Cloudflare Defeats Patent Troll Sable at Trial
owl writes:
https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-defeats-patent-troll-sable-at-trial
For almost seven years, Cloudflare has been fighting against patent trolls. We've been doing this successfully through the efforts of our own legal team, external counsel, and the extraordinary efforts of people on the Internet looking for prior art (and getting rewarded for it) through our Project Jengo.
While we refuse to pay trolls for their meritless claims, we've been happy to award prizes to Project Jengo participants who help stop the trolls through prior art that invalidates their patents or claims. Project Jengo participants helped us in the past roundly beat the patent troll Blackbird (who subsequently went out of business).
[...] The jury found that Cloudflare did not infringe the patent asserted against Cloudflare by patent trolls Sable IP and Sable Networks.
And while that would have been enough to decide the case by itself, the jury went further and found that Sable's old and broadly-written patent claim was invalid and never should have been granted in the first place-meaning they can no longer assert the claim against anyone else. Since Sable first sued us, we've invalidated significant parts of three Sable patents, hamstringing their ability to bring lawsuits against other companies.
It's worth noting that very few lawsuits ever reach a jury. Most non-lawyers are shocked to learn that only about 1% of civil cases make it to trial, because trials are generally what they see on TV or in film. But professional litigators know that almost all cases are resolved much earlier through procedures that are much less entertaining to watch on screen: written motions, delay, or settlement. A big reason for this is that taking a case to trial-even on simple matters-is extremely costly. In patent cases, that means millions of dollars.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.