Patent Law

Feeling Taken

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Slapped with millions in fees over failed patent litigation, E-Pass has served a lawsuit on its former lawyers: primary counsel Moses & Singer, along with local counsel Squire Sanders & Dempsey. New counsel James Rosen of Rosen Saba: "In advising E-Pass to file and maintain their patent infringement claim, they spent $10 million in legal fees and costs without a sound basis to make the elemental case of patent infringement." No mention was made of personal responsibility for one's own actions.

Not only did E-Pass' patent suit righteously rile Northern California District Judge D. Lowell Jensen, who threw the case out after slugging E-Pass with sanctions and fees, but the CAFC piled it on upon appeal. A real stinker for the books from the get-go to the last lick.

The angry act-out against its own attorneys was filed in January, but E-Pass didn't uncork with service until after the CAFC reamed them royally. Singled out were Stephen Weiss of Moses & Singer, and Mark Dosker of Squire Sanders.

Andrew Oliver of Townsend and Townsend and Crew, who represented the accused and aggrieved:  "I felt that it was nice that the judges held the attorneys jointly and severally liable."

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on March 25, 2009 (boomark / email).