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Manic Monday

By Troll Tracker

It's February now, and I'm working on the January patent litigation statistics. So I won't have much to post this week. But over the weekend I came up with a couple of posts, for today and tomorrow.

Before I get into things, I wanted to note that Michael Smith is reporting that the Rembrandt v. CibaVision trial started in Marshall last Thursday. Here is my earlier post on that trial.

(Michael Smith is also reporting that Lucent won a defense verdict over Dell in a long-running patent dispute in Sherman. I hear this one is noninfringement. If I am counting right, that's two big defense verdicts for John Desmaris of Kirkland & Ellis in a little over six months in the Eastern District. I noted the other one here).

This month, I'm working on a little different angle for patent litigation statistics. As I have said, I am no longer focusing primarily on the Eastern District of Texas. Sure, interesting cases are still being filed there, but I have started to notice cases being filed in places where you just don't hear about patent cases. I am still experimenting on different ways of presenting the data, and I'm still waiting on the returns from California and New York.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of my highlights for January:

Most Likely To Be MDL'd: VTran Media Technologies. After filing a lawsuit a few months ago in the Eastern District of Texas against Comcast, Charter, Time Warner and Verizon, VTran has been quiet. As I reported here (#118), VTran is asserting patents first involved in a divorce proceeding, and then sold in an Ocean Tomo auction. But last week, VTran went wild, filing three new lawsuits. The first was also in the Eastern District of Texas, against Cebridge Acquisition Corp. (d/b/a Suddenlink Communications, formerly known as Cox). Fair enough. But then VTran sued Bright House Networks, Knology Inc., and Mediacom Communications Corp. in Huntsville, in the Northern District of Alabama. The next day, VTran sued Atlantic Broadband Finance, Cablevision, and MetroCast Cablevision of New Hampshire in Harrisburg, in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. With four lawsuits in three judicial districts against eleven companies, I'd say it's time to whip out those MDL rules.

2/1 Late Morning Update: Make that five lawsuits in four judicial districts against fifteen companies. I missed one VTran filed in Philadelphia against Armstrong Utilities, Blue Ridge Communications, RCN Corp, and Service Electric Television.

Bloated Case Award: This award goes to Source Inc., who sued 38 defendants in one case in the Eastern District of Texas. You can see the list of the 38 defendants, including JP Morgan and US Bank, on this Affiliate Marketing blog. The patent-in-suit is RE36,116 (see it here, including in red the changes made in the reissue). The inventor listed is Patrick D. McCarthy of Louisville, Kentucky. Source, Inc. has a website touting its "LoyaltyShare" program. It looks like Source has a whole team -- in the Central District of California, mind you; it doesn't appear to be a pure patent troll. McCarthy doesn't appear to be listed among the executives. This blog not only has a link to the complaint, but has some reactions from those sued and asks some good questions.

More tomorrow.

Full post as published by Patent Troll Tracker on February 04, 2008 (boomark / email).