Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Get the Screen Shots

Drew Curtis, the CEO of Fark.com had the unpleasant experience of being sued for patent infringement by Gooseberry Natural Resources - a patent troll with no employees and an office in a strip mall in LA.

Mr. Curtis abandoned the standard "settle for a little as possible as quickly as possible" strategy of resolving patent infringement law suits and instead invoked the "show me where I'm infringing" strategy.  Get the proof of infringement.  Fight infringement rather than fighting the patent.  By not wasting time and money trying to have the patent invalidated, he focused instead on making the NPE prove infringement.

His TED Talk is a refreshing look at someone who chose to remove the cover of darkness from a patent infringement suit and settlement.  Regardless of your feelings toward patent assertion entities, everyone in the patentsphere benefits from moving the discussion of what is infringe and what isn't into the sunlight and away from platitudes like "the patent system if broken."