DISQUS

Technology Liberation Front: Lichtman on Patent Holdouts and Safety in Numbers

  • Luis · 3 years ago
    The contention that no judge would stop the sales of all DVD players seems overly optimistic to me, given that it was exactly the threat of an injunction to stop operation that forced Blackberry to kowtow, despite the federal government saying that a blackberry outage would threaten the ability of the government to function- something they'd never say about DVD player sales.

    Otherwise, mostly a very solid-looking analysis.
  • Tim · 3 years ago
    Ah, but the judge didn't shut down BlackBerry. And I suspect that--outrageous as the final settlement was--it would have been much higher if NTP really believed it had the capacity to do so.

    Indeed, I suspect the size of the award was based largely on the judge's perception that RIM had acted in bad faith during previous phases of litigation. I remember reading accounts of the judge being exasperated by the subbornness demonstrated by both sides. I think the ultimate constraint on these sorts of awards is the patience of the judge(s) who would be issuing the injunction.
  • Steve R. · 3 years ago
    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (May 18, 2006) had this quote from Justice Kennedy's on the Ebay lawsuit.

    "An industry has developed in which firms use patents not as a basis for producing and selling goods but, instead, primarily for obtaining licensing fees. . . . For these firms, an injunction, and the potentially serious sanctions arising from its violation, can be employed as a bargaining tool to charge exorbitant fees to companies that seek to buy licenses to practice the patent."