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Comment by tinus_hn | Hacker News Reader

A Pyrrhic victory; they are out $12k and the troll is free to go harass the next company.

They did produce a fairly good pattern for the next company approached by Altair Logix. Including links to prior art, counterclaim documents, etc.

> Altair Logix

Do you think those kind of company keep their name same for more than few years

The patent number stays the same though.

That's all standard in a patent litigation and is by far the least expensive element of what you'd be paying an atty to do. That is to say, it's basically trivial to get an atty to say that you should contend invalidity via a counterclaim (especially in light of how §101 is treated lately). What costs is getting an atty to actually find the invalidating prior art, draft up the counterclaims, etc.

Sorry, I'm confused. If Altair Logix sues some other party, for the same patent, why is this linked list of invalidating prior art and counter claims not useful in reducing cost?

This is what I got from reading your comment:

Least Expensive Element: Invalidating prior art, counterclaim documents.

Actually Cost Money: Invalidating prior art, drafting counterclaim documents.

Well that's because you neglected the part where the Least Expensive Element is an attorney telling you that those things should be done, not atually doing them.

"We’ve sold 221 units over the entire time we carried the pcDuino. You want to sue us for $500 worth of made-up royalties to use your bogus patent? Sure. Come get it."

I think it's not the 500 USD they are looking for, but rather to win a court case against someone who has not the ressources to defend himself, so they can reuse this case as an example in a more lucrative litigation.

Pyrrhic victory? $12k is cheap. Generally, patent litigation is the sport of kings. That $12k means that Altair Logix gave up quickly, which in itself is useful information. $12k means that small cap companies should fight these trolls.

> $12k is cheap

Not to real people it isn't.

What price your principles?

On the contrary, this patent could now be useless even if it doesn't get invalidated:

It's expired for future use, and according to Sparkfun's response it can't be asserted against prior infringers because Huawei owned it and shipped devices without marking the patent on them.

Perhaps, but it did impose a cost on the troll which makes their venture less lucrative and hopefully more importantly, a psychological and emotional cost on the lawyers who's working to extort people.

Also missing from the article is an explanation of why they spent $12k defending against an expired patent?

Because the allegations are for a period when the patent was not expired.

Getting qualified people to dig up prior art and write responses ain't cheap.

The patent is expired now, but they can still sue for infringement that occurred during the life of the patent. In fact, this is how it goes for many patents given the lifecycle.

Because you don't just automatically win because the patent is expired. You have to hire a lawyer to research the patent and find out it's expired, then, at minimum, your lawyer has to go to court and prove that the patent is expired.

But patent terms are 20 years. It had clearly been more than 20 years.

Why didn’t the lawyer simply state this in their counterclaim? I don’t actually see it anywhere in the counterclaim.

You can, in some cases, sue for damages accrued up to six years in the past. You don't have to sue for those before the patent expires. You just stop accruing new damages when the patent expires. Past damages is what was allegedly at issue here. (Which is why the attorneys were talking about "marking," as it's a factor in whether you can get pre-suit damages for some types of claims in some cases.)

Thank you for this!

>You have to hire a lawyer to research the patent and find out it's expired

You can do this yourself though

Free maybe, but at least not funded as a settlement would have.

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