that the defamatory statement was false IF the plaintiff is a public figure OR if the statement involved a matter of public concern; otherwise the burden is on the defendant to prove the truth of the defamatory statement. [0]
It's a balancing act between a patent that is worthwhile to own yet still novel+non-obvious. Overly broad means prior art exists that can be used to invalidate. If none could be found then it means patent is valid.
The even shadier part of this is that VirnetX comes out of SAIC - shady US govt. contractor (with a healthy private military contractor arm...). The tech was probably funded out of taxpayer dollars, that they are using to (arguably already) unethically profit off of.
Thank you for the sarcasm tag! I honestly use that on the internet lately because 63% of everything is sarcasm and then it's just a whole ridiculous mess of misunderstanding.
Honestly I do not think it is the problem with a patent holder, but rather USPTO for giving patents to whatever. Maybe the problem is (or was) that staff were not knowledgeable about the subject enough. What are you saying sounds much like "People majoring in nose picking at college of Eastern Nowhere should not be allowed to run for President", or "people who won the lottery with random numbers should not be allowed to claim full reward".
Patents are much like little pieces of law. And we can either believe in law in its entirety or ignore it whatsoever. I choose the former. If someone uses and abuses exceptions and loopholes in the law, the problem is with the law, not person using that to their advantage.
> There should be massive fines for patent trolls to deter this kind of behavior. Patenting abstract ideas with no viable product should not be allowed.
Then start with fining large corporations who each hold numerous patents that do not ship a corresponding "viable product" for.
Love that the founder believes that because technologists founded the company and a movie character used something similar, they are not a troll.
They list some companies that have licensed their software, but did they actually license software or just settle the IP claim?
>>>
VirnetX has been saying for years that it has plans to market various products, but for the time being, its income comes from licensing patents. It has about a dozen employees and leases a small office in Zephyr Cove, Nevada for roughly $5,000 a month, according to a recent yearly financial statement.
>>>
Finally, is _anyone_ using the suite they released in 2015? Also funny: their website forum is filled with employee-generated Q&A back in May 2015.
"All you have to do is look in the app store on your iPhone and you’ll find the Gabriel Collaboration Suite, a set of integrated applications that enable secure messaging, secure voice and video calling, secure mail and secure encrypted file sharing with any other device. We created and sell these products."
Sure I trust secure comms to a company with CIA involvement. I bet, those apps are closed source...
I don't see any chance at all that a company could actually get an injunction against iMessage based on a few patents like this. The judge will expect the parties to negotiate in good faith and come to a settlement. Apple will have to pay "a lot of money".
Could Apple not find prior art and invalidate the patent? Apparently not.
I assume a software patent in particular does not give VirnetX an absolute right to shut down a product for which it is just a small component.
I do think patent awards for component functionality do not get adjusted downward enough based on the relatively small weight of the subject matter on the overall product. When one piece of software can be covered by thousands of parents, violating a single parent should, most of the time, cost less than a small fraction of the overall value of the product.
IMHO The patent laws should be amended to require entities to both "articulate a solution" and "add value" to make the patent valid.
For ARM (described in other posts as a NPE) their patent licenses are bundled with a low-power processor core design that provides a solution to licensees requirements. The core design adds value to the basic technology covered by the patent.
The VirnetX patents shouldn't be valid as they merely describe an element of a design, and not a particular means of implementation. This may fall under Sec. 112(f) "Means-plus-function" [0], but getting the patents invalidated is not easy.
The EFF have tried to bust "stupid patents" [1] somewhat successfully. Please donate to support this worthy cause.
Here is how we can start killing patent trolls vernetx stock is trading at 4.89 and has a total marketcap of $252M[0]. When the list a massive portfolio (e.g. a huge weapons cache which is then publicly purchaseable) all major companies and a fund set up by the ETF or a responsible steward, buy enough to control the company. This would technically fund a patent troll, however, you could limit the attack vector to a payout less than even a single win in court would be given the apple lawsuit was >600M minus all the law fees.
There is conceiveably at least 1 other company with comprable shitty patents that is public, so a bidding war race to the bottom would incentize prices down instead of up if possible.
It could also be possible (in a much more gray possibly worse) way, actively drum up interest for a patent trolls IPO from the alliance funds, and then not invest in the fund, but release open source patents sourced from a different provier inavlidating there ability to sue in the market, with the alliance fund promising anyone using [ rediculously standard tech ] would have their full support in leveraging the open source patents and fighting legal fees associated with someone trying to invalidate the open source patents. this could disincentize bad behaviour.
It is pretty rediculous a company that is less than 2 years old can win a settlement for fucking twice it's market cap. I don';t think the market/law could limit age/market cap as startups would get killed if bigger people poach there stuff, but maybe some requirement to file suit of needing a working product or service using the technology and maybe some combo of years in the market / market cap, plus (which I think is critical) the public company must be owned by some reasonably large but not insane number. e.g. if you quietly ipo your shell and then you and your horrible 10-20 stakeholders foot the legal bill, then you shouldn't be allowed to sue, but if hundreds/thousands ++ are buying it, then it is likely actually a real or semi legit company.
It's actually a good idea if they get a foundational patent on something with no other alternative and fees higher than the troll is worth. In this case, they've... probably for buddies at DOD/NSA that fund them... created patents on encrypted messaging that they're using to sue everyone in a way that weakens security if dodged and still legal in U.S.. Plus the judgments cost a fortune.
I recommend big companies buy out the firms with foundational patents like this from back in the day. They already do in big-company acquisitions with patent portfolio being a big reason. Just an extension of that. Any other patent trolls they should squash. Plus these wherever they can. Buying is last resort.
> I recommend big companies buy out the firms with foundational patents like this from back in the day.
Would that be Nortel / Rockster Consortium approach? Sadly, big companies will be tempted to 'monetize' the patents and/or use them as a competitive advantage: and both are enforced via litigation. I supposed being sued by a big tech company rather than a patent troll is better?
The worst case is when a tech company buys patents, sells them to an NPE and then sics it on competitors, it's a good thing that'll never happen.
The ones being sued were deploying end-to-end secure messaging in widespread use. It would indeed be better if they had the patents and only sued other big players.
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the markets and would INCENTIVIZED patent trolls to become a big enough target then just sell off their shares to the "do-gooders".
If you see below, I clarified what I meant, but admittedly just a thought expiriment. However, it would certianly not be dooggooders. It would be a group of self-interested companies colluding to kill patent trolls to protect themselves from future litigation. e.g. if you can't beatem join em. Which if such a strategy were workable, i would hath ideological confliction about anyway. But I guess, I am surprised (or am missing something key) about why this has not been done as they are going against very smart and very well funded companies, it is their business model.
Apple could buy the troll suing it hundreds of times over(although assuredly it isn't for sale now) so patent trolling could be limited if they were stopped within the mareket. It is already a risky investment as they must litigate smaller companies to prove the patents as they gain the crediblity to go after larger ones.
Small companies are fighting them in court, big companies are fighting them in court, it makes sense that we take the fight to the market, and hurt them financially as well.
My point is that this would not hurt them financially.
Once the trolls got enough publicity where this anti-troll group was going to try to take over the company then the trolls just sell their stock in the company (making $$$$$) and let the anti-troll group shut it down.
I approached it like a thought experiment, and it isn't really a workable strategy, especially not something I would argue should be eployed in perpetuatiy. It is an issue that should be handled legislatively, but in this thought experiment/hypthetical consider the objective an infinite game where the objective is war vs. patent trolls:
A patent troll typical incorporates a vehicle and often they are public. This limits their risk as they are not opened to lawsuites (as many companies) but in cases of partnerships it is sometimes possible to target the partners themselves. When they take what is essentially a SPAC[1] public, it is likely only insiders invest. They must disclose their assets and thus, the "portfolio" is what is taken public. Even outside investors are likley either people contributing patents, banks/fin inst. with knowledge of space/lawyers/esecutives executing strategy. This extremely high level of consolidation would make it much easier to manipulate their share price. This is some of what I suggested above. Either during the IPO, in the media, or during trading trying to negatively impact patent trolls to disuade them from existing. What I suggested orignally may not be the correct strategy, but the thought was that it could be possible and very situationally, cooperate in a market as consolidated as this to make the cost of trolling so high that it would be unprofitable or very risky, ideally legislation/patent reform would fix these problems but this would be the patch.
This would be a combination of hostile takeovers of companies, buying and open sourcing patents, and actively trying to make the risk and cost of capital so high, or an executives failure so humiliating there would be less people trying to raise, and the difficuly would go up substantially.
Obviously, massive market coordination would be very difficult, but it is considerably easier to do this if a company is neccessarily consolidated as (I suspect) trolls might be, given they aren't real companies and are quite niche.
Another possible benefit is that if a patent troll tried to dump a portfolio into another shell after a loss, or otherwise do something negative, a minority stake could bring lawsuits against the individual person. For example, a group of 10 troll execs would not think twice about started an identical company and moving assets packages there. If you were a shareholder of a real company, you wouldn't give away a lot of "IP" for free but they can, as they pass it to themselves or partners.
A minority, but legal sharholder, could sue the individual executives for breach of fiduciary responsibiltiy and other than raising the risk financially, personal individuals could face risk if not operating 100% above board.
[1] Special Purpose Acquision Vehicle
edit; Also, being inside would allow information to be accessed about internals. Outside investors could be found and outed (if actual entities) and tried in the media. E.G. if a hedge fund or firm had money in, they would be outed and scandalized for hampering innovation and PE & VC funds would refuse(if possible) their investments in future funds if they continued to fund such poor investments. A logical argument could be made to such hedgefunds as well, that it is possible for a risky mediocre return from a patent troll, they may actually cause damage to their own portfolio if one company is in the ecosystem or directly affected by a PT>
>It is pretty rediculous a company that is less than 2 years old can win a settlement for fucking twice it's market cap
No it's not. Regardless of what you think of them if they own IP that was used by another company to sell a product that generated hundreds of billions of dollars then they should be entitled to fair compensation regardless of their market cap.
iMessage came out in 2011, and was likely in development much earlier. this company incorporated in 2015. So, I understand what you are saying and it is why I noted problems with any one factor being used, but summarizing and adding what I said above:
* company does not have a product using the technology.
* company has not existed longer than the product infringing on their technology, and is not a whollly owned (or largely owned) subsidiary of another company.
* company is suiing for a sum larger than its own market cap.
* company wants an injunction placed on the "infringing" technology & ops.
* company awarded a sum 3x its market cap and is asking for a sum close to its market cap on top of that.
So, yes, I get it and noted it in a different comment, age and marekt cap alone would be bad for startups and imperfect metrics. I believe that if you consider the above points, there is a way to create scale/filter for trolls that would allow "real" companies to actually operate.
If a company has no product, and its primary source of revenue is from direct litigation and settlements, is new/has recently restructured itself, is a public company with highly consolidated holdings, and is a patent troll, it should be considered a patent troll.
edit: I was incorrect, they IPOd in 2015. They started suing apple(or the article I read referenced the suit) as early as 2013 so they are in fact older.
Could someone who knows about network engineering give a quick summary on whether the claims make any sense? I do mostly front-end and to me they look like "that's just how the Internet works".
Good call. It's broad enough to catch DNSSEC in a suit. I double up on claim to buy this company given its patents are on Internet foundations. Too risky to leave to trolling.
The patents to me seem broad enough to cover DNSSEC, but in intent they discuss a DNS proxy that intercepts non-standard TLDs like '.scom', '.snet', etc. and routes them over a VPN. Interesting idea, but I don't see how iMessage infringes on it.
It's probably the first patent, which seems to cover... a ton of things. Seems like the first patent could potentially cover everything from MPTCP to VPNs to any P2P network to BitTorrent to certain IPv6 transition mechanisms to certain kinds of MPLS routing to...
There is almost certainly prior art, but it can be very hard to challenge a patent if the troll has already notched a few victories.
If that patent really is this broad then its very very dangerous to the Internet. It could in theory shut down dozens and dozens of things, including some very fundamental ones that are core parts of Internet infrastructure.
Maybe I'm really uninformed or haven't been paying attention, but I was really surprised to see that a patent troll is traded on the NYSE: https://www.nyse.com/quote/XASE:VHC/company
What is a patent troll really? In VirnetX's case, last time I checked most (all?) of their patents were created in house.
There are numerous publicly traded stocks of companies that are mainly patent holding entities: Acacia (ACTG), Finjan (FNJN), Inventergy (INVT), MARA, Wi-lan (WILN), Hopto (HPTO), etc...
But where does the whole troll definition end - many mid-large corporations have patents that they do not practice or not embodied in any product - so aren't they trolls too? even if they haven't explicitly threatened legal action with those patents - competitors view those patents as implicit threats. So why not label them as trolls too? At the end of the day, every patent holder can be considered a troll in some way - so the definition of a troll really comes down to: patent troll = patent holder.
There is a really simple solution to patent trolls: make every patent follow the guidelines for "Petition to Make Special". In other words: "use it or lose it". PTMS was created to expedite patents based on the assumption that it would be too costly to make an invention without patent protection.
For example is my patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5341429A/en?q=transforma...
which has about 500+ citations. After the dot bomb, the company went out of business. That patent was not picked up by a troll. Why? Not sure, but perhaps the PTMS made it less useful for litigation.
Why not just revolutionize patent laws? Make it only applicable if the patent is used for a real product available on the market. That would make patent trolling unattractive.
As many people as there are who use these services, I wonder if it would cause such a public outrage if they were turned off that congress would actually do something about the broken patent system in the U.S.
At this point the patent troll problem is so severe that I think any new law needs to not only fix the problem, but retroactively assess punitive damages to all patent troll companies. It should be relatively easy to prove which companies were created only to litigate (e.g. they have few employees and produce no products related to the patents that they own). The fines should be absolutely massive; to hell with these people.
This is unconstitutional. And not the fuzzy kind of constitutionality that pundits like to fight over. This is explicitly called out as forbidden in the U.S. constitution.
> No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Punitive damages are also not awarded as part of criminal cases. These would just be fines.
You want to be careful with the "produce no products" bit - you'd stomp on entities like ARM that don't actually fabricate chips, but create and license designs.
Problem is, coming up with a definition of "patent troll" that's 100% objective and can reliably differentiate between a benevolent NPE like ARM and a group of snakes like VirnetX is tricky. Too strict and you'll have some awful false positives. Too vague and you're reduced to arguing it in court, something prohibitively expensive.
IMHO The patent laws should be amended to require entities to both "articulate a solution" and "add value" to make the patent valid.
For ARM (as a NPE) their patent licenses are bundled with a low-power processor core design that provides a solution to licensees requirements. The core design adds value to the basic technology covered by the patent.
The VirnetX patents shouldn't be valid as they merely describe an element of a design, and not a particular means of implementation. This may fall under Sec. 112(f) "Means-plus-function" [0], but getting the patents invalidated is not easy.
The EFF have tried to bust "stupid patents" [1] somewhat successfully. Please donate to support this worthy cause.
That's already governed under trade secret and copyright law. Their design itself would be protected the second it became a published work. Anyone could clean-slate the implementation themselves doing their own work on that. So, this is where patent law protects them as it prevents others from building something they described in detail. Aka, protects monopolistic business practices in chip industry. :)
> Problem is, coming up with a definition of "patent troll" that's 100% objective and can reliably differentiate between a benevolent NPE like ARM
From what I can tell, ARM started 30+ years ago and sold physical chips. I am missing when they morphed into mainly selling chip designs - and how were they able to make such a transition without the publicity of lawsuits.
Wouldn't that be their biggest payday ever? They'd go out with a massive pile of cash ahead of real patent reform that would otherwise tank their market cap. I've got to think that that's Plan B for every patent troll, and that it wouldn't be a disappointing outcome to them.
Yeah, even assuming you bought the majority share and sued the executive team for mismanaging the company, you'd have to prove they weren't focusing on profits. Which they essentially are.
Downvotes? There have been proven incidences where Apple sued other companies (and even non-competing businesses) offensively for frivolous and ludicrous patents. Just because it's a loved company here, doesn't negate that fact (Sure, the degree of 'trolling' differs).
I would normally have sympathy for Apple due to the voracity of this patent troll, but Apple once demanded that Samsung pay them a $40+ per phone licensing fee. Karma sure is a bitch.
The term patent troll is used without regard to any facts in the media these days, and I fear that is doing harm to the patent system.
The patent system was designed to foster innovation. If you invent something, you get protection for your intellectual property. It's not a requirement that you produce a product. You could realize that you don't have the resources right out of the gate and choose to license your invention to someone that does. The days of submarine patents are over.
There are some entities that actually are patent trolls - companies that collect patents for litigation purposes - but just because a lawsuit happens doesn't mean that the plaintiff is a patent troll.
1) In what way is it "doing harm" to the patent system? Usually, when people are vague about a harm, it is either because there is none, or it is some sort of vague "causing people to not respect [thing]" or some such. I suspect you mean the latter due to complaining about "the media". I, ahem, have very little respect for that viewpoint. I do understand the arguments respect for legal institutions being necessary for them to function, but respect is two-way - act disrespectfully enough, and nothing is going to save you. Perhaps more importantly, it is the patent trolls are the ones doing the damage, not "the media".
2) This patent troll is an NPE, which is usually (along with, you know, suing) the defining trait of patent trolldom. Why are you reciting grade-school nostrums about the Noble Idea of IP protection in general when responding to news about a particular entity in a particular case, who is quite clearly a troll? If I'm missing something, do clue me in.
3) If I'm misreading you, please do clarify. Being specific about harm, to whom, exactly, you're referring when bashing "the media", and perhaps why an extremely simplistic defense of patents seemed needed here would all be edifying.
> This patent troll is an NPE, which is usually (along with, you know, suing) the defining trait of patent trolldom.
Look at Goodyear. He was an NPE. He invented vulcanized rubber. Never saw a dime. They even stole his name and built a company around it. He didn't have the resources to sue.
Look at Robert Kearns. He was an NPE. He sued. It destroyed his life.
There's no special qualification to come up with an idea. Patenting is a painful process. But it's a way to protect yourself. Just because people are involved in a lawsuit doesn't say or mean anything.
Regardless, this company is not an NPE. They have a working implementation of their secure messaging patent that is available on the app store.
> In what way is it "doing harm" to the patent system?
It's doing harm by framing inventors as villains rather than innovators. You've judged this company based on no other information than that they are referred to as patent trolls in an online article. If it's that easy for a large company to quell innovators, then the purpose of patents in the first place - to foster innovation - is gone.
---
Regardless the verbiage is frequently inappropriate and certainly in this instance.
> In what way is it "doing harm" to the patent system?
Well here's a study showing that the user of the term "troll" had become widely used by media without any evidence to support their negative views. This has led to judges forbidding the use of that term at trials as it is unfairly prejudicial.
If it is improper in the court of law, one can reasonably assume it is improper in the court of public opinion as well. The effects of this bias can be seen in the usual comments on patent-related threads here and other forums, where the USPTO is regularly derided by people who don't know the first thing about patents. These people know only what the media tells them, and as the paper shows, media is highly biased. This bias is being spread to a large audience and is also being used to push for reform that may not necessarily be balanced. I'd say, yes, such rhetoric is hurting the patent system.
If it's been copied directly, that's what copyright is for.
Would you spend millions in developing something novel just to have some random with a capriciously granted "X, but on a computer" drag you through court?
yeah, that was really close, wasn't it? just imagine we had all these mature IP protections in place two thousand years ago! so much stuff we could have had by now! imagine no one but the chinese government having access to silk production!? there'd be no nylon made without royalties!
From the Enumerated Powers (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8) of the US Constitution, granting Congress power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
"To promote progress" is the core rationale for this power; I would argue that if the current implemention no longer does that, or in fact inhibits progress, then Congress needs to redefine how this works in law.
> By the 16th century, the English Crown would habitually grant letters patent for monopolies to favoured persons (or people who were prepared to pay for them).[14] [...]
> This power was used to raise money for the Crown, and was widely abused, as the Crown granted patents in respect of all sorts of common goods (salt, for example).
The biggest problem is that the patent system is flawed currently. They accept too many things that are quite vague and general. When this is the case it is up to determination by the courts which could vary based on when and where the case is being handled. I am all for patenting ideas and fostering innovation, but I think the system needs a little fixing.
But the patent office itself will never fix its problems because its source of income is from people applying for patents. You need to have Congress fix it, but good luck with that.
There are two big problems here - as pointed out by the other commentators, this company is very much a patent troll. The label fits.
The other problem is that the protections offered by patents were designed at to give a "temporary monopoly" on the invention at hand. For software patents, though, this "temporary monopoly" ends up being (sometimes) five times the lifetime of that given technology. This is partly because the barriers for "inventing" something in the software space are minimal. Cloud hosting for services makes it possible for a small inventor to provide a large service inexpensively (or, at least without large upfront expenses). Traditional software requires only time and a place to download. What happens with software patents is the "inventor" is effectively given a monopoly over more than the effective lifetime of the product and for reasons that don't fit with the original design of the patent system.
Then there's the relative "quality" of those patents. Patents are supposed to be a way to make an invention public so that a person skilled in the field is able to reproduce the invention from the patent, alone. That's laughable if you've read any of the kinds of patents that end up in this kind of litigation. The patent is written in an artform designed to make the description of the invention as vague as possible (to cover as much infringement as possible) and is accepted by an overworked patent office that doesn't have people skilled in the field enough to actually evaluate whether a patent application should be accepted and granted this temporary-turned-lifetime monopoly protection.
These facts are what are doing harm to the patent system and it's no surprise, to me. I am not anti-patent[1]. I believe the protections as they were intended are a good idea. They're being abused, horribly, these days and the system around it needs to be brought back to its roots. Inventions with large barriers to production (drugs, where it can cost an incredible amount of money to get through regulatory approvals, for instance) should be allowed reasonable lengths of time for monopoly protections to encourage their development[2], but things that are novel, and have little-to-no barriers to production should have extremely limited or no protection from the patent system and trolling in this manner should come with penalties (plaintiff pays).
[1] OK, I'm vehemently against software patents and I have a serious problem with gene patents (I can't patent a rock, or the definition of the characteristics of a rock, I shouldn't be able to patent the characteristics of a molecule,... it's an over-simplification, but that's my opinion on the subject).
[2] There's plenty wrong here, too, but it's the best example I could come up with.
That's the usual dance. Normally, a non-practicing patent owner such as VirnetX would FAR prefer to have the infringement continue, and thus get a bigger payday, than to have the court order the defendant (Apple) to stop the infringement. So, the patent owner pushes hard for just such a shut-down order, to try to bulldoze the defendant into settling. Outside observers would be forgiven for thinking that there's a certain element of "playing chicken" involved. To a first approximation, this seems to be pretty much what happened in the NTP v. Blackberry case ten years ago. [0] [1]
[0] http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/24/technology/blackberry/
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/03/technology/rimm_ntp/