NewEgg Selling Anti-Patent Troll T-Shirts
from the nicely-done dept
While lots of companies hate patent trolls, few have gone quite as far as NewEgg to flat out declare very publicly that they will never settle with a patent troll. While this has lead to some lawsuits, the strategy seems to be working for the company, and we wonder why more companies don’t do the same. Since many trolls just want companies to settle quickly, having a reputation as a fighter should (hopefully) lead those trolls to stay away.
Either way, it appears that NewEgg has figured that some of its loyal customers might want to get in on the fight as well, and are now offering an anti-patent troll t-shirt which can be purchased on their site, of course.
The proceeds of Newegg’s new T-shirt will go to fighting said patent trolls in court. The shirt warns victims not to settle in court — that’s how patent trolls get all of their money.
“We’ve been proudly kicking patent trolls’ asses for eight years — it’s terrible what they’re doing to small companies that can’t defend themselves,” Lee Cheng, Newegg’s chief legal officer, told The Huffington Post. “It’s the [patent] litigation that’s kicking everyone’s butt. The only thing we can do is fight the patent itself.”
Nicely done. Good to see companies being more and more public about the harm that patents do.
Filed Under: lee cheng, patent trolls, patents, t-shirts
Companies: newegg
Comments on “NewEgg Selling Anti-Patent Troll T-Shirts”
Hah! Bought one!
thanks
Thanks. I just bought one, too!
Bad patents
Sorry, can’t comment now. Too busy drafting a cease-and-desist regarding the new patent I just bought for A Method of Selling Anti-Patent Troll t-shirts. 😉
Re: Bad patents
On the internet
Size selection
The supplied link took me to the small item. Other sizes can be found here:
http://www.newegg.com/Newegg-Newegg-Gear/BrandSubCat/ID-1552-805
Patent Trolls
Patent Trolls really annoy me. I also hate it when companies like Apple and Samsung just constantly sue each other!
Maybe they should concentrate on actually being a good store again instead of riding on their used up name and trying to look cool, again… *sigh*
Priorities. They have them backwards.
Re: Re:
I get emails every day from NewEgg not one of these promotions mentioned anti-patent troll t-shirts. In fact if it was not for Techdirt I would have not known about this.
I’ve had nothing but good experience with Newegg. I’ve bought a few things that did not work the way they should and each and every time Newegg and their vendors went out of their way to make either get it working or refund me my money.
The fact that they are bringing to light patent problems is not backwards as you claim and they certainly haven’t made it a focus/priority of their business. It’s nice to see a company have some balls for once and fight these trolling asshats. So I commend them not condemn them.
Re: Re: Re:
Taking RMA hostage because you didn’t ship in the original box, offering products they (or the maker) cannot honor the warranty of, shipping in huge boxes without any sort of packing material, boxes opened up, fake CPUs… you name it, they do it. It’s one of the worst companies out there. Now take any product, go on an indexer, and find it cheaper elsewhere.
That being said, apparently Canadians cannot show their support either, since it’s not available here. Their own product not available. Add that to the list. That’s how awesome they are.
I also find it hard to believe they did not advertise it. I doubt some random kid searching for troll shirts on newegg saw this and decided to contact whatever blog/news outlet reported on this first.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“Taking RMA hostage because you didn’t ship in the original box”
What do you mean by original box? If you’re talking about the products box, not the shipping box, then I would say you didn’t return everything that came with the product you purchased.
I have personally had to RMA things with Newegg before, and have never had any problems. I would say they bent themselves over backwards to help take care of my problem.
I’ve also purchased probably near 100 different computer parts from them (including half a dozen CPU’s), and never seen any of the other problems you’re talking about here.
It sounds like you made a mistake on an RMA (not returning everything that came with the product you’re sending back) and don’t want to accept that it was your mistake.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
lol. Nice try, A for effort.
When you send a defective product, and request a replacement, who the hell cares if it’s in original box or not? It’s not a legal requirement to hold on to the original box until the warranty expire. But newegg, who bend over backwards to make sure you have the worse experience possible, will literally take your product hostage. They will refuse to swap boxes, like any decent store with horrible customer service would. They refuse to refund you, even though they have the product in hand. Down the line, you have to go through consumer protection to get your money back, and it takes close to a year. All because that excellent company refused to use basic common sense.
And no, it wasn’t me. it was a co-worker. I was however sold a product which they could not, legally, offer any type of warranty for. Again, had to go through consumer protection because that box full of defective awesome could not be repaired, replaced, or fixed.
They also blamed a friend for having put in a bad address, when they shipped plenty of times to that address before, and it’s tied to paypal and they won’t ship to unverified accounts. He had to go through paypal to get a refund because they refused to refund, even though they admitted to never having shipped the product.
Newegg lost both consumer protection cases, even after pleading “it’s not our fault”, and had to reimburse 100% + damages.
Did you ever buy a refurbished product only to have it shipped to you in a huge box with no protection, the electronics bouncing around in the box freely, only to have to pay to ship back and restock because they could not pack the product properly? I have. Ended up costing me 35$ to get nothing at all.
Did you find an indexer to find the same products cheaper yet? Did you browse their forums for complaints/problems? Did you google for horror stories? There are so many…
So yeah, it must be my mistake and I refuse to accept it. Good try. Really. My bad… for every buying there. Get real and stop playing the fanboy.
Re: Re:
What’s wrong with Newegg? They still have the best online store that I know of for sorting through electronic components.
Try putting together a computer by choosing components on Amazon. shudder
Don’t settle with trolls.
Also:
Don’t pay kidnapping ransoms.
Don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Don’t pay Somali pirates.
Don’t buy RIAA or MPAA products.
There are always at least two sides to every story, and Newegg’s is no different.
For another perspective, consider the following reproduced at IPWatchdog:
At a CES meeting in Las Vegas, Newegg?s patent counsel even suggested ?criminalizing patent trolling.? And this comes from a company that is a notorious serial infringer of United States patents, having been sued for patent infringement by manufacturing and non-manufacturing entities more than 30 times in the last five years. Newegg?s work force is primarily Chinese and has been accused by three of its former employees of requiring them to hack into U.S. competitors? websites to gain unfair competitive advantages. Yet, these are the same people that now encourage our Congress and the FTC to punish individual inventors and their companies simply for asserting United States patents against entities they believe infringe. These companies have done a good job portraying themselves as victims and inventors as villains. But, just the opposite is true.
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hahaha… good one. Patent trolls trying to play the victim in all of this. hahaha… trying to portray NewEgg as the aggressor. hahaha… just can’t stop laughing at the fantasy world of trolls. Seriously it’s disgusting that NewEgg had to defend itself against 30 trolls. If NewEgg was in the wrong then it wouldn’t be winning the cases at trial. hahaha…
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Ah, but here’s the kicker, how many of those 30 patents were valid, reasonable patents, and how many of them were ridiculously overbroad, should-never-have-been-granted patents?
You’ll forgive me if I take that comment with a giant block of salt, as it sounds remarkably like a patent troll or someone defending them trying to demonize a company that stood up to them.
Re: Re: Re:
Considering that Newegg has apparently won 3 patent cases this year, it maxes out at 27. A cursory check of google turns up another patent case against Newegg amongst others that was thrown out last year. So maxes out at 26. That’s assuming he’s not confusing “sued for infringing 30 patents” with “sued 30 different times for infringing patents.”
I also don’t lend much weight to accusations of former employees until their claims are either verified by other sources, or until their claims are sustained in a court of law. When you have 2500 employees, it’s easy to end up with some crazy, disgruntled ones that sue you after you fire them. Neither has yet to happen in this instance.