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Boca Resort Opens New Front in Assault on Global Patent Holdings' JPEG-on-a-Website Patent

By Troll Tracker

Ray Niro emailed me yesterday, complaining about the personal attacks being made on him in Slashdot. There's a right to free speech, but there's also a line. I don't care if one's address is public information or not: don't publish someone else's personal information in a blog post or in comments. I have had plenty of home addresses available to me on the web - even Niro's - but legal or illegal, I thought it's plain wrong. I hope Slashdot can remove the entries telling people where he and his children live.

He also tells me he now definitely knows who I am. I'm waiting for confirmation, since he didn't tell me my name. Then we'll see. According to him, one of my "friends" turned me in for the cash. Thanks, whoever you are, if true.

Meanwhile, I might as well get rid of a couple of posts I have saved, and was planning to post next week, when I'm not going to be able to post for various reasons. You know, go out with a bang, so to speak!

Global Patent Holdings is facing several new attacks from parties it has sued on its JPEG-on-a-website patent. Boca Resort, the latest to be sued, has filed a motion to dismiss based on the theory that GPH has not and cannot prove direct infringement of its claim by any one entity, and under BMC v. Paymentech, the complaint requires dismissal. It's an interesting strategy, and one that nobody else in the GPH lawsuits has tried yet.

In the GPH v. CDW & Motorola case in the Northern District of Illinois, CDW has moved to stay the litigation pending the ex parte reexamination just filed on the '341 patent, which I discussed here. Click on the Global Patent Holdings label/tag below if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Finally, according to GPH's status report in the Green Bay Packers litigation, both Apple and Kraft have settled, choosing to pay far less than the cost of litigation. The rest of the defendants, including the Green Bay Packers, will continue to fight. Global Patent Holdings has asked for a fact discovery period of 3 months, ending May 1, followed by expert reports on May 15 and June 1, and trial in August 2008. They claim that there is no requirement for a Markman hearing, and that "the reexamination has effectively decided the issues of validity and claim construction." Defendants would like more time, of course.

So when's someone going to refer this case to MDL? Or do we really want three judges making Markman rulings at the same time?

Full post as published by Patent Troll Tracker on January 31, 2008 (boomark / email).