Assignment 11- part 1

Drew Curtis Ted Talk

I will be talking about the Drew Curtis TED talk and specifically the correct ways to fight a patent troll. He begins with his experiences fighting a NPE called Gooseberry Natural Resources. Along with his company, Gooseberry was suing other tech giants including TechCrunch, MSN, and Yahoo. The ridiculous part about this specific case is that the patent should have never been granted in the first place.

This patent was for sending emails with news releases. This sounds like a very obvious and anticipated patent because it is, but somehow Gooseberry (or whoever they bought the patent from) was able to get the patent issued. This patent is literally protecting the right of a single entity to send emails that contain news stories. This patent is so obvious and anticipated that I personally cannot see how anyone working in the US patents office could approve of this.

Instead of rolling over and settling with Gooseberry over this ridiculous patent, Drew Curtis decided to fight it. He eventually won and settled for a grand total of zero dollars. He gives tips for how to fight these. The most memorable of which is the mindset that one does not negotiate with terrorists. You go about this by saying you don’t have any money, and if you do you would rather waste it on legal fees than settling. Next, you actively make this as painful of an experience for them as possible. This is essentially using their tactic against them. Lastly if it actually does come to a court case make sure to fight the challenge of infringement rather than trying to void their patent. Voiding a patent is much harder than proving you did not infringe.