{"id":2569,"date":"2014-02-18T22:24:06","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T22:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=2569"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:56","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:56","slug":"from-fruit-to-tiny-hamburgers-patent-trolls-target-apple-and-white-castle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/from-fruit-to-tiny-hamburgers-patent-trolls-target-apple-and-white-castle\/","title":{"rendered":"From Fruit to Tiny Hamburgers: Patent Trolls Target Apple and White Castle"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the 2014 State of the Union<\/a> address delivered on January 28, President Obama expressed support for anti-patent assertion entity (PAEs), or patent troll, legislation, \u201cLet\u2019s pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly, needless litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Companies such as Apple and White Castle have come out to plead for legislative help against the patent trolls, exposing numbers and facts that would normally not be shared.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This recent, national, exposure has brought patent trolls to a larger audience.\u00a0 Patent trolls<\/a> legally collect unused patents and file suits infringement suits against companies, simply for the purposes of gaining fees and settlements.\u00a0 The patent litigation\u2014and the recovery that results\u2014is escalating: litigation costs<\/a> came to almost $30 billion in 2011, which is more than quadruple the total of costs in 2005.\u00a0 In addition<\/a>, patent trolls filed 18% more lawsuits in 2013 than 2012, and there were 3.134 patent troll suits in 2013, which comprised more than half of all patent suits.\u00a0 Alan Schoenbaum<\/a>, the general counsel of a web-hosting company in San Antonio, Rackspace, says that patent litigation is \u201ca shakedown\u2026extortive behavior.\u201d
\nRecently, patent trolls have entered the conversation in several ways, such as their effect<\/a> on the existing patent system and possible state law remedies<\/a>.\u00a0 However, though state and federal legislatures, and now the President<\/a>, have begun to take action on behalf of companies that have been targeted by patent trolls, now the companies themselves have been using the media to fight back themselves.\u00a0 Companies such as Apple and White Castle have come out to plead for legislative help against the patent trolls, exposing numbers and facts that would normally not be shared.
\nInterestingly, patent trolls have targeted many different companies.\u00a0 The expected, usual companies have been sued, such as Google and Samsung.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 However, the trolls have also pursued other, less obvious companies, such as White Castle<\/a>, a company with 406 locations, but only two lawyers comprising their in-house legal counsel.\u00a0 This patent troll attack, which began last year, was surprising to White Castle\u2019s VP of corporate relations, Jamie Richardson<\/a>.\u00a0 Some<\/a> predict that patent trolls not only will restrict technological discoveries, but may also \u201cgobble up restaurant innovation.\u201d \u00a0White Castle has already started to change the nature of its relationships with third-party technology providers \u201cin a way that is not beneficial to innovation and the economy,\u201d according to Lisa Ingram<\/a>, the president of White Castle System, Inc.
\nThough it is not surprising that Apple has been on the receiving end of several patent suits, Apple did surprise the worlds of business and technology with recent revelations. Apple has state<\/a>d that it considers itself the patent trolls\u2019 top target in its December 16 letter<\/a> to the Federal Trade Commission.\u00a0 In Apple\u2019s amicus brief<\/a> for Highmark v. Allcare Management Systems<\/i><\/a>, Apple reported numbers that of the most recent 92 cases over the past three years, 51, or over half of them resulted in payment to the troll.\u00a0 In addition, Apple presently has 228 patent assertion cases against it that are unresolved<\/a>, according to Apple itself.\u00a0 These settlement figures were publically released on a weekend, front-page story in The Chicago Tribune<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0 Obviously, it is against general good form for businesses to release their settlement numbers, but it is a defense tactic.\u00a0 However, in neither its letter nor its various amicus briefs does Apple number the patent lawsuits<\/a> it has filed itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the 2014 State of the Union address delivered on January 28, President Obama expressed support for anti-patent assertion entity (PAEs), or patent troll, legislation, \u201cLet\u2019s pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly, needless litigation.\u201d Companies such as Apple and White Castle have come out to …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7501,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569\/revisions\/7501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}