Patent Litigation Weekly: 'Troll Tracker' Speaks. Plus, Inside Acacia's Big Win against Yahoo

What led you to start the Patent Troll Tracker blog?

It was really seeing a lot of other blogs covering patent issues, but nobody really covering the issue of NPEs. In early 2007 I didn’t see many articles at all in the legal papers I was reading. The only ones I did see were in IPlaw360, where they’d refer to some company I’d never heard of as a "Texas corporation." Which was true, but I thought there was more of a story there. Who was really behind the assertion? A lot of us had noticed the huge uptick [in NPE lawsuits]. To me, [Patent Troll Tracker] was a missing piece of what was going on in patent litigation. By the time I stopped the blog, others were writing about it too.

Does your work as Patent Troll Tracker affect your practice now?

What I was doing was really studying non-practicing entities. I learned a lot about the way entities like this operate. It’s helped when I’ve had clients or prospective clients who have been sued.

At Wilson, we do a lot of defense work against non-practicing entities, it’s something that everyone has become quite used to, as the PricewaterhouseCoopers survey showed.

Ten years ago, the practice of patent litigation was dominated by competitor cases. Today, at least half of the cases, seemingly, are cases where the plaintiff is not a competitor.

Finding out about the history of a patent, who owned it, how the current owner got it, what they paid for it—there’s a lot you can find out. I was collecting information and trying to make it accessible to everybody. I’m still collecting the same kinds of information, just doing it for my clients—to help them assess a patent case and decide what to do with it.

How do you see the state of the debate about patent trolls or NPEs today?

I don’t know that there is much of a debate about the issue anymore. I don’t know if there is any shot at legislative reform. I certainly don’t think that the nature of the [patent-holding] plaintiff is playing into that debate.

Do you think it should?

I don’t remember that being one of my points. One of the issues I was really writing about a lot was the issue of venue, and whether or not there should be legislative reform because of what I perceived to be problems with interpretations of the venue statutes.

Since then, the Federal Circuit has issued several decisions [regarding transfers], and there are several district court opinions issuing transfers. In light of that, I don’t know if there will be legislative reform.

How do you feel about blogging, in hindsight?

Well, I’m glad to [be] moving on from all the legal issues.

It taught me a lot about what has happened over time in terms of patent litigation. But it was a huge task, took up a lot of my personal time, and i don’t miss it.

(This interview was edited for length, clarity, grammar, and style.)

HOW ACACIA NEARLY DOUBLED ITS WIN AGAINST YAHOO

Acacia Research is a large patent-enforcement company based in Newport Beach, California. Because it buys others’ patents and maintains a heavy litigation docket—pursuing dozens of patent infringement lawsuits around the country at any given time—Acacia is no stranger to controversy, and CEO Paul Ryan long ago learned to ignore being tagged as a “patent troll” and other less-polite terms by tech-industry folks.

Founded in 2002, Acacia didn’t experience its first jury trial until 2007. That trial ended disastrously when Microsoft—represented by Matthew Power of Weil, Gotshal & Manges—scored a rare Eastern District of Texas defense that invalidated Acacia’s patent-in-suit.

Acacia launched something of a comeback last year when another E.D. Texas jury issued a $6.6 million verdict in favor of the patent-holding company in a patent infringement lawsuit against Yahoo Inc. The winning party was actually an East Texas–based Acacia subsidiary, Creative Internet Advertising Corp. (CIAC), which was formed to pursue the infringement claim of U.S. Patent No. 6,205,432.

Now, TPA sibling publication The Recorder reports that U.S. Magistrate Judge John D. Love has issued a final judgment in the case, tacking on interest and a willful infringement penalty that brings to $12.4 million the total amount Yahoo must pay to CIAC.