Appeals Court Takes No Time At All In Rejecting Patent Troll's Ridiculous Lawsuit Against Cloudflare
from the buh-bye-now dept
You may recall that back in May of 2017, a patent trolling operation called Blackbird Technologies picked on the wrong internet company to troll. Having built up some success blasting frivolous lawsuits at other internet companies, it chose to go after Cloudflare. That was a mistake. Cloudflare didn’t just hit back, it promised to destroy the patent trolling firm, Blackbird Technologies. It opened up a campaign to crowdsource prior art not just on the patent at issue in its lawsuit but on every patent that Blackbird Technology claimed to hold.
Almost exactly a year ago, Cloudflare won its case with the court invalidating the patent. It was such an easy decision that it took US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria barely over a page explaining why the patent was so clearly invalid and the case was dismissed.
Blackbird, for reasons that escape me, decided to appeal to the Federal Circuit. Now, we’ve spent the better part of two decades mocking the Federal Circuit and its history of nutty decisions, but there are some cases so obviously bad that even the CAFC can’t fuck them up. This is one. A CAFC panel heard the case last week and found the situation so utterly stupid that it only took a few days for it to affirm the lower court ruling. Indeed, its ruling is even shorter than the district court’s ruling. The CAFC opinion doesn’t even say anything other than: “Affirmed.”
Ouch.
According to Cloudflare’s General Counsel, Doug Kramer, in a blog post on Cloudflare’s site, the CAFC panel didn’t have a single question for the company’s lawyers (which is nearly unheard of), leaving him with tons of extra time:
A panel of three judges from that court heard arguments on the appeal last Friday, but didn?t ask our attorney a single question about the substance of our argument on the abstractness of the patent. He sat down with almost half of his 15 minutes of argument time left because there was nothing more to say. Yesterday, just three business days after that hearing, the court affirmed the lower court?s decision in summary fashion, which means they didn?t even write about the claims or arguments, they just said ?Affirmed? (see below).
Of course, as Kramer further notes in the post, even “easy victories” take a ton of time and resources, not to mention other kinds of costs that can impact a business in lots of ways:
Blackbird filed this case in March 16, 2017. For nearly two years, anyone doing due diligence on Cloudflare might have had questions about whether there was a cloud over our rights to our technology. And we had to go through a lot of briefing, and the related legal expenses, to get to this point. Blackbird?s combined legal filings at the district court and appellate court amounted to more than 650 pages, our responsive briefs were more than 900 pages.
The two courts spent less than two pages describing a result that was obvious to them, but it took us two years of uncertainty and cost to get there. Federal court litigation doesn?t make anything easy. Even if Blackbird had won the case, it is not clear they would have been able to collect significant damages. Our allegedly infringing use was not a product or feature that we charged for or made money from ? it was essentially posting interstitial messages for various errors. Even though we were able to win this case early in the legal process and keep our costs as low as possible, it?s possible we spent more money resolving this matter than Blackbird would have been able to collect from us after trial.
This is why trolling works. This is why so many plaintiffs use the judicial system as a weapon, even when their lawsuits clearly have no merit. Even to get an “easy win” you can lose, big time.
Filed Under: cafc, patent trolling, patents
Companies: blackbird technologies, cloudflare
Comments on “Appeals Court Takes No Time At All In Rejecting Patent Troll's Ridiculous Lawsuit Against Cloudflare”
It seems to me that the CAFC should be able to give trolls the smackdown in cases like this. The judgement should say "Affirmed. Pay defendants lawyer fees."
Re: Re:
This is what Anti-SLAPP laws are for, and yes, we need them.
Do more, don't do good
Past administrations have taken the attitude that more patents approved meant that the economic machine worked harder and faster and better. This led to an increase in the quantity of patents approved regardless of quality. Now we get to feast upon the economic burdens imposed on companies that have done no wrong by this attitude. Costs to these companies that wind up needing to defend themselves when they shouldn’t need to. The money they spend on these defenses might actually have helped the economy (other than the lawyers) but is now wasted upon…well lawyers (not that lawyers are always a waste, but they should not have even been needed).
I don’t see this position changing with the current administration. I wonder if the misunderstanding of the economic engine known as patent filing will get any better in the future, especially given the number of bad patents approved recently.
Drag on Innovation
Patents are nothing but a tool of corporations to inhibit innovation.
Re: Drag on Innovation
Wow, oversimplify much?
Patents are needed to reward innovation. That didn’t magically go away because we’ve allowed the system to be abused.
Re: Re: Drag on Innovation
"Patents are needed to reward innovation"
That is also a huge over-simplification.
There were lots of inventions and innovation before patents. They were designed to be incentive for inventors by helping to make sure good inventions could not be simply copied and taking the monetary incentive to invent away.
While it is laudable, it misses two important points:
1) Most inventions need no monetary incentive. The majority of real invention and innovation is about solving a problem that the inventor had. The incentive was actually the invention solving a problem they had, not the monetary value of selling the invention afterwards.
2) Most inventions and innovations are much more difficult to copy than they appear. Take, for example, the iPhone. If it were easy to copy, there would be a Chinese copy that owned the market by now. That has not happened because Chinese companies cannot actually make the thing as well.
For some things, patents are reasonable, but for many, patents are counter-productive to innovation. Few things are a completely new invention. Most build on others (no car without a wheel and an engine).
Re: Re: Re: Drag on Innovation
That’s also an oversimplification. All modern day Apple has ever done is copy.
Chinese companies didn’t replace the iPhone because of marketing skill, not invention.
There are a number of phones and portables with much superior build quality and hardware than Apple, Samsung and co ever have pushed out. Take Archos for example. They came out with the first HDD mp3 player, the Jukebox, a year before the iPod. The Archos 5 Internet Tablet was the first Android tablet ever to exist, and camw out 2 years before the iPad. The Archos 9 was the first and sadly one of the only full x86 PC tablets.
Cloudflare? Getting a favorable judgment?
blue and Jhon Sanford are going to fucking lose their shit…
Re: Re:
Lose it?
There is so much of the stuff it has an event horizon.
What do you think of “no more patents”
Let’s say that there are good players and bad players in the court system, and that sometimes it is hard to tell them apart. I think we could all agree on that.
A patent, to be valid, has to explain a useful new technology with enough detail for those skilled in the art to reproduce it. I think everyone would (at least more or less) agree on that.
In the current environment, many large companies are just openly practicing patented technology and have been doing so for years. Take EBay/Mercexchange as an example, there are hundreds more.
So without determining who is the “good guy” and who is the “evil troll” or “evil corporation”, one result of the current environment is that inventors are less incentivized to protect their inventions with patents. Instead, just keeping innovation details secret is (in many cases) more effective in protecting new technology at lower cost and with better outcomes.
Is this good or bad? Do you anti-patent people feel that the public will suffer WITHOUT patent disclosures? Do you feel that inventors should be COMPELLED to document their inventions, like manufacturers should be COMPELLED to publish their service manuals?
Will the loss of patent disclosures affect society in a positive way or a negative way?
Re: What do you think of “no more patents”
And it has to be something original, not a rehash of an available technology with the added moniker "with a computer".
Do you have any idea how much it costs to file for a patent? In multiple parts of the world? There you have the incentive not to a file patent for small inventors.
And keeping innovation secret? Depending on the jurisdiction you are in "first to file" is the rule which means suddenly you may have to pay licensing for your own invention. I doubt most would call that a better outcome.
The problem of "evil trolls" is that the patent system is broken in some countries, especially the US. This leads to patents that have zero originality which are then used in extortion schemes.
The thing is, unless you register your invention you are SOL if someone else uses it. You want that sweet money an invention may generate you file for a patent – which means you have to disclose your patent.
Re: Re: What do you think of “no more patents”
I don’t see that you actually answered my question: do you think the loss of patent disclosures will have a positive or negative impact on society?
Re: Re: Re: What do you think of “no more patents”
In response to your very narrow question, the loss of patent disclosures, assuming that all patents were quality patents, would have a negative impact on society. That assumption, with regard to the quality of patents, is a big problem, and the proliferation of bad quality patents has a deleterious effect on society.
One also has to consider whether a (let us assume here good quality) patent holder has the ability to bring a product to market effectively. The disclosure would tell a potential competitor how not to do something so that they can do the same thing via a different method. Remember that it is the implementation that gets protected by the patent, not the idea. Again, if that secondary producer has the ability to bring a product to market effectively, society wins, and the patent system works as intended, including the part about disclosure.
Then considering the opposite of above, and (let us assume bad quality) patent holders have the ability to disrupt, rightly or wrongly, any other implementation of the idea by imposing monetary sanctions on any producer that creates a similar product even if they scrupulously avoid infringing on the bad patent. They have to spend money defending their position that could have gone into product improvement, or for that matter new products. In this scenario disclosure does nothing good for society. The lawyers win, the manufacturer loses a lot of money defending their product, and likely the patent gets disqualified so even the patent holder loses. In this
In the end, your question needs to be "do you think the loss of high quality patent disclosures will have a positive or negative impact on society?", and the answer is still, positive, if there are no junk patents. As to disclosure for the junk patents, disclosure means nothing at all as there is rarely a product to go along with that junk patent and society loses all around.
Re: Re: Re:2 What do you think of “no more patents”
Consider the interval windshield wiper, or the paper clip, or Velcro. Yes, a patent tells a competitor what NOT to do, I would agree with that. Don’t build a machine that makes this particular paper clip, bent at these particular angles in this particular fashion. The paper clip is amazing, isn’t it? I’ll be you use the same paperclip design that was originally patented.
I think your stance on patents will encourage inventors to keep their inventions secret. That’s actually OK with me personally, but it runs exactly counter to what the framers of the US constitution had in mind.
Re: Re: Re:3 What do you think of “no more patents&
What exactly is unique and non obvious about bending medal?
Re: Re: Re:4 What do you think of “no more pate
a unitary length of spring-quality metal wire bent into an elongated configuration presenting
an elongated U-shaped inner loop,
an elongated U-shaped outer loop, and
an arcuately-curved interconnecting portion therebetween;
each such U-shaped loop having
an open end,
a closed end, and
a pair of longitudinally-extending legs;
such closed end of the elongated U-shaped outer loop defining one longitudinal end of such bent wire elongated configuration,
such inner loop being nested within such outer loop with such open end of each such U-shaped loop facing in the same longitudinal direction;
such pair of longitudinally-extending legs of each such U-shaped loop including
a free leg having a distal end located at the open end of its respective U-shaped loop, and
a connecting leg,
such arcuately-curved interconnecting portion extending between such connecting legs at the open end of each such U-shaped loop and defining at its longitudinally outward midpoint the remaining longitudinal end of such bent wire configuration;
each such inner and outer loop free leg extending at least to the juncture of such longitudinally-extending connecting legs with such curved interconnecting portion while not extending beyond a location which is contiguous to a laterally transverse plane normal to the longitudinal axis of the clip which is longitudinally inward of a tangent to the longitudinally inward midpoint of the arcuately-curved interconnecting portion, and
each such U-shaped loop and such curved interconnecting portion being substantially coplanar so that the paper clip lies substantially flat when not in use.
Re: Re: Re:5 What do you think of “no m
and you’re serious?
Re: Re: Re:6 What do you think of “
You are apparently not an inventor. Give it a go, it’s fun. I rather like the description above, though my understanding is that the real patent that was used in history was for the machine that bent the wire, not the wire itself.
Inventing is fun. Try it sometime. Imagine something new and useful and write it down. We all develop ideas from our personal life experiences.
Re: Re: Re:7 What do you think of &am
"the real patent that was used in history was for the machine that bent the wire, not the wire itself."
"Inventing is fun. Try it sometime."
Re: Re: Re:7 What do you think of &ld
That reminds me.
Shiva Ayyadurai didn’t invent email.
Re: Re: Re:3 What do you think of “no more patents”
If you think that raising the quality level of patents granted will encourage inventors to keep their inventions secret, then I suppose those inventors you are referring to have ‘inventions’ that if they tried to patent them, those patents would be considered junk.
The only reason to keep a product secret is so that one can finish creating the market ready product. Once the product is in the marketplace, it is no longer secret. This is only a benefit if the product originator can keep their design ahead of inevitable competitors (who don’t need to infringe on any patent to compete, and will find it easier to compete when no patent exists, and will likely file for a patent because none exists, which will likely cause the originator some big headaches) and maintain their market share and margin by having been first and continually being different and better.
Re: Re: Re:4 What do you think of “no more patents?
You’re daft, right? Coca-Cola. Tell me you know how to reverse engineer an encrypted FPGA image. You can’t, any more than you know how to reverse engineer the formula for Coca-Cola. You can’t in either of these two very obvious cases.
Trade secrets work. Duh.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Are you claiming that you know of something that can not be decrypted?
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
I know many things that cannot be decrypted. Something you don’t have access to, for example.
Re: Re: Re:7 Re:
How does one make a profit off of their (I assume) trade secret encrypted whatever if they never sell one … you know, because they do not want you to have access to it?
Re: Re: Re:8 Re:
It is still possible to sell something and restrict access.
Re: Re: Re:9 Re:
With the law rather than the product.
Re: Re: Re:8 Re:
How does one make a profit off of their (I assume) trade secret encrypted whatever if they never sell one … you know, because they do not want you to have access to it?
Sell access to a program which runs on your servers…
Re: Re: Re:9 Re:
Oh — the same way people profit from open-source software, then.
Re: What do you think of “no more patents”
"A patent, to be valid, has to explain"
I think they should have to have a working model.
Re: Re: What do you think of “no more patents”
That sounds reasonable to me too.
Re: What do you think of “no more patents”
These days, mainly positive, as an IPO will not be a signal for the trolls to demand their toll. Also, it is way harder in the modern world to keep industrial secrets because of the turnover of staff.
Re: Re: What do you think of “no more patents”
Not really – many inventions involve combinations of things which really are non-obvious. Short of serious reverse-engineering activities, which are beyond the technical reach of the Open Source community, it’s really not hard to keep secrets.
That is, people smart enough to figure out the invention (without the patent disclosure) are smart enough to be doing something else better with their time.
Re: Re: Re: What do you think of “no more patents”
"many inventions involve combinations of things"
"Short of serious reverse-engineering activities, which are beyond the technical reach of the Open Source community,"
"That is, people smart enough to figure out the invention (without the patent disclosure) are smart enough to be doing something else better with their time."
Re: Re: Re:2 What do you think of “no more patents&rdqu
Simple question: How many really smart guys do you know or have you ever met or heard of that made a living out of reverse engineering proprietary trade secret technology and wrongfully selling it? People smart enough to do it are smart enough not to do it. Trade secrets for complex inventions are extremely effective. They are not as American as patents, which have a long and proud tradition, but in today’s nearly socialist environment, patents are a bad bet.
Trade secrets will soon dominate the technology market, as Open Source completely runs out of gas. Personally, I think it’s great.
Re: Re: Re:3 What do you think of “no more patents&
What makes you think that someone smart enough to reverse engineer your super secret product isn’t smart enough to make the same product differently? Oh, and never mind that without a patent they could do it exactly the same way as you did, because…no patent exists!
Oh and just because a product is complex does not mean it cannot be reverse engineered. They will just tear it down into smaller components and reverse engineer each of those. There is no such thing as secret sauce.
Re: Re: Re:3 What do you think of “no more patents&
How much open source software was just used for you to write something that stupid?
Re: Re: Re:3 What do you think of “no more pate
"How many really smart guys do you know or have you ever met or heard of that made a living out of reverse engineering proprietary trade secret technology and wrongfully selling it?"
"People smart enough to do it are smart enough not to do it"
"Trade secrets for complex inventions are extremely effective."
" in today’s nearly socialist environment, patents are a bad bet. "
"Trade secrets will soon dominate the technology market, as Open Source completely runs out of gas. "
Re: Re: Re:4 What do you think of “no more
Even you would have to admit that the sale of Red Hat to IBM has to be the biggest embarrassment imaginable to the Open Source community. Open Source has no ideas, no plans, no future products to invent or imagine. That’s why Red Hat is being sold – Open Source is at the end of the road with nothing valuable to offer other than milking the “me too” solutions already on the table. IT’s over for Open Source – do you really think IBM will stand for any shenanigans from the Open Source crazies? I cannot think of two more divergent cultures. It’s over for Open Source, in fact it’s been over for some time – the only thing left to do is grab a few dollars from real companies on the way out the door.n Goodbye Open Source Religion, Hello IBM Autocracy.
Re: Re: Re:5 What do you think of “no m
If Open Source is that much of a non-threat then what are you foaming at the mouth for?
Re: Re: Re:5 What do you think of “no m
IBM has been a major contributor to open source for many years now, and uses Linux as a prime operating system on their mainframes. Also Red Hat is not the only commercial Linux vendor, and the sale cannot have made Oracle very happy.
Then there is Debian, and a whole host of smaller distros which are community owned and managed, and immune to take over.
Also Linux owns supercomputing, and large scale computing. It also has a strong presence in the embedded world, and there is a very good chance that any Intelligent device you own, like a TV, runs Linux.
Re: Re: Re:6 What do you think of “
Linux = Free, so of course it has market share.
It still sucks, and innovates nothing. It’s not hard to be popular when you are free and the Chinese manufacturers exploit you for their own purposes.
Re: Re: Re:7 What do you think of &ld
Please explain how Linux sucks and how it doesn’t innovate?
How do you exploit something that is free?
Please elaborate your "thinking".
Re: Re: Re:7 What do you think of &am
Unfounded accusations lacking any supporting evidence or even arguments do not sway most educated people.
Who is your audience?
Re: Re: Re:8 What do you think of &am
You are my audience, obviously. And I swayed you enough to take the time to respond.
Be honest – if Red Hat (Open Source) had any legitimate purpose or future, as the religious open source fanatics always liked to imagine, why would they sell it to IBM?
No new ideas, no future, no hope. That’s why it was sold. It was all a big lie from the beginning. Of course you can gain market share with $0 pricing. But then you have nowhere to go and nothing to do except copy the work of others, which the open source community has done again and again, and little else.
Re: Re: Re:9 What do you think of
Then if it has no value, why did IBM buy it for $34 Billion?
Re: Re: Re:10 What do you thin
Because it has shutdown value, obviously. It’s cheaper to buy it, dismantle it and bury it than compete with $0 pricing, which is good for no one except the Chinese. Goodbye, Open Source community. Of course IBM is not going to say that, but just watch, it’s so obvious. It’s been over for Open Source for a long time, now we just see it playing out in public. You can only copy and redistribute other people’s stuff for so long until you run out of code to steal and patents to infringe. And they have run out. Goodbye, farewell and good riddance to the religious nutcases, go back to your communes.
Re: Re: Re:11 What do you
This coming from the guy who wrote the Ten Commandments on Mailing Lists…
Re: Re: Re:12 What do
What does that even mean? Your post should be flagged as useless nonsense.
Re: Re: Re:13 What
It means quoting you, genius. Mailing lists is where all the money’s at. Your words. Not mine.
Re: Re: Re:11 What do you
And you have no clue what you are talking abut, it’s obvious.
If you bothered to read any of the articles going over the IBM – RH deal you would have understood what it was all about – but you don’t do that, you form your own half-assed opinions from headlines and the belief that no matter what you are right.
You are a typical asshat that can’t to be bothered with facts or doing research before saying something that you can’t back up – at which point you either just ignore the people pointing out how wrong you are OR you attack them with more fact-less posts.
I would say that you possess the typical Dunning-Kruger personality.
Re: Re: Re:12 What do
You are hilarious, really. Such "out of the blue" criticism without any rational argument at all. Call me names, nya nya nya, words can’t hurt me, and facts are facts. Open source is nothing but redistributing other people’s ideas for free, and serves the Chinese first. It has now copied and stolen all it can, and has nothing new to offer. Look at Open Stack, falling apart at the seams, big companies walking away one after another. Open Source is a nightmare to manage at any kind of scale, the only reason anybody uses it ever is because it is free. After being shameless promoted as a religious cause for years, now the truth comes to bear. Only a company obviously unable to manage it’s own future would agree to a sale. Any companies with good ideas would resist. Fact. This is especially obvious considering the chasm between the cultures. It was all a self-serving lie from the word go, open source was and is nothing but a marketing scam.
Re: Re: Re:13 What
The one lacking facts are you, you made some fantastical claims which you can’t back up.
For example:
[Citation needed]
[Citation needed]
[Citation needed]
Actually, you didn’t have one shred fact in your rambling post supporting your claims. What you "feel" and what you "believe" isn’t facts.
You make claims, supply the facts or GTFO.
Re: Re: Re:14
You would have to be an idiot to see it any other way. Imagine you are running a company, and IBM says they want to buy your company. If you have a SINGLE idea that is better than IBM’s, you should refuse, unless you are desperate. If you are worth anything as a leader, you should bet on yourself. You should tell your shareholders to trust you with their money, that’s why you were hired. Selling out to IBM is capitulation. IBM?! Come on. There could be no other interpretation to these historical events except that the open source has no future. Give it up already. The fact that some college professors can take money from the government to produce gibberish is not news, it is business as usual. We should all celebrate that it is coming to an end. I never dreamed it would be so public and so humiliating, I do have to say I am enjoying it. Open Source extinction by IBM. Perfect. Priceless.
Re: Re: Re:15
You have still not presented one single shred of evidence that you are right.
Your ramblings regarding the shareholders tells me how disconnected you are from reality. In a majority of sales of this nature you have investors that want a return on their investments NOW and not years in the future which means they will push for a sale.
In this instance IBM offered to pay a 63% premium on the RH shares, do you think a majority of the shareholders would turn down that kind of offering? It’s not like they are shareholders out of some altruistic motive.
And from the shareholder perspective regarding your idiot remark – they may perhaps be idiots, but they are at least VERY rich idiots compared to your garden variety idiot inhabiting the internet who have quaint ideas how things should work.
And I fail to see how open source would become extinct because IBM bought RH, it’s just another unfounded idea you propose with no facts or reasoning behind it. Perhaps you failed to realize what one of the key strengths of open source is?
Re: Re: Re:16
What is even more hilarious, and amusing, and fun for me to watch, is how the Open Source community rationalizes the sale to IBM! Wow, do you remember how “free” software was going to change the world? Hahaha, all the trumpeting by the Open Source zealots turned out to be completely baseless, they are ready to sell out their principles for money ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.
Tell me again what is good about “free” software? That you can SELL IT to IBM and Abandon your Principles? Hahaha – hilarious.
Re: Re: Re:17
Is that all you have to come with? How about a coherent factual statement?
But I guess that’s too much to ask from you, because you don’t even realize that open source already changed the world.
Re: Re: Re:17
You do realize that the Internet is built on free software, and I think that qualifies as changing the world.
Re: Re: Re:11 What do you
Bruce Perens doesn’t seem to agree.
, he typed into his web browser, which is either open-source or partially open-source.
Re: Re: Re:9 What do you think of
Perhaps you should research the History of IBM and Linux, they have been employing programmers to work on the Linux kernel for a long time, and support the Use of Linux on their big and expensive Mainframes.
Re: Re: Re:10 What do you thin
Which of course had no bearing on their decision to pay for the company that gives them code for free.
Re: Re: Re:11 What do you
You are also overlooking that IBM directly employs programmers to work on the Linux kernel, and has done so for years. It is also a member of the Linux foundation, investing its membership fee in the further development of Open Source Software. Also, because of support contracts, mainframe owners only run IBM approved operating systems, and that Includes Linux, and IBM is not going to pull that rug out from under them.
Re: Re: Re:12 What do
Oh my, no, IBM would never pull out a rug from under it’s customers.
You’re joking, right?
Do you know anything about history at all?
Look up the IBM System/23 DataMaster.
Re: Re: Re:13 Reason? We need no stinkin' reason where we are going!
You drag up some anecdote about a computer from ~35 years ago to prove that IBM is "evil"? A computer that was obsoleted by the PC-revolution very very quickly.
You are one stuck-in-the-past special snowflake, aren’t you?
Re: Re: Re:14 Reason? We need no stinkin' reason where we are going!
And the PC was introduced by ….? Wait for it.
Re: Re: Re:5 What do you think of “
Side step the points being made and bring out your favorite bullshit … brilliant!
None of what you typed is relevant to the conversation.
Re: Re: Re:5 What do you think of “no m
, he typed into his web browser, which is either open-source or partially open–source.
Re: Re: Re:6 What do you think of &ld
In addition, the request from said browser was most assuredly handled by a web server running apache.
Re: Re: Re:3 What do you think of “no more patents&
how much open source software is dependent upon reverse engineering anything at all?
Re: What do you think of “no more patents”
And shit lost, confirmed!
You’re the guy who thinks that rounded corners were Apple’s gift to mankind, aren’t you?
So what about CloudFlare's side project?
Now that this case is finally decided (I can’t see it going to the SCOTUS), how is CloudFlare’s invalidation project going? This seems like something multiple companies could get behind, and ANY patent troll could be added to the list of "filers of interest" — including giants like IBM and Apple.
Behavior might change if anyone attempting to troll found their war chest rapidly evaporating under them.