Scorched Earth Litigation Kills Patent Trolls
Killing a troll and throwing its corpse into lava is a good strategy because apparently the trolls die again as soon as they revive.
Legally speaking, that's what some companies are doing with patent trolls. It's the scorched-earth approach, and it seems to be working.
Rather than pay the trolls, small businesses are fighting back and taking no prisoners. It sounds like a good plan because the patent troll story is getting old.
Killing Trolls
The story started some time ago, but it has gotten out of control in recent years. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a hero in the war against patent trolls, says there has been a troubling trend of "more and more small developers and companies targeted by trolls."
A few of those companies, however, have dragged the patent trolls through the fire of litigation. Cloudflare carried the flag for small companies into an epic battle last year.
The company swore to burn Blackbird to the ground, and to take out the lawyers who ran the company. It worked and inspired other companies like Bitmovin to follow.
"We threatened to counter sue the troll, win the case on the merits, and then seek recovery of our fees and costs from the troll and its lawyers," said general counsel Ken Carter. "Without another word, the troll dismissed its lawsuit against us."
Too Hot for Hertl
Bitmovin did not name the troll, but the case was filed by Hertl Media. Above the Law said it existed only to file patent lawsuits.
Hertl also sued Amazon, Cox Communications, Netflix, Comcast and others. But Bitmovin wasn't having it.
"With minimal effort in court (just a standard request for extra time to file a response), Hertl just walked away and the case was closed," the ezine reported.
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