This stupid patent was going to be used to sue hundreds of small businesses
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's most recent "Stupid Patent of the Month" highlights the importance of IPRs-patent reviews that can knock out bad patents quickly and relatively cheaply.
US Patent No. 6,738,155 was originally filed in 1999 and assigned to the Banta Corporation, a provider of printing and supply chain management services. Banta was acquired by R.R. Donnelly in 2006, and R.R. Donnelly handed off the '155 patent to a patent-holding company called CTP Innovations in 2013. More correctly, Donnelly tried to hand off the patent-more on that in a bit.
The patent claims to cover a "printing and publishing system" that uses "a communication network." Amazing, right? But in 1999, it was very easy to get software patents.
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