Lawyer Sues EFF for Calling His Patent 'Stupid'
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been sued by a patent attorney and inventor who alleges he was defamed when the organization named one of his patents the "Stupid Patent of the Month."
June 02, 2015 at 08:52 PM
3 minute read
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which created its “Stupid Patent of the Month” campaign to highlight flaws in the U.S. patent system, has been sued by a patent attorney and inventor who alleges he was defamed when the organization named one of his patents April's “Stupid Patent of the Month.”
Scott Horstemeyer, a founding partner of the law firm Thomas Horstemeyer in Atlanta and the inventor behind a litigious nonpracticing entity called Eclipse IP, alleged in a complaint filed May 26 in Superior Court in Atlanta that EFF's blog post was filled with defamatory statements that damaged him personally and professionally.
The April 30 post, which ran under a headline “Eclipse IP Casts a Shadow Over Innovation” and was written by staff attorney Daniel Nazer, focused on the '334 patent issued to Horstemeyer by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on April 21, claiming a method of updating delivery information. The “stupid patent” designation, the post said, goes to the '334 patent because the PTO issued it after a federal judge in the Central District of California invalidated claims from three Eclipse patents in the same family, saying they claim abstract ideas and therefore were invalid.
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