Being sued, in East Texas, for using the Google Play Store [video]

A comment from a reddit thread states: The gist behind this case is that the Judge&#x27;s son owns patent law firm in East Texas where they often represent both sides. This guy doesn&#x27;t live in East Texas. However, the dad lets these stupid cases into the town to bring business to his son. Really shady.<p>I agree with clavelle&#x27;s comment. It&#x27;s not so much the laws, but the system that allows this to occur.<p>Link here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Android&#x2F;comments&#x2F;4n08jj&#x2F;developer_is_being_sued_for_using_the_google_play&#x2F;d405cbn" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Android&#x2F;comments&#x2F;4n08jj&#x2F;developer_i...</a>

Patent trolling issues aside (they&#x27;re valid, but discussed and I&#x27;m just another one of the &quot;software patents suck guys&quot;), I&#x27;m surprised that Google doesn&#x27;t provide protection for developers using the Play Store. It&#x27;s a very critical service for developers writing code for Android -- though it&#x27;s not <i>always required</i> it is if you want your app to be seen.<p>They certainly don&#x27;t have to and I&#x27;m not sure if Apple or Microsoft do or not for their equivalents, but I know Microsoft offers patent indemnification for a lot of things these days. It would be in Google&#x27;s best interest to have a patent indemnification policy for Google Play store.<p>I&#x27;d love to know what the actual numbers look like but I&#x27;d be willing to bet that the costs are extremely low since it works as a deterrent to these kinds of lawsuits. Patent trolls go after these lone developers because they&#x27;ll settle rather than incur the cost. It&#x27;s an easy buck. This guy didn&#x27;t make Google Play, he didn&#x27;t <i>write the code that &quot;supposedly&quot; infringed on the patent</i>. He simply <i>used</i> it because that&#x27;s the only way <i>for practical purposes</i> to publish an Android app. And since the patent covers a large set of features that Play uses for licensing, he couldn&#x27;t have published through Play and <i>not</i> infringed in the eyes of Uniloc. The law allows anyone in the chain (including the guy playing with the Flight Simulator) to be sued for infringement, but they&#x27;d be very unlikely to do this kind of garbage if they knew Google would bring their legal team into the fold. By <i>not</i> protecting their developers, Google has a deterrent to people using their platform.

I find it oddly funny how Google hasn&#x27;t stepped in to support their &quot;clients&quot;, I&#x27;d think they&#x27;d help shutdown patent trolls so developers can continue to improve and distribute applications

So, no attempts to bring Davis in front of the Texas BAR association for unethical practices?<p>I&#x27;m also curious why numerous developers have not demanded an Insurance Protection Product &#x2F; Plan that would take a premium in return for subrogation (defense) if a frivolous Patent Suit is filed. I&#x27;m rather certain the market exists and while it may be for larger businesses or players, developers forming a Mutual Company and writing on some big name AM Best A paper (or even going to Lloyds) could be helpful.<p>Anybody know of such an organization or idea?<p>I guess my line of thinking here is that &quot;Yes, this is totally unfair and rigged&quot; and then move on to &quot;How do I work around the issues, at least to a limited extent, to avoid these pitfalls?&quot; Sign me up for reform, sure, I&#x27;m all for it. Until then, I don&#x27;t like banging my head against walls, I prefer to figure out ways around or over them.

Also: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=d8XknFl1l_8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=d8XknFl1l_8</a><p>He visits East Texas and shows that the &#x27;offices&#x27; of the &#x27;companies&#x27; that hold each patent are empty shells.

The patent in the video is US 6857067. Claims 1, 20, 22, 30, 31, 67, 107, and 108 were invalidated by the Patent Office in an administrative proceeding, but claims 21 and 22 survived that particular challenge. See IPR2013-00391, Final Decision. Cost for these challenges is around $300k (and often much less for troll suits), rather than the $2-5 million that is typically quoted for district court cases.

Couldn&#x27;t Google offer defense in such cases for its users? Every case is the same so it shouldn&#x27;t even be that expensive (I guess, IANAL), and it would discourage future cases because the troll would know he will have to fight against Google.

Can these services just be disabled in East Texas to avoid their jurisdiction? At the very least, it would force the patent trolls into more neutral territory.

Here&#x27;s a vid from the same guy last year: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8</a><p>He had just won a three year litigation with the same group, after which they pointed out that even though he had won a battle, they had enough BS patents to keep him in court for several lifetimes. He is currently in year 4 out of a projected 450.

I happened to read this article about recusal recently and I don&#x27;t understand how some of these allegations wouldn&#x27;t be explicit grounds for recusal, specifically the son being a lawyer with a firm that tries cases in the father&#x27;s court.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;popehat.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;06&#x2F;lawsplainer-when-must-federal-judges-recuse-themselves-anyway&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;popehat.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;06&#x2F;lawsplainer-when-must-federal...</a> Article is in the context of Trump, but you needn&#x27;t let that turn you off.

i was the victim of a patent trolling company called acacia research. they sent me a bunch of legal threats but had my name spelled incorrectly, which happened to give away who had sold my info to them(in exchange for dropping the case a certain entity traded all of their affiliates info to acacia). i was 19 at the time and laughed it off. nothing ever came of it, but in hindsight it certainly wasn&#x27;t a laughing matter. in the end i think someone staged a pretty good defense and crushed their patent.

Judge Davis retired May 15, 2015<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Leonard_Davis_(judge)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Leonard_Davis_(judge)</a>

Is there a unified place one can donate to that people think is the best way to put some money toward real change in the system? I&#x27;m happy to send some money to the EFF, but I&#x27;d up that 100 times if I knew it was going 100% toward killing patent trolls and I thought it was the best organization to fight that fight.

I thought we already squashed this shit: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;26&#x2F;uniloc-patent-troll-defeated&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;26&#x2F;uniloc-patent-troll-defea...</a>

Really seems like Google&#x2F;Apple should make some kind of statement calling out how ridiculous these lawsuits are.

The only way you can deal with trolls is to slay them. Attribution of costs does not work. Most trolls consist of lawyers who create paper work and file it. They do not hire outside law firms at $500+ per hour - the ones their victims are forced to hire. The only tru costs they have are the file fees, which East Texas keeps low. That town is totally a parasitic town and they award wins to trolls to keep the town in cash that trickles down.<p>I say slay the trolls, slay the judges, slay them all - by legal means if possible. I would love to find an old Texas law that allows trial by combat with no substitutions...

I&#x27;m no advocate of violence but this makes you wonder about the ethics of beating such guys up. The legal system seems pointless.

It&#x27;s good to raise awareness, especially on the users of the play store (I mean, the developers).<p>For example I learned a lot from this video: in case I decided to sell an app on any store, I&#x27;d better contact my lawyer to get advised on where and how to incorporate my company.<p>I don&#x27;t know if it can be easily resolved by incorporating in another country, but the difficulties of an international litigation should discourage trolls.

A while back, I did some research into patent trolls, and came across the history of NPE firms that do DPA (defensive patent aggregation), like RPX [0]. What surprised me from a game theoretical perspective was how murky things got. These situations can be tough on entrepreneurs and seem to create space for said entrepreneur to purchase protection in the form of patent aggregation to mitigate against potential devastation caused by this. On one hand, I can see how it can amount to a protection racket. On the other hand, the existence of patents and how they relate to property are pretty complex. This TechCrunch article about RPX does a good job of going into further detail about this, but truth be told, I am even more on the fence after reading this. I agree that patent reform would be necessary to rectify this situation, but in the meantime, I can&#x27;t think of a better alternative. The cynic inside me can&#x27;t help but think that business is always it&#x27;s own kind of war, sadly.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;RPX_Corporation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;RPX_Corporation</a> [1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2008&#x2F;11&#x2F;24&#x2F;is-rpxs-defensive-patent-aggregation-simply-patent-extortion-by-another-name&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2008&#x2F;11&#x2F;24&#x2F;is-rpxs-defensive-patent-ag...</a>

What about making an &quot;anti patent troll&quot; website that will allow users to share their legal approaches and documents and the rest of the defense materials. Some of them may be reusable. I guess it should significantly limit the legal costs for everyone and improve their position against trolls, right?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ric_Richardson" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ric_Richardson</a><p>&quot;Ric Richardson is an Australian inventor. He is the holder of multiple granted patents including the Uniloc patent US5490216 and the Logarex patent 6400293. Although he spent twelve years in California to promote and develop products produced by Uniloc, Richardson grew up in Sydney and currently resides just outside Byron Bay.<p>He is the founder of Uniloc, a company based on the technology he first patented in 1992.&quot;<p>Here&#x27;s his picture from the Uniloc web site: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;uniloc.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2010&#x2F;08&#x2F;ricrichardson.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;uniloc.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2010&#x2F;08&#x2F;ricrichardson.p...</a><p>He&#x27;s apparently insanely talented, having &quot;invented&quot; the panic button, the visual voice recorder, the 3G skype phone, the secure browser, the universal database, the carbon scrubber, the book dispensor, &quot;media objects&quot;, the &quot;Internet Computer&quot;, QR Codes, DRM, a password replacement system, TV muting, and several dozen other devices, just in the past 16 years alone.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sites.google.com&#x2F;site&#x2F;ricricho&#x2F;ric-s-inventions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sites.google.com&#x2F;site&#x2F;ricricho&#x2F;ric-s-inventions</a>

What to do about this?<p>I&#x27;m told, you may be put to trial in East Texas, if you&#x27;re selling your goods or services there. – So, why not stop selling to East Texas and let them settle the resulting collision of interests themselves?

Yet another example of the consumer software industry being completely impotent when it comes to defending itself.<p>Patent trolls file these frivolous lawsuits because they make millions and suffer zero consequences for their actions. Why? Because there is no industry trade group representing the software industry with any sort of teeth. They know software developers have money, and they know software developers are absurdly weak when it comes to defending themselves. Software developers are easy prey.<p>Other than the EFF who is out there to represent us with any measure of real leverage over the legal process? Who is out there with the muscle to make patent trolls and software unfriendly lawmakers have second thoughts when targeting developers?<p>With no lobbies or trade associations with any sort of power out there representing consumer software, anyone with even minor influence over government can simply walk all over software developers, again and again and again. The consumer software industry has enormous amounts of cash at it&#x27;s disposal, surely a few cash rich companies can pool enough resources together to kick off a trade association worthy of punching back, hard

Uniloc has this piece of Google Maps screenshot hosted at their web server. Isn&#x27;t this not allowed? <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.uniloc.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2010&#x2F;08&#x2F;Screen-shot-2010-08-05-at-10.11.47-AM-300x248.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.uniloc.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2010&#x2F;08&#x2F;Screen-shot...</a>

While I applaud what Austin Meyer is doing by raising awareness about patent trolls, does anyone here but me wish that the content had been made available in some sort of text medium instead? I can&#x27;t think of any important parts of the video that couldn&#x27;t have been reasonably conveyed through the use of text.

Interestingly, the login button doesn&#x27;t even work at uniloc.com, and if you look in the source, there&#x27;s a ton of commented-out paragraphs that say stuff like &quot;&lt;h2&gt;The spirit of innovation is alive and well at Uniloc.&lt;&#x2F;h2&gt;&quot;.

How has East Texas not been shut down already?

One practical thing one could do is to forward this to an influential tech journalist, ideally to a mainstream publication that has a technology section, like CNN or WSJ.

Someone really needs to create a patent that defines methods of patent trolling, so every time one of these scumbags starts a lawsuit you can sue them.

How about a patent about placing the right foot into a solid hollow object with three to four cylinder shaped objects (with low height to radius ratio) separating that hollow object from the surface of the earth - yeah - and well, then driving with it ... will have to think about how to make that sound smart and original.<p>How is this even for real - why is Google not putting an end to it?

Would incorporating your tech company in England instead of the USA protect your company from these patent troll lawsuits? It&#x27;s extremely easy to start a company based in England, even as a US citizen living in the USA. With the patent trolling this out of control in the US at the moment, would basing your company abroad offer you any protection?

There&#x27;s only so far a justice system can get dysfunctional before people say fukitall and it looses its legitimacy. It&#x27;s not just patents, civil forfeiture is another thing that comes to mind and I&#x27;m sure there more.<p>I imagine if in future somebody gets such a patent lawsuit, they&#x27;d just rip up the letter and throw it away. Police comes to carry out court orders because they decided in absence? &quot;Sorry officer, the reason you&#x27;re here is just patent bullshit.&quot; - &quot;Oh well, I won&#x27;t lift a finger for these idiots. Sorry for bothering you, have a nice day!&quot;<p>Or a more extreme reaction: already in this thread, a couple of people are fantasizing about violence, hiring a hitman and so on. I realize it is mostly meant jokingly, but self-justice is another effect of a justice system that&#x27;s lost legitimacy.<p>Rule-of-law is a great thing to have, but it only works if these laws are somewhat reasonable and in accord with peoples moral values...

Here&#x27;s written coverage of the situation in case you don&#x27;t have time to watch the video: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technobuffalo.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;07&#x2F;x-plane-flight-simulator-patent-troll-uniloc&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technobuffalo.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;07&#x2F;x-plane-flight-simul...</a>

The American patent system is a dead weight drag on the American software economy. The quality of software patents is atrocious, and the value of the tiny fraction of good patents in this space does not make up for the Billions lost to trolls and the costs of administering the system.

Judge Leonard Davis presides over a large amount of these &quot;Patent Troll&quot; cases, and his son (!!) Bo Davis is a Lawyer who represents these very same Patent Trolls in court!<p>If that&#x27;s not a racket, I don&#x27;t know what is.

Question: Is a lot of the backend supposed to be available through going directly to the wp-content? If you go to uniloc.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;, there&#x27;s backups, images, plugins, and even a .sql file...

How about creating a petition here about this issue and we all sign it?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;petitions.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;petitions.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;</a>

Will Peter Thiel help? These trolls are actually destroying lives.

For all the entrepreneurs looking for a problem to solve, here it is: Create a company&#x2F;product that automates legal services (start with the niche case for defending against Patent Trolls): then offer it as a service, say with a flat fee. If the cost of this service is on the order of hundreds of dollars, say less than 500$, it should solve the problem of frivolous law suits. This sub-niche is huge!

If Google won&#x27;t step in and litigate the patent trolls into poverty, ruining everyone&#x27;s life who is involved and possibly even promising to ruin their children&#x27;s and grandchildren&#x27;s lives long after the actual patent trolls are dead...<p>that would stop it.<p>But in the meantime, guess I&#x27;ll just be writing webapps.

The docket for the lawsuit in question is here:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.plainsite.org&#x2F;dockets&#x2F;sknqayqz&#x2F;texas-eastern-district-court&#x2F;uniloc-usa-inc-et-al-v-laminar-research-llc&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.plainsite.org&#x2F;dockets&#x2F;sknqayqz&#x2F;texas-eastern-dist...</a>

Someone patent &quot;the idea of having a patent&quot; and Sue these companies in Hawaii.

Somehow this all seems illegal. I&#x27;m not that familiar with the US law so can somebody explain if the defendant can claim that the judge has a conflict of interest and is not fit to handle the case because his son profits from it?

I live less than an hour from Marshall, TX. Maybe an hour and a half from Tyler, TX. I&#x27;d love to help in any way I could, but since I&#x27;m not a lawyer I bet anything I could do is slim to nothing.

Glad to see he won.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NbyW_QS8Ef8</a>

OK HN, get out there and find this man some prior art so we can all just put this company out of business...

If Peter Thiel could do it, why not Google? It does not cost much for Google to invalidate the patent.

&quot;... defend myself for committing the crime of ...&quot;<p>But a lawsuit is a civil case, not a criminal case, right?

&quot;I&#x27;m not here to raise awareness! Ok, yes, maybe that&#x27;s what I&#x27;m doing.&quot;

Is the process of filing a patent patented?

As angry as this video makes me, I&#x27;d point out that we&#x27;ve been making some progress in the fight against trolls. Yes, they&#x27;re still a problem, but some things that have weakened them:<p>The Supreme Court&#x27;s ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank, which dealt a fatal blow to a lot of software patents out there (especially the awful, vague and overly broad patents that trolls love so much). The Supreme Court reaffirmed that merely &quot;adding a generic computer to perform generic computer functions&quot; does not make an otherwise abstract idea patentable. [0] This ruling helps get rid of cases earlier. While it doesn&#x27;t kill off patent litigation, it makes it easier for us to fight low-quality assertions. More importantly, this puts a tougher filter for prosecution of new patent applications, the vast majority of which are dumb and overly broad.<p>Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings, which are rather expensive (average $278,000) [1], but are much cheaper than litigation. Third parties can use IPRs to challenge patent claims (patentability) based on prior art patents and publications. In the case of Austin Meyer&#x27;s patent defense, many of the patent claims were invalidated through this kind of proceeding, and petitioned by a consortium (Distinctive Developments, Ltd., Electronic Arts Inc., Gameloft S.E., Halfbrick Studios Pty Ltd., Laminar Research LLC, Mojang AB and Square Enix, Inc.). [2]<p>Heightened pleading standards. Before December 2015, it used to be that trolls could sue dozens of companies with cookie-cutter complaints, citing no real facts, and put on pressure for settlements by threatening lengthy and costly discovery proceedings. But thanks to decisions in Iqbal&#x2F;Twombly, complaints must plead facts and recite aspects of the accused product that are alleged to infringe. This butchers the spam lawsuit tactic, and the day before this went into effect, trolls filed a one day record for new suits. [3] Shameful, yes, but it&#x27;s helped clarify standards governing motions to dismiss.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;files&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;19&#x2F;alice-corp._v._cls-bank_opinion.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;files&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;19&#x2F;alice-corp._v._cls-bank...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rpxcorp.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;02&#x2F;iprs-reality-amid-the-pyrotechnics&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rpxcorp.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;02&#x2F;iprs-reality-amid-the-pyr...</a><p>[2] search patent number 6857067 and document 37 at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ptabtrials.uspto.gov" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ptabtrials.uspto.gov</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;12&#x2F;02&#x2F;patent-lawsuit-record&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;12&#x2F;02&#x2F;patent-lawsuit-record&#x2F;</a>

WTF! This is ridiculous. later these people might start sue people use cell phone.

People will mention the problem with patents but I see another, perhaps bigger, problem:<p>We do not have equal access to our judicial system in the United States.<p>If you have money, you have the power to legally hold people with less over a barrel. That exploitable inequality is poison for a well functioning society. That is the problem that needs solving.

Welcome to america

TLDW - Patent troll sues Xplane creator after he migrated his app to the Google play store. They claim they own the general idea of the Google play store. Law firms create these cases for billable hours for their lawyers and some of their parent judges in Texas. Patent trolls and law firms in the end want to receive a settlement by targeting app creators and not Google themselves who are well equipped to defend themselves, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thepatentscam.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thepatentscam.com&#x2F;</a> .

Someone with money and lawyers needs to sue the state of Texas for allowing a father and son duo to practice in such a conflict of interest fashion. This is a clear cut case of corruption.

America needs to follow New Zealand&#x27;s example:<p>Ban software patents!

How do you americans still allow East Texas to be a part of the United States? They&#x27;re clearly rogue?

So do not register your company in the USA, otherwise you have to deal with patent trolls.

welcome to a political system (and indeed a world) run by lawyers.

All the Mobile Marketplaces are on fire. Nice.<p>Posted from my Windows Phone 8.1

At least that totally rad cliff diving video that YouTube queued up afterwards was a nice chaser.

It&#x27;s time to call in John Oliver...He&#x27;s our last and only hope!

A couple of misconceptions in this video. Patent infringement is not a crime. A son lawyer appearing in front of his judge father would not be allowed for conflict of interest in most circumstances.<p>That being said, patent trolling is obviously a problem, and legislation to fix the problem is making its way through Congress.

I&#x27;m not sure if this would help, but I think we should all tweet a link to this video clip to John Oliver.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;iamjohnoliver?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;iamjohnoliver?lang=en</a><p>or maybe this twitter account<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;LastWeekTonight?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;LastWeekTonight?lang=en</a>