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Bitmovin Takes A Scorched Earth Approach To Patent Troll, Who Limps Away Quickly

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A few years back, e-commerce company Newegg decided to take something of a scorched earth approach to all of the various patent trolls that came after it: it would never settle with a patent troll. While many trolls rely on the fact that it's cheaper to settle than to fight in court (even if you win), Newegg did the longer term calculation, and recognized that even if it cost more to defeat trolls in court, by being very public with its stance in fighting it would likely scare off trolls from continuing to sue the company. It took a few years, but the strategy mostly worked. Trolls have mostly learned to steer clear of Newegg.Last year, Cloudflare decided to up the ante a bit on such a strategy. After a patent troll went after it, Cloudflare didn't just promise to fight back, it promised to effectively burn the patent troll into the ground. It set up a bounty looking for prior art on every patent held by that patent troll (Blackbird Technologies), and also filed ethics complaints against the lawyers who ran the company, arguing that they were pretending not to practice law when they clearly were. That strategy has resulted in an easy win over Blackbird in court while various Blackbird patents are being challenged.It appears that approach is inspiring other companies as well. Streaming infrastructure company Bitmovin's General Counsel Ken Carter (who, notably, used to work at Cloudflare) put up a blog post describing just how it dealt with a recent patent troll. After first pointing out that patents can be important, and noting that the company itself holds some patents, the post reminds everyone that it's possible to abuse the patent system.

Patent trolls tend to be at the bottom of the IP food chain. If the patents they held were really valuable, the patents would have already wound up in the hands of someone who could make the invention. These trolls behave like bullies, threatening companies actually servicing customers, hoping to pick up some quick cash. The troll knows about and takes advantage of the fact that it is cheaper for those companies to pay it off than to endure the cost of litigating the case. By contrast, patent holders who are making products for customers tend to be more rational. Sure, sometimes the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung get one another involved in multi-year, multi-million dollar lawsuits, but for the most part these companies don't extort one another. It's a better use of their time to make products than to sue.
Bitmovin didn't just hit back at this patent troll: it promised a similar scorched earth approach to the one that Cloudflare took against Blackbird:
We threatened to counter sue the troll, win the case on the merits, and then seek recovery of our fees and costs from the troll and its lawyers. Further, we pledged that Bitmovin would, as a public service, reinvest any recovery in invalidating all of the troll's other patents. Through our initial investigation, we found the person behind the troll who had acquired some 15 patents originally held by a European technology company. This person then placed these patents in at least two other LLCs. In turn, those LLCs were asserting these patents in no fewer than 13 other lawsuits against defendants such as Sony, Microsoft, Cisco, Polycom, Blue Jeans Networks, and Motorola. Bitmovin pledged to use our recovery to assist those 13 companies and 6 other companies defending against the current patent in finding prior art and filing Inter partes Reviews at the US PTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board to invalidate all of those patents.
How did that work out? Pretty well:
Without another word, the troll dismissed its lawsuit against us.
And the company hopes that other trolls will take notice:
Trolls beware. Bitmovin will continue to stand for innovation and a nuanced, balanced approach to intellectual property. We will stand up against intellectual property abuse and for our customers, our industry, and the Internet at large.
Of course, in that post, Bitmovin declined to name the troll. Though, it's not that hard to figure it out. The case was filed by Hertl media, whose only existence online is for the various patent troll lawsuits it filed at the end of June. Within 3 days, Hertl Media sued not just Bitmovin, but also Amazon, Cox Communications, Netflix, Comcast, Longtail Ad Solutions, and Telestream. One hopes that others on that list take a similar approach to Bitmovin, and they too might see the following neat results. With minimal effort in court (just a standard request for extra time to file a response), Hertl just walked away and the case was closed:


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Comrade Brewing Gets Its 'Superpower' Trademark After Nonsense Opposition From The Wonderful Company

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Between the explosion in the craft beer industry and our pernicious ownership culture, the beer industry has enough of a trademark problem to regularly appear in our posts. While many of the disputes in the industry are generated by once-small breweries that have grown up and shed their permissive attitudes towards branding, just as many trademark disputes result from entities outside the industry attempting to pretend that the alcohol industries, if not craft beer specifically, are not markets all to their own. This lack of nuance occasionally pervades even within the USPTO, unfortunately.But sometimes the TTAB gets it right. Such is the case with Comrade Brewing, makers of its 'Superpower IPA' brew, for which the TTAB refused the opposition of The Wonderful Company, which makes fruit juices. At issue was the slogan for POM Wonderful juices: "Antioxidant Superpower."

In past cases, the board has held that wine and spirits are closely related to beer in the minds of consumers, but it said The Wonderful Co. had failed to show that a soft drink such as fruit juice had the same kind of connection. “Simply put, opposer has not submitted sufficient evidence that consumers are accustomed to encountering these goods under the same mark,” Judge Peter W. Cataldo wrote for a three-judge panel.“Particularly in light of the differences between the goods but also because the two marks had key differences in appearance,” Cataldo wrote, “the board sided with Comrade Brewing.”
This opposition was a loser on several grounds. The markets being different for each product is certainly the easiest to conceptualize. Customers looking for fruit juices are unlikely to wander into a store's craft beer section and find themselves irrevocably confused. As someone who has seen what pomegranate juice looks like, and as someone who has consumed an unholy quantity of IPAs, this opposition would be hilarious if it weren't so frustrating in the first place. For a small brewer to have to entertain this kind of clear bullying from a much larger company at the trademark office is plainly absurd.And, when you take into account the difference in the actual marks, it becomes all the more so. A beer named "Superpower IPA" and a slogan that says "Antioxidant Superpower" are simply unlikely to cause anything resembling confusion in the market. Everything else about the trade dress is also, of course, wildly different. David Lin, owner of Comrade Brewing, appears to be taking this all in stride.
“Operating this brewery has thrown us a lot of curveballs,” explains Lin. “If I’m being completely honest the potential confusion between antioxidant juice and craft beer was more surprising to me than the day someone crashed their truck through our front door. We’re going to laugh this one off over a couple of Superpowers.”
It's certainly an endearing attitude to have, but it should be obvious that the wasting of a non-competitor's time with this sort of thing ought to be worthy of punishment.

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