A U.S. jury on Friday awarded Optis Wireless Technology $300 million in damages after a second patent trial versus Apple.
In April, U.S. District Court Judge Rodney Gilstrap threw out a $506.2 million patent damages award against Apple after ruling the company should have been able to argue that the owner of the patent, Optis Wireless Technology, was making unfair royalty demands, although the judge refused to throw out the liability finding.
In a statement, Apple said: “Optis makes no products and its sole business is to sue companies using patents they accumulate. We will continue to defend against their attempts to extract unreasonable payments for patents they acquire.”
MacDailyNews Take: Patent trolls are an unrelenting scourge.
Yes, patent trolls are a scourge. But in the end they still own the patent rights, correct? If so, you have to either develop it your own way, or pay them…before or after.
Technically, sure, Company X buys a bunch of patents from Company C who went out of business or just sold them for cash. they may have a right to defend them, but, it’s still wrong. They did nothing to develop the process or concept of what was patented, they just took it over and then more than likely pursue deep pocket companies that they think maybe using them, and that they can extort for large fees… its just a ripoff.
The patent laws needs to change, if the company that developed and patented whatever the patent was for is gone, their work goes into the public domain and has no more value..
I can see it now, large corps forcing smaller companies with patents they want out of business to make those patents ‘public domain’… 😛 Probably cheaper than litigation.
Didn’t Apple also have the choice to buy them, when they went on sale