Last year, we wrote about a crazy patent troll, named Innovatio, who had sued a ton of restaurants and hotels, claiming that anyone who used WiFi was violating its patents. It was even claiming that individuals who use WiFi at home infringed too -- but that it wouldn't go after them "at this time." Instead, it preferred to focus on shaking down tons of small businesses, offering to settle for $2,500 to $3,000 -- which is cheaper than hiring a lawyer to fight it, no matter how bogus. We noted at the time that Motorola and Cisco had gone to court to try to get a declaratory judgment to protect its customers.

Well, it seems that the effort to stop these lawsuits has been taken to the next level. Cisco, Motorola and Netgear have now filed an amended complaint which rips Innovatio apart, and doesn't just seek a declaratory judgment of non-infringement, but outlines a parade of lawbreaking by Innovatio, arguing that it's actually involved in racketeering and conspiracy among other things. The full filing, embedded below, is fascinating. The filing reveals some background about Innovatio, which apparently is connected to Noel Whitley, who had been VP of Intellectual Property at Broadcom... but then left to create Innovatio, which just so happens to have acquired most of its patents from... Broadcom. Among the parade of insanity charged against Innovatio:

• Motorola, Cisco and Netgear all have licensed the patents in question, meaning that users of that equipment are covered by those patents under the concept of patent exhaustion (basically, if you buy a licensed product, it's licensed). Innovatio conveniently doesn't mention this to the people it sends threat letters to.
• The patents in question are part of commitments to IEEE that they'll only be licensed on RAND terms, but the threat letters demand way more than would be considered "reasonable."
• Incredibly, Innovatio includes some expired patents in the list of patents it has threatened people over. That's a massive no-no. Once a patent is expired you can't demand a license for it. At all.
• Innovatio apparently tells the people it threatens that it'll be cheaper to just settle, rather than to even investigate the claims that it's making -- and has told people that the manufacturers in question aren't defending their customers, which is proven false by the lawsuit, which, again, was filed soon after Innovatio popped up on the scene.
• In an attempt to appear more legit, Innovatio claims that the patents in question have "generated in excess of $1 billion in settlements and license fees" to scare small businesses into complying. It leaves out that it appears to be basing this number on the famous broad patent fight settlement between Qualcomm and Broadcom, which was a wide-ranging cross licensing program, that has nothing to do with Innovatio or its specific patents.

There's a lot more in there, but if the allegations by the vendors are accurate, Innovatio's actions are really questionable. Even if people agree that the patents in question are legit, the fact that the vendors have already licensed them makes these actions quite incredible. The lawsuit claims that Innovatio has sent threat letters to an astounding 8,000+ businesses, mostly way too small to be able to understand the details of what's happening.

Defendants prey upon end users that are not involved in the development or supply of the accused technologies, demanding exorbitant licensing amounts that breach numerous obligations on the patents and greatly exceed any notion of reasonableness. In furtherance of their plan, Defendants threaten protracted negotiations with onerous burdens on end users, and offer supposed “discounts” for promptly paying Innovatio without engaging in such negotiations, while making it clear that Innovatio will initiate costly litigation with anyone that does not acquiesce (something it cannot realistically do given the 8000-plus letters sent throughout the U.S.). Under these circumstances, Innovatio circumvents its obligations and illegally obtains and seeks to obtain licensing fees to which it is not entitled, at great detriment to the Plaintiffs in this action, their customers, and the public generally.

Oh yeah, as for that whole "expired patent" thing? That seems especially egregious:

To date, at least ten of the Innovatio Patents have expired, yet those patents continue to be highlighted in Defendants’ threat letters in furtherance of their licensing campaign. Yet Innovatio states to its licensing targets that “Innovatio proposes granting [the licensing target] an upfront, paid-up license for its use under all of 31 of the issued Innovatio Patents,” when those targets have no liability on and therefore no need of such a license to expired patents. For example, on May 9, 2012, almost one year after the ‘771 patent expired and almost six months after the ‘311 patent expired, Innovatio sent a demand letter to [redacted] .... Innovatio did not provide notice of these or its other patents to [redacted] before expiration. Notwithstanding the expiration of these patents and other patents, Innovatio’s May 9, 2012 demand letter stated “[t]he operation and use of any [WLANs that use the IEEE 802.11 communication protocols] by [redacted] constitutes infringement of at least the following Innovatio Patents: . . . U.S. Patent No. 5,940,771 . . . [and] U.S. Patent No. 6,374,311.” .... Yet circumstances here including a failure to comply with 35 U.S.C. §287, confirms that Innovatio cannot assert infringement or recover damages on at least these expired patent claims. On information and belief, Innovatio never disclosed that these patents had expired, or that its remedies were limited, and the purpose behind inclusion of these patents is to inflate the size of Innovatio’s portfolio, instill fear, increase fees and costs to investigate, and force its targets to capitulate promptly to Innovatio’s unlawful demands.

The filing also includes standard claims of non-infringement and invalidity of the patents in question, but the highlighting of these other behaviors by Innovatio are really quite stunning. Even in cases of extreme patent trolling it's pretty rare to see such egregious behavior. Every so often we see RICO claims being used to counter trollish behavior, but they rarely work. However, the details in this case suggest that if a RICO charge is going to stick, this seems like a reasonable case for it to happen.

A few years back, we wrote about one of the (many) nasty and nefarious practices of the pharma industry: ghostwriting scientific "review" articles that pretended to give an overview of research on a certain treatment, but which really promoted a specific treatment, while de-emphasizing the risks. These ghostwritten works were then made to look legitimate by getting a real doctor or academic to put their name on it, and then getting it published, sometimes in somewhat prestigious journals. Back in 2009, there was some movement on this story, as some Senators began investigating this practice... but not much came of it.

However, now, there's a fascinating article over at PLoS, arguing that guest authors who put their names on such ghostwritten papers should be charged with fraud under the RICO Act. The article argues that mere academic sanctions and/or banning such authors from publishing again in certain journals may not be enough. Instead, it suggests that a credible claim can be made in some cases on a RICO class action:

Because a journal’s readers are all harmed by the fraud, they may sue the guest in a civil RICO class action. One of their harms involves the value of the journal subscription. The subscription price represents the value of a year’s worth of articles that conform to the guidelines. Readers would not willingly pay for the fraudulent articles, as shown by the hypothetical example of a guest author who disclaims responsibility for authorship. Whether or not they read the article in question, its publication deprives them of the opportunity to read an article satisfying the journal’s requirements, and thus diminishes the value of their subscription. The harm may be measured by reducing the subscription price in proportion to the space devoted to the ghostwritten article. If the subscription costs $100, and the journal publishes 100 articles per year, it could be said that each subscriber suffers a $1 loss from a fraudulent article. The individual loss is small, but the aggregate loss to all subscribers may be significant—particularly if the cost is trebled under RICO.

While I find the whole practice of bogus pharma marketing of this nature to be ridiculous, I'm still not sure I see a strong RICO claim here. My guess is that a lot of courts would throw this kind of claim out pretty quickly. I agree that something should be done to stop ghostwritten articles, but I'm not convinced that potentially charging them under the RICO Act is going to be the most effective.

We've talked a few times about the rights associated with some George Clinton songs, and allegations of forged signatures to transfer the copyrights. However, we've also noted that Clinton's explanations have often been less than clear as to what he's actually alleging happened. The lack of a simple clear explanation has really limited the ability to determine what happened and if it was really illegal. The latest, however, is that he's filed a lawsuit against his former law firm and it finally lays out some of the specific allegations, though still leaves some questions unanswered.

Specifically, in this lawsuit Clinton claims that his former manager, Nene Montes forged signatures to claim ownership of the copyright on certain Funkadelic master recordings, and back in 2005, he sued Montes, and won. Part of that lawsuit was evidence that Clinton's signatures were forged on some early 80s copyright transfer agreements, using some sort of "cut and paste" method. That's part one. Part II (which still isn't fully fleshed out) was some sort of plan to file a RICO suit against... someone... for the misappropriation of Clinton's rights. Then, Clinton tells of an attempt to file a lawsuit against Universal Music, which appears to have been mucked up by his law firm (whom he's suing now). He lists out a bunch of things he thinks the law firm did wrong, including botching certain filings to extend the statute of limitations, and not really caring about the forensic evidence.

So he's suing the law firm for "negligent misrepresentation," "legal malpractice" and "fraudulent inducement." On the whole, while this new lawsuit provides some additional details, it's still pretty hazy. It's not clear if the law firm really did anything that would be "negligent" or "malpractice." The lawsuit may not have gone smoothly, but such things happen. It's not necessarily malpractice. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised at how weak the claims appear and how far out there some of the allegations are. As THREsq summarizes:

First, Clinton alleges he's been ripped off. Next, those who have ripped him off allegedly pursue their own legal agenda. For example, Lewis is said to have convinced Clinton "to pursue other lawsuits to generate the funds necessary to maintain a civil RICO action."

Finally, having been ripped off and having become victim to legal actions without his full support, Clinton sues for redress.

In sum, Clinton either has an insatiable appetite for suing or he's the victim of never-ending legal fraud -- and frankly, we have no idea which assessment is correct."

I just don't see a real malpractice here. They may not have performed well, but that's not necessarily malpractice.

Tanya Andersen has been fighting back against a bogus RIAA lawsuit for a while, and got some attention earlier this summer when she accused the RIAA of breaking the law with its investigation technique. It's also one of a few cases that have questioned whether or not the RIAA's settlement offer process can be considered illegal racketeering. However, she's now looking to turn her lawsuit into a class action case, covering all of those who have been sued by the RIAA. It may be quite difficult to convince a judge that this really deserves class action status, but if it gets that far, it'll certainly be fun to watch. It's been pretty clear for quite some time that the RIAA is abusing the process by making it cheaper to settle than even to defend your innocence (which sounds mighty similar to the classic shakedown). However, whether or not you can build a class out of those offered settlement deals (or sued) isn't entirely clear. But, if it can actually get somewhere, then it might finally make the RIAA recognize that it's practices are questionable. So far, every time someone has accused them of anything like this, they just try to get out of the case and move on to suing others who are less likely to fight back.