Chicago IP Attorney & Lawyer : R. David Donoghue : Chicago IP Litigation Blog

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.

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There has been a lot of coverage of Troll Tracker's recently disclosed identity.* Troll Tracker ended his anonymity a few weeks ago and now faces a libel law suit along with his employer, Cisco, based upon statements he made about a case involving Cisco -- this is one of the many reasons I do not write about cases that my firm or I are involved in.

I did not intend to weigh in on this story because there was not much to add (see below for links to some of the best coverage). But then I read Joe Hosteny's March 2008 IP Today article – click here for the article -- about anonymous blogging and anonymous commenting. Hosteny is a partner in the Niro Scavone firm, a firm that was often a focus of Troll Tracker's posts. I have not always seen eye to eye with Hosteny in the courtroom, but I found his article both very good and thought provoking.

Hosteny raises real concerns about how the anger surrounding the non-practicing entity dispute has gotten out of hand. Death threats over patent litigation (even assuming they are idle threats) cannot be tolerated. These threats make me question whether the patent litigation bar is maintaining the levels of civility and sanity required by our professional standards.

Violent threats and, more broadly, incivility have no more place in the realm of legal blogs than in the legal system. But it does not follow that anonymous blogging and commenting are inherently bad – the issue is more complex than that. Lots of electrons have been spilled over the pros and cons of anonymous blogging – blog guru Kevin O'Keefe is no fan of anonymous blogging, whereas the anonymous editor of Blawg Review provides a great service to both the legal and the blogging communities with the weekly Blawg Review, despite his anonymity.

Anonymous blogging is not the problem. The problem is with anonymous bloggers who believe that anonymity allows them to comment on cases involving themselves or their clients , or to post threatening comments (Troll Tracker, of course, never posted any threats that I am aware of). If Troll Tracker had not blogged about his client's case and if he had stuck to the verifiable facts, he likely would not have gotten sued.

Similarly, anonymous commenting is not the problem if legal bloggers, including Troll Tracker, monitored and approved comments before** they went live, the death threats against Niro never would have been published. I moderate the comments to this Blog and, as a result, angry rants against a judge or an attorney (none have been violent) do not make it on the Blog. And that anonymity may have provided the writer with false courage. But I prevent that, and so can any blogger, by acting as a gatekeeper.

Hosteny argued that anonymity is cowardly and not in the tradition of the First Amendment because the Declaration of Independence was signed by the Continental Congress. But he leaves out that the Federalist Papers were signed with aliases. Anonymity can be useful in that it can provide courage to voice ideas that otherwise might not be interjected into public discourse. For that reason, I think there is a place for anonymous blogging and commenting, as long as anonymous bloggers do not use anonymity as an excuse to avoid the rules of our profession and of common sense.

As promised above, for more coverage of Troll Tracker and the defamation suit, see:

E.D. Texas Blog

IP Law360 (subscription required, but a very thorough history)

Patently O -- discussing a related federal suit filed in the District of Arkansas, including a link to the complaint.

Prior Art Blog -- detailing the history of the suit and here and here on other aspects of the story as well.

WSJ Law Blog

[Update]:  Blawg Review #151 at Lex Ferenda was just updated discussing this post.

* There are no Troll Tracker links because the site is currently either down or subscriber only.

**  Troll Tracker did remove violent and offensive comments, but only after they were posted and he became aware of them.

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Illinois Computer Research, LLC v. Google Inc., No. 07 C 5081 (N.D. Ill.) (Pallmeyer, J.).

Judge Pallmeyer is presiding over this case, which began as a standard case of a patent holding company, Illinois Computer Research (“ICR”) suing a large defendant, in this case Google, for patent infringement. The complaint was a standard three page notice pleading complaint alleging that Google infringed ICR’s patents based upon its Book Search functionality – click here for the original complaint. But the case quickly morphed into a dispute between a law firm, Fish & Richardson (“Fish”), and its former partner, the inventor and former owner of the patents in suit Scott Harris. ICR amended its complaint adding Fish and turning it in to a speaking complaint alleging that Fish forced Harris to resign because of the suit against Google and seeking a declaratory judgment that Harris, not Fish, owned the patent in suit – click here for the amended complaint. 

Fish answered the amended complaint – click here for the answer – and filed speaking counterclaims alleging that Harris breached his partnership contract and fiduciary duties, and seeking a declaratory judgment that Fish owned the patents – click here for the counterclaims. Harris responded with his own speaking counterclaims alleging tortious interference and defamation – click here for Harris’s counterclaims and click here for Fish’s answer. Shortly after Fish’s second answer, Google was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice, but the case regarding Harris and Fish continued.

Fish filed a motion for expedited discovery, which the Court granted in court, without an opinion detailing the discovery allowed. Fish also filed a Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings seeking to dismiss plaintiffs’ tortious interference and defamation claims. That motion has been briefed, but not decided yet. And last week, Fish filed a motion to amend its counterclaims and third-party complaint naming six additional entities – click here for the motion.  The motion does not identify the new parties specifically except to say that some are unnamed Doe defendants and that they are all related or believed to be related to Harris’s and ICR’s law firm Niro Scavone. Fish appears to be making a Propat-style argument that some or all of the additional defendants have or had an interest in the patent in suit and, therefore, are necessary parties. I will cover these opinions as they come out, but in light of all of the coverage this case has been getting – for example, see this recent Troll Tracker post and this case timeline at Joe Mullin’s The Prior Art Blog which Mullin promises to update periodically – I thought readers would be interested in some detailed background of the case. More to come as the Court issues opinions.

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