Ars Technica has a writeup detailing Intellectual Ventures' loss in its case against Capitol One. US District Judge Anthony Trenga declared IV's patents "nothing more than the mere manipulation or reorganization of data." Between this outcome and Google's recent success in getting the venue of its battle with Rockstar Consortium changed from East Texas to California, also covered at Ars Technica, dare we hope the tide is turning for patent trolls?

3 comments

Note to patent trolls: (Score: 2)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-04-22 12:26 (#150)

Die, patent trolls, die. This is a public service announcement on behalf of the tech-using world, who is sick of this kind of crap.

Re: Note to patent trolls: (Score: 2, Interesting)

by songofthepogo@pipedot.org on 2014-04-22 14:59 (#153)

Indeed. I find myself in the odd position of rooting for Capitol One. It's heartening and satisfying to learn the judge had the wisdom to see these patents for the nothing they were and to prevent this case from going to a jury trial. Had it gone before a jury, I'm not so confident the outcome would've been as good.

It was interesting to note, in Ars' writeup, that several of IV's much-touted "inventors" are themselves patent lawyers.

Nathan Myhrvold Is Vile (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-04-23 20:12 (#15H)

Everything about him makes me ill, from his time at MS to his patent troll scam to his bloated soulless cookbook to his appearance.

Is there any hope that this failure in court is the beginning of the end for his "IV" extortion scam? I'm a pessimist by nature so I doubt it, but at least there's hope.

Patenting a budget alert and personalized web sites... for heaven's sake.