EFF: How Landmark Technology’s Terrible Patent Has Survived
How Landmark Technology’s Terrible Patent Has Survived Stupid Patent of the Month There’s an increasing insistence from the highest echelons of the patent world that patent abuse just isn’t a thing anymore. The Director of the U.S. Patent Office, Andre Iancu, has called patent trolls—a term for companies that do nothing but collect patents and sue others—mere “monster stories,” and suggested in a recent oversight hearing that it was simply name-calling. But whatever you call them—trolls, non-practicing entities, or patent assertion entities—their business model, which involves stockpiling patents to sue productive companies rather than making goods or services, continues to thrive. It’s not hard to find examples of abusive patent litigation that make clear the threat posed by wrongly-issued patents is very real. Take, for instance, the patents that Lawrence Lockwood owns. These patents have been used to sue companies, large and small, for nearly 20 years now. Through his c...