Everybody here knows that Irreal doesn’t hold patent trolls in high regard. That’s me showing restraint. What I actually think is that they’re parasites that should wiped off the face of the earth in service of improving the commonweal.
Still, there are edge cases. Here’s an example from 2008 that even though it’s old news now, is a great story. Monster Cable actually produces products and offers them for sale. Unfortunately, that apparently didn’t stop them from abusing the patent system by threatening their competitors with patent litigation. Irreal, of course, has no idea of the merit of those claims but one of their targets had some very strong opinions of them.
Sadly for Monster Cable, it turns out that one of their targets, Blue Jeans Cables, is headed by Kurt Denke, a former litigator, who was not at all amused. He responded to Monster Cable’s lawyer by pointing out that they, not he, were the ones making claims, and it was up to them to prove them, not up to him to disprove them. He also told them that absent their convincing him that he was, in fact, infringing one of their patents or a finding from a court of the same thing he would not under any circumstances pay them a cent. He ended by saying, “Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.”
Again, without commenting on the merits of the case, this seems to me to be the proper response to nuisance patent suits: “Prove it or go pound sand. We will not, under any circumstances, pay you to make this go away.” Most often, that’s all it takes. It’s a shame more companies don’t have the fortitude to make that stand.
After reading this story I was curious as to what happened so I did a bit of research. That turned up the full response from Denke, which is an entertaining and educational read, and a short recpap of the story from Denke that includes what happened in the end. As you might imagine, after his response to Monster’s lawyers, he never heard another word from them. I like to imagine his letter bursting into flame when Monster’s counsel opened it.