I hope everyone had a fantastic spring break! This week's assignment was to look at silly patents that are stupid, crazy, and/or funny. The case example I will be using for my silly patent regards Life360, a family networking and communication service, and its CEO Chris Hulls.
Life360 CEO, Chris Hulls, details that patent trolls are a known problem, but that people/firms don't often fight back because they would rather settle the case before paying high licensing fees for going to court. Hulls' company received $50 million in financing -- the same week that they were attacked by Advanced Ground Information Systems Inc. for patent infringement. A coincidence -- I think not. In this case, Life360 did not settle, and instead went to court where they won after non-infringement was declared. For Hulls, he took it to court as a matter of principle, in addition to a couple of other reasons.
As detailed, many lawyers and legal advisors encourage the defendant to avoid large legal costs by settling the case before it goes to court. However, if a company/CEO keeps settling, they can be perceived as weak and easily pushed over. Therefore, in order to solidify a strong grounding and position, companies should push against patent trolls to show they are forces to be reckoned with. Furthermore, Life360 were slapped with two more patent troll cases following this one, but the trolls were soon turned around following Life360's strong defense.
Patent trolls, in general, are used to defendants that keep quiet and settle. However, negative media for the patent trolls is also a really strong method for fighting these types of cases. in this example, Chris Hulls portrayed the patent trolls in a negative light to the media so that the public could be notified of their unjust actions.
Cooperation with the community and other businesses is also essential to successfully fighting a patent troll case. In the Life360 example, Hulls collected all of the prior art available with the technology community in order to effectively draw attention to the case. Cooperation with other companies and startups allowed Life360 to seem stronger than just one company, and strengthened their position especially against future patent trollers.
I found this Life360 case example to be of great interest, and I look forward to reading your thoughts!
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