Patent Trolling Incidents in Recent History

‘Patent troll’ is a negative term that is used to describe an entity, which can be a company or an individual, who challenges the scope of patent rights against suspected infringers beyond the real worth of the patent.

As this practice became widely known among attorneys and lawyers, cases involving patent trolling or abuse started to make headlines in web based news stories. This resulted in increased awareness among the masses, but as too many stories appeared in such a short span of time, it became hard for the public to remain interested for long.

Listed below are two high profile patent abuse incidents. You can learn a lot about this practice by understanding how these cases played out.

Apple vs Google

These two Silicon Valley giants signed a landmark agreement in 2014 that settled all outstanding patent litigations among them. According to their joint statement to TIME, the companies were said to ‘dismiss all the current lawsuits that exist directly between the two companies’. Moreover, they also agreed to work together in some areas of patent reform, however, this didn’t include licensing their technology to each other.

Oracle vs Google

Originally, Java was developed by Sun Microsystems in 1991, and Sun was sold to Oracle in 2010. Android Inc. was founded in 2003 and was sold to Google in 2005. In 2007, Google released the beta of the Android system, indicating that it would use some of the Java technologies, and was congratulated by then Sun CEO the very same day. Google released the android SDK in November 2007, and negotiated with Sun over possible licensing deals for Java, but no agreement was reached. After Oracle purchased Sun, licensing deals were still under discussion, without any final agreement. Oracle went ahead and sued Google for copyright and patent infringement in 2010.

In May 2012, the jury found that Google did not infringe Oracle’s patents, and the trial judge ruled that Java APIs used by Google were not copyrightable. The agreement was reached on zero dollars in damages. But in 2014, the case was reopened and the Federal Circuit partially reversed the court ruling in Oracle’s favor. This case is still in court and the final verdict has not been reached yet.

While these famous patent trolling incidents may be an interesting read, you need to make sure your intellectual and innovative ideas stay protected against infringement.

Patentec is an Australia based patenting firm with top notch lawyers and attorneys operating under a strict moral and ethical code. At Patentec, we offer individualized, sensibly capped-fees, and expert experience in patenting in Australia. We extensively guide our clients in legal matters so that they do not become a victim of patent trolling. For more information, visit our website or contact us