Cloudflare defeats another patent troll with crowd-sourced prior-art army
- Reference: 1707770708
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/02/12/cloudflare_patent_troll/
- Source link:
Sable Networks, which owns patents originally given to defunct "flow-based router" company Caspian Networks, [1]sued Cloudflare and five other companies in 2021 [2]alleging a whole host of violations of four patents now owned by Sable.
A lot has changed since the case was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, leading to a [3]jury verdict last week that found Cloudflare not only didn't infringe on the single patent that made it to trial, but that the final patent claim at issue was invalid as well. It took the jury just two hours to return the result, Cloudflare said.
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"Since Sable first sued us, we've invalidated significant parts of three Sable patents, hamstringing their ability to bring lawsuits against other companies," Cloudflare's in-house counsel [5]boasted on Monday.
Jengo rides again
Cloudflare said that it managed to whittle the case down from four patents and "approximately 100 claims" to a single claim on one patent - number 7,012,919 - over the past three years. This is thanks in part to the assistance of outside investigators on Project Jengo, a scheme first launched in 2017 to get help digging up prior-art patents when Cloudflare sued by another patent troll, Blackbird Technologies.
"The patents relied on by Sable were filed around the turn of the century, and they addressed the hardware-based router technology of the day," Cloudflare said. "More specifically, they addressed a particular type of hardware focused on 'flows' composed of multiple linked packets.
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"This approach is not used by modern-day software-defined services delivered on the cloud, particularly not services like Cloudflare that handle traffic on a packet-by-packet basis," Cloudflare added.
To help with the Sable case Cloudflare kicked off a new round of Project Jengo, a bounty scheme first launched in 2017 that pays volunteers for digging up prior-art patents, when sued by another patent troll Blackbird Technologies.
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Blackbird [9]accused Cloudflare of infringing on a purchased patent from 2002 regarding third-party sources injecting data into connections between a client and a server. As we noted when the Blackbird case was filed, the particulars of this patent are nothing like Cloudflare's actual approach.
The [10]Blackbird case ended in Cloudflare's favor , and the content delivery network paid out [11]more than $50k to 18 individuals who submitted prior art findings through Project Jengo. Blackbird has since gone out of business.
[12]Wells Fargo patent troll case has finance world all aquiver so Barclays, TD Bank sign up to Open Invention Network
[13]Creator of Linux virtual assistant blames 'patent troll' for project's death
[14]Cloudflare sheds more light on Thanksgiving security breach in which tokens, source code accessed by suspected spies
[15]Cloudflare defends firing of staffer for reasons HR could not explain
So far $70k has been [16]awarded [17]so far in the Sable round of Project Jengo, Cloudflare said, with an additional $30k set to go out after the case is wrapped up.
"Relying on prior art, we filed petitions for inter partes review to the US Patent and Trademark Office seeking to invalidate Sable's patents," Cloudflare said. "To avoid responding to one of those petitions … Sable voluntarily canceled all of the claims asserted against Cloudflare under one of its patents. And in January 2023, we were successful in invalidating the portions of a second Sable patent that had been asserted against us."
A summary judgment invalidated the third patent, Cloudflare said, leaving just the one patent claim left. With the jury's verdict, that final patent is now invalid as well.
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"Patent trolls create what we consider to be an unfair, unjust, and inefficient system that throttles innovation and threatens emerging companies," Cloudflare told The Register . "Thursday's victory is an important validation that we can successfully fight back against the threat to innovation posed by patent trolls."
Lawyers for Sable Networks didn't respond to questions for this story. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/26/cloudflare_patent_troll/
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/02/12/sable-cloudflare-lawsuit.pdf
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/02/12/cloudflare-sable-verdict.pdf
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZcqjGLKKzWZPVXzUFf8ngwAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-defeats-patent-troll-sable-at-trial
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZcqjGLKKzWZPVXzUFf8ngwAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZcqjGLKKzWZPVXzUFf8ngwAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZcqjGLKKzWZPVXzUFf8ngwAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2017/05/11/cloudflare_patent_trolls/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2018/02/13/cloudflare_blackbird_patent_battle/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2018/02/13/cloudflare_blackbird_patent_battle/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/15/barclays_td_bank_join_oin/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/13/linux_ai_assistant_killed_off/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/02/cloudflare_okta_atlassian/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/15/cloudflare_viral_firing_video/
[16] https://blog.cloudflare.com/arkansas-engineer-wins-round-3-of-project-jengo-and-cloudflare-continues-to-win-at-the-patent-office/
[17] https://blog.cloudflare.com/three-new-winners-of-project-jengo-and-more-defeats-for-the-patent-troll
[18] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZcqjGLKKzWZPVXzUFf8ngwAAAE0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: More companies should do this
Maybe patent offices should do this instead of waving patent applications through.
Re: More companies should do this
While I agere, they don't have incentive to deny patents. In fact, some (at least in the US) have an incentive to approve them. They also aren't subject matter experts down to the level of detail decently sized bounties would get.
I could imagine when some huge company like Google or Apple is fighting some patent troll with billions on the line, offering a bounty of a million per patent or $100K per claim or whatever would attract some of the top people in the field (way better than the patent office could ever hire) to look into on their behalf.
And if they have some guys like that looking and saying "well I was able to invalidate x and y, but z seems pretty solid" then that would inform their decision about whether to settle rather than try to fight it out in court.
Re: More companies should do this
That is so unbelievably easy to fix. Just make fees higher for patents that are denied. If you’ve got a real innovation that you think you can make money on, protect it! If it’s just bullshit, pay more for wasting everyone’s time. If you then want to fight, you’ve got a gold standard patent and free reign to go make money with it, otherwise it can’t be that good and just shut up and increase your marketing spend
Re: More companies should do this
Even easier to fix. Make the patent office responsible for both party's costs if the patent is invalidated in court. At the slightest hint of a challenge they're almost certain to find a reason to invalidate it before the costs mount up.
Re: More companies should do this
They could even get together into some kind of office! This kind of work could be funded by the fees paid when new patents come in, in fact, it would be more efficient to do this at the same time and then you wouldn’t have unpredictable workload related to legal cases, and it would only be linked to when funded applications come in.
"Lawyers for Sable Networks didn't respond to questions for this story."
Too busy counting their fees. They wouldn't have lost.
More companies should do this
Maybe get together to fund a single prior art search organization, so there is always a fresh stream of patents for amateurs interested in competing for bounties can have a look at! It would probably do better if it was a bit better funded so the bounties can be a bit higher.