Comment by rlpb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rlpb | Hacker News Reader

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"As a result of the misconduct found, Judge Martinez of the United States Federal District Court for the Western District of Washington slapped the patentee-plaintiff with Rule 11 sanctions totaling $141,984.70 for failure to perform a reasonable pre-filing investigation. The district court also awarded the defendant $489,150.48 in attorneys fees and costs pursuant to 35 U.S.C. 285."

So the sanctions were only about a quarter of the half a million dollars in legal costs the defendant had to put up to fight the case? I understand that the plaintiff had to pay the costs in the end, but this is hardly going to deter trolls.

It seems to me that with sanctions such a small proportion of legal costs, trolls can just carry on doing what they are doing and the defendant's fear of being sunk in legal costs will far outweigh the troll's fear of the sanctions for the troll (which after all are probably smaller than his legal bill!)

In what way is this a deterrent?

The total cost for the plaintiff is the $631,100 listed in the article, plus their own legal fees. Obviously the owners of the company are lawyers, so that screws up the numbers a little, but let's say their own legal fees were $370,000. That is really only 2 or 3 lawyer salaries for a year so it is probably a safe bet.

They might be making a decent cash flow off previous settlements, but a million dollars is still significant. The article made it sound like their previous settlements are in the low 5 figures. If you are making $50k per settlement, and spending $1 million per court case, it only takes 1 in 20 actually calling your bluff to make it a losing proposition.

I'm with on the idea that, on the surface, it feels lopsided - $142,000 in sanctions vs. $489,000 in defendant's legal fees - but AFAIK sanctions are not related to defendant's legal costs. You're trying to tie two unrelated concepts and getting twisted that they aren't more inline with each other. Sanctions, in most cases, are regulated - there's a minimum and maximum - whereas defendant's legal fees are not. The judge hopefully gave the maximum sanctions available.

I understand that sanctions are not related to defendant's legal costs.

I think they should be, because I think it's a joke that sanctions can be far less than what the defendant had to risk to fight the behaviour that caused the sanctions.

Wait a minute. You said the defendant had to put up half a million dollars? And the district court awarded the defendant $489,150.48? Half a million is $500,000. Unless I've picked out the wrong numbers, the award looks pretty close to the costs.

Can you clarify?

I assumed that the award for costs ($489,150.48) is at least what the defendant's actual costs actually were. Was this a mistake?

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