Admitted Patent Troll Finds The Phrase 'Shell Entity' Offensive
from the oh-really? dept
You may recall last year that we wrote about a patent lawsuit where the judge banned the use of the word "patent troll." That seemed reasonable enough, since it's clearly a negatively loaded phrase. However, it looks like some patent attorneys are trying to go even further with that concept. Ray Niro, in defending Scott Harris (who, you may recall, licensed his own patents to be used in lawsuits against his own firms' clients), is demanding that the phrase "shell entities" not be used either, claiming that they, too, are used negatively. That's because, like so many patent holders these days, Harris used shell companies to hold the patents and to sue companies. Of course, "shell entities" is a descriptive term, not one that is clearly designed as an insult like "patent troll."Besides, this seems quite rich, coming in defense of Harris, who used to own the website ImAPatentTroll.com. And, indeed, the lawyers on the other side of the case wasted no time in pointing this out:
Additionally, the Motion to Strike asserts that the term 'shell entity' is synonymous, in this context, with the term "patent troll." Significantly, Mr. Harris, even while at Fish & Richardson, sponsored a website, imapatenttroll.com, in which he proudly and openly referred to himself as a "patent troll." Truth is an absolute defense.Separately, it is also rather amusing to see patent system defenders get upset about the phrase "patent trolls" when they're so quick to refer to any sort of patent reform as "patent deform", companies in favor of patent reform "The Piracy Coalition," while, of course, insisting that any individual in favor of patent reform a "shill."
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Filed Under: lawsuits, offensive words, patent trolls, patents, ray niro, scott harris, shell entity
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stop the shilling!!!
By the way, inventors do not as a whole object to all changes to the patent system. The problem is that most all the present changes as embodied in the Patent Reform Bill do not address what we perceive as true problems, but will instead create many. All this talk of bad patents is a hoax invented (that’s the closest they come to inventing these days) by some large tech firms as a way to in effect legalize theft. The changes they propose are therefore not reform, but deform.
What is truly amusing is that the big firms and their lackeys continue to use the slang “patent troll” even when they don’t even seem to know what it means. Now that, is funny.
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