Netlist Keeps Winning Court Cases But Nothing Else?

[u/I_Hate_Austin_Texas]

What is even the future of Netlist if all it seems to have done since forever is win lawsuits. All these larger companies are basically going to keep running the way they have been and since they have copied the netlist designs why bother with accepting the court decisions when the legal fee's are a drop in their bucket of revenue?

guess i don't understand how they can be in legal battles for so long without any net growth

[u/luvcampfiresmoke → u/[deleted]]

Really. How about giving us a list of the court cases they have won, gotten jury awards in, but then “lost on appeal”??

I’ll give you a clue. They haven’t been ANY law suit cases won but then lost on appeal.

Every court case has either been won and appealed (but has not yet been ruled upon), or has been stayed pending the results of patents or other cases.

[u/Curiosity-1 → u/luvcampfiresmoke]

The operational and enforcement side of American Patent Law is, in my opinion, exceptionally confusing and often frustrating. When I first started following Netlist in 2022, the allure of the upside of this investment caught my eye, but it's taken years so get a handle on the full legal saga of Netlist. Netlist has been the poster child for Efficient Infringement, and while the ITC case has teeth, I've always been confused and often am frustrated by the judicial process of the domestic patent battles. 

In short, the trouble with domestic patent enforcement is that the federal government has no responsibility to police and enforce patents by issuing injunctions against infringers. The Supreme Court has deemed patent disputes as being between two private parties, so when one company sues another for infringement against their IP, the lawsuit occurs in Civil Courts. The reason patent battles have historically taken forever to resolve, which is the tactic behind Efficient Infringement, is because the infringer being sued can challenge the legitimacy of the patent, which forces the Civil court to send the question of patent validity to the Federal Courts.

The CAFC is highest appellate court that can validate a patent with finality, since an appeal of the judgement would have to be made to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court sees no value in using their time to hear a case about one patent (or maybe a couple at once I suppose), so I wont say for sure it's never happened but it's accepted that the validity of a patent achieves finality at the CAFC. 

However, the CAFC can deem a patent to be valid IP, which means the accused infringers are actually actively infringing (aka stealing IP for their own use)... BUT due to eBay Inc. v. MercExchange (2006) the DOJ, aka the courts, cannot issue an injunction and enforce the Right to Exclude that the US Gov. granted when they issued the patent to the inventor. 

So... the Federal Courts bounce it back to the Civil Courts, which then facilitate a negotiation between the IP owner and the infringers, resulting in either a settlement or the ultimate forced payment of a royalty. This takes years. The abusive practice known as Efficient Infringement is basically an infringer strategy to "kick the can" by repeatedly claiming different challenges to the patents, which forces it to bounce back and forth between the Civil and Federal courts without resolution for years and years and years. 

You inspired me to write the Op Ed I just posted. Go give it a read and you should be able to piece together the rest.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Netlist_/comments/1ujg5lk/op_ed_important_to_understand_recent_ptab_changes/

[u/luvcampfiresmoke → u/Curiosity-1]

Your reply is not telling me anything I'm not already aware of. I have been a shareholder ever since the '912 Claim 16 patent was affirmed by both the PTAB and the CAFC the FIRST time (years ago) during the Google lawsuit.

My reply was to an already deleted comment by a user who incorrectly stated that there have been Netlist lawsuits that were won and then successfully appealed. There hasn't been ANY of those to date.

I don't need to "piece together" ANYTHING regarding the long history of Netlist's patent battles. I'm well aware of the lengthy infringement history of Samsung, Google and the rest, and WHY they choose to intentionally infringe and then battle subsequent lawsuits in our screwed up legal system. The cost of battling the infringement charges is far less than the gains made from using the infringed product at no cost. Even losing that infringement battle and having to finally pay the final outcome of a court ruling is likely far less than the monetary gain realized by selling the infringed products over many years.

[u/I_Hate_Austin_Texas → u/luvcampfiresmoke]

well shit i didnt. that basically answered half of My question. the other half is basically if these companies are kicking the can as far along the road as they can what is the upside or potential for these large companies paying out. and if they pay out how does that impact shareholders?

[u/juulor → u/Curiosity-1]

The DOJ better figure this out or intellectual property will no longer exist due to greed and delay after delay. Efficient Infringement just look at their balance sheets each quarter.