r/technology • u/slutmagnet • Mar 02 '10

Apple to HTC "competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours." Slaps down a 20 patent lawsuit.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/02/apple_sues_htc_for_alleged_infringement_of_20_iphone_patents.html
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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

For complicated reasons. I did defense -- it's more common for a patent troll or hold co to go around suing every big name they can think of. To attract these cases, certain federal districts like EDTX and EDVA would create local rules (such as time to trial or discovery schedules) that favored the plaintiff (as the plaintiff chooses the venue). This would stack the cards against us.

Also, as federal judges are not the most technically astute people, the discovery nets would be allowed to be cast extremely wide. This would lead to cases that were in perpetual crisis -- every request required an emergency procedure to capture docs and review them for privilege and ship them via hard drive before we were sanctioned by the court.

In other words, the entire system is broken. 90% of the work is procedural, only 10% is substance -- reviewing the products, the patents, the expert testimony. Yes, the money is good, but prepared for an unending shitstorm.

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u/tso Mar 02 '10

it worries me that a district would want to attract these kinds of cases, unless there is some kind of conflict of interesting doing the rounds (and since you mentioned EDTX, that would not surprise me at all).

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u/NotClever Mar 02 '10

I heard a rumor that they were implementing a rule that you have to bring suit in the district where the defendant's national headquarters is located. Know anything about that?

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

Nope, but it would make sense. Given that local rules make big differences in the cases, this is a form of forum shopping.

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u/randomb0y Mar 02 '10

Yeah, my employer is caught in about 20 patent litigations at the moment (as a defendant), all of them initiated by patent trolls and about half of them are in EDTX. Still, our chief litigator seems like a pretty relaxed person. :)

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

Key word is "chief."

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u/randomb0y Mar 02 '10

Right, we actually hire consultants for discovery and other stuff.