I just got off the phone today with Lauren Castle, Bloomberg Law correspondent covering IP Law. We had a lively discussion about the trends of patent law moving from simply filing patents and checking for infringements to a troubling escalation of full litigation to protect our clients' property.  

We were joined on the call by inventors and clients of our firm; Swamy Narayanaswamy, inventor of numerous patents with PacSec3; Mark Jeff Reed; inventor of Traxcell Technologies, LLC patents and manager of the company; Andy Ling, co-manager of AML IP, LLC; Carlos Gorrichategui, manager and broker of DynaIP Deals; and, Luis Ortiz, manager and inventor with Ortiz & Associates.  

The inventors discussed with Lauren the difficulties they are experiencing paying large fees for patents, having the patent granted, and then when they approach corporations to try and commercialize their product, the real problems begin:  

“We came up with an invention in the network security space that required us to talk to router companies, it's a very technical invention…” says Swamy Narayanaswamy with PacSec3.  “So, we ended up having a very long conversation with router companies where we disclosed so many details to them about how this was and at various points, we would think how our life was changing, hey they're going to do something with our work. The things that we have to disclose are highly detailed things, proprietary things that we have to tell them so they can evaluate the validity to it…at the end of a long cycle we can handle a yes, everybody can handle a yes, everyone knows how to handle a no- you lick your wounds and you move on, but silence is hard to learn from. They would just keep us going keep us going…Then when we see infringements going on, possible infringements it's not like we can band together, there's no organization that supports us, the fact that we were able to reach Bill made a difference and the settlements that he has been able to give us have been instrumental for us, recovering all the monies that we invested in this.”   

Our firm has experienced in many of these cases recently, an attempt from these big corporations to attack our lawyers personally by trying to push through court sanctions and attacking the methodology of how we run our patent plaintiff practice.    

Andy Ling of AML IP explains why;  “The big thing you're seeing with these sanctions that Bill has personally seen in his firm and even us, is as small business owners and inventors, is meant to cause a chilling effect by these bigger entities, they want a chilling effect so that you won't represent a small company in their fight against the big companies.”  

Carlos Gorrichategui manager of DynaIP Deals says the demand for representation is much greater than the lawyers who are available to do this kind of work, a recent trend he calls deeply troubling: “We get approached by at least 2-5 inventors every day. And then that turns out to be 20-50 new inventors every month, but we can only... afford to take one… And all of the inventors that we talk to, once they get sanctioned, they don't want to invent anymore, they are done. They are terrified because they can only get hit once so if that's what it does to an inventor, there's not going to be any inventors.”  

At Ramey LLP, we stand for fostering innovation.  We stand for what the patent system is meant to do.  We strive to provide representation for those who are currently underrepresented in the courts. The cost of litigation is the biggest barrier to people who want to enforce their IP rights and that is what our firm tries to address.