Must Be Hard to Face a Huge, Unexpected Bill, Amirite?—The subhead for a story in The Register about an $847,000,000.00 judgement against Verizon for patent infringement.
There is, as there always is, a story behind all of this. This case was held in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the most patent troll friendly jurisdiction in the nation, and it was presided over by Judge Rodney Jockstrap Gilstrap, who is the most patent troll friendly judge in the USA. (So much so that he typically hears over ¼ of all patent cases in the country.
There are literally thousands of offices in and around Marshall and Beaumont, Texas which are nothing but a door with a name on it. They are used by patent trolls as "Headquarters" in order for them to have their case heard there.
I can't speak to the specifics of the patent, it about various radio signal technologies, and if it were in my wheel house, I would still find the obscure verbiage of patents hard to penetrate, but the plaintiff is a non-practicing entity (NPE, better described as a patent troll), so I'm inclined to call bullsh%$ on the verdict.
I cannot believe that I am saying this, but I'm with Verizon on this one.
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