Joe Mullin, an IP Law & Business reporter, has an excellent series of posts on his The Prior Art blog discussing the Harris v. Fish & Richardson case and the Patent Troll Tracker — click here for this blog’s coverage of the Harris case.  Mullin has three posts with lots of details and has promised a fourth:

  1. Harris has dropped his subpoena for a deposition of Rick Frenkel, the previously anonymous creator and author of the Patent Troll Tracker — click here for the post.  The post includes detailed analysis of each party’s declaratioins and allegations about the other. 
  2. Frenkel, in a declaration related to the subpoena for his deposition, stated that his Patent Troll Tracker blog will return — click here for the post.  Unfortunately, Frenkel did not give a date for his blog’s return.  While I have not always agreed with the Troll Tracker (for example, I  am not a fan of the "Troll" name), Frenkel researches and writes very well and it will be good to have his voice back as part of the blog conversation.
  3. Mullin’s third post is a detailed analysis of whether Frenkel is a reporter, including an analysis of Harris’s arguments, through the Niro Scavone firm, that he is not — click here for Mullin’s post.  Mullin concludes that Frenkel is a reporter.  The facts that he wrote anonymously, did not reveal his sources and was advocating a position (which Harris argued meant Frenkel was not a reporter) do not mean Frenkel could not be reporting.  Mullin explains that there is a long history of both advocacy in reporting and anonymous reporting, and that reporters generally do not reveal anonymous sources.
  4. Mullin promised a fourth post this week about anonymous blogging, a subject I have weighed in on several times — click here for the Blog’s anonymous blogging posts.  I will likely comment on Mullin’s post once it is up.  But I think he previewed his position when he posted over the weekend that he was discontinuing moderation of comments and welcomed anonymous comments.